State of Affairs Blog

Words That Still Matter: ROMANCE

By: Dave Kurtz

I’m a hopeless romantic. I’m the kind of guy who, as the song says, would literally “walk 500 miles and…walk 500 more just to be the man who walked 1000 miles to fall down” at the door of a girl I love. I definitely err far more on the passionate, emotional attachment side of the equation than on the side of level-headed deliberation when it comes to matters of love.

While dreamy tendencies like mine often go hand-in-hand with fickle caprice, I think it’s important to define romance as something far more concrete than a sappy expression of sentiment. It’s so much more than cards, flowers, chocolate, and a teddy bear that says “I love you” when squeezed. In fact, that stuff doesn’t have much to do with romance at all.

Romance is really all about commitment. The word “commitment,” particularly in the context of anything related to relationships, tends to strike fear into the hearts of our modern-day sensibilities. The idea of committing to a life-long marriage conjures images of a decades-long forced slog through dullness, boredom, and captivity. As a result, it’s no surprise that Americans so often go back on their vows and choose divorce once their initially strong “romantic” sentiments toward their spouse give way to arguments, bitterness, and the harsh realities of living with one another’s flaws.

Romance properly defined, then, is so important because relationships can only succeed where there is commitment. Romance is the man who pursues his wife’s affections every day of their marriage as he seeks to know, love, and serve her without reservation. It’s the 70-year old woman who faithfully tends to her sick husband, day in and day out. The middle-aged man who takes delight in knowing he wouldn’t trade a single crevice of his wife’s body for any on a younger model. It’s an apology to the other person even when the present issue is clearly 99% the other’s fault. It’s an an intimacy within sexual expression that seeks selfless giving rather than self-gratification. Romance is a paradoxical phenomenon that embraces death to self in order to give life to another.

So, yes, I’m a hopeless romantic, but I’m a hopeless romantic who wants every whimsical thought and loving touch to be backed up by an unwavering commitment to my beloved. I want to be a romantic who doesn’t tap out at mile 6, but makes it the whole way to mile 1000. And well beyond. Because I’m convinced that in pouring out myself for another, I’ll actually experience love more deeply than I ever could otherwise.

Dave Kurtz is a Christian ministry fellow in Princeton, NJ. Posters for the Words That Still Matter campaign were designed by Jason J. Bach. Read more about the campaign here. View the campaign website www.wordsthatstillmatter.com.

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Words That Still Matter: STRENGTH

By: Margaret Fortney

A lot of the idioms that we use in talking about love suggest that it’s associated with weakness. There’s the damsel in distress waiting for her knight in shining armor. We get “weak in the knees” as we spot that someone across the room. We speak of “falling in love” as if love were a canyon we tumbled into. Our hearts get stolen and sometimes broken.

This language suggests that we enter—and leave—love in a state of weakness. But must it be like this? I think not. We can—and should—exercise strength as we navigate the sometimes stormy waters of dating, romance, and love. When we do, we find that love in turn strengthens us.

Love, when properly understood, does not necessitate or even imply weakness. Love is not something uncontrollable that just happens to us. It is not a feeling that we can’t resist or an emotion we can’t suppress. Rather, love is a choice. We choose who we love and we choose how we love.

Decisions regarding love require strength because, well, all decisions require strength. It takes strength to say no to the cupcakes that tempt me daily; it takes strength to walk away from those cute, over-priced shoes in the window display; it takes strength to get up early to go to the gym when I would rather sleep in.

So much more, then, does it require strength to make good decisions in dating, romance, and love—where the temptations and the stakes are so much higher than a one-time dent in my wallet. Often what is immediately the most attractive is the most harmful in the long term. Compelling options like cohabitating before marriage, having sex at a young age, watching porn, and sleeping with multiple partners are associated with higher divorce rates, less satisfying sex in marriage, more extramarital affairs, and greater incidences of sexually transmitted diseases. It seems that sacrificing these things in the short term increases our chances for a healthy, stable, and satisfying marriage in the future; a lifetime of love is immensely more satisfying than any temporary pleasures.

But strength in love is about a lot more than saying no to certain temptations in the short-term. It’s about saying yes to someone else—to their well-being, to their happiness, to their good—forever. It takes real strength of character to sacrifice one’s own good, consistently and repeatedly, for the sake of another. And yet that is exactly what love is and what love calls us to.

We must be strong in decisions regarding love because our feelings cannot always be trusted. It might seem like a swell idea right now to eat three cupcakes, but one we would almost surely regret later. The butterflies in one’s proverbial stomach can be misleading, and the cutest guy in the room might not be best guy in the room. This might all sound cynical. Perhaps we would prefer to believe that love is some type of fantasy or euphoric experience. But how much more romantic is it to realize that the person who loves us has chosen us (out of all the people in the world!) and likewise we have chosen him or her?

Strength in the realm of dating, romance, and love doesn’t mean being tough, cold, prone to scowling, or avoiding commitment. It means willfully choosing what is good—for ourselves, yes, but more importantly for another—and forgoing what is not. By exercising real strength, we might just find ourselves in the arms of someone to whom we can relinquish control and who can relinquish control to us. We might just find ourselves growing in strength of character and witnessing that growth in another. We might just find ourselves strengthened by love.

Margaret Fortney is a senior at Princeton University pursuing a degree in computer science and linguistics. Posters for the Words That Still Matter campaign were designed by Jason J. Bach. Read more about the campaign here. View the campaign website www.wordsthatstillmatter.com.

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Words That Still Matter: INTEGRITY

By: Cassandra L. Hough

Browsing through the pages of the Love and Fidelity Network website, the phrase “marriage, family, and sexual integrity” seems to repeat itself more than once. But what is “sexual integrity”? Or rather, what is “integrity” and what does it have to do with our sexuality and relationships?

Put simply, “integrity” means to be whole and undivided. It means matching one’s actions to one’s beliefs, acting consistently with one’s standards of right and wrong, good and bad. It is an honesty of action, where one does what one means and means what one does. It seems simple enough, and yet it can be hard to live out in today’s culture of gratification.

Integrity, even if we don’t always call it by this name, is something to which many young men and women aspire. If they believe in this cause or that – feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, advocating for the underprivileged – they strive to show it through the activities they take on and the clubs they join. In their professional preparation, they aim to do good and honest work. And in their friendships they can be depended on and confided in. Today’s college men and women don’t want to be hypocrites. They strive for integrity by seeking consistency – or integration – between their behaviors and their values.

And yet, the hook-up culture and the norms that attend it are all about dis-integration. The whole point of a culture that embraces casual sex is that one can disconnect, or dis-integrate, sexual intimacy from such things as commitment, love, and responsibility. One can enjoy sex without all the “baggage” of its normal consequences. Within this culture, sex is disconnected from the person. What matters is merely mutual consent to do a certain sexual activity together– not who the person is, what history you have together, or what future you hope to share. The hook-up culture is founded in maintaining separation and division between people. And it is precisely in this social disintegration that men and women begin to experience a personal disintegration – an internal sense of division – as well.

The hook-up culture is in part so damaging because it creates and fosters an estrangement of people from each other, and especially the estrangement of the sexes. We can only survive in relationship with one another, and we can only thrive in relationship with one another. The hook-up culture has contributed to a growing bitterness of men toward women, and women toward men. (Not to mention a growing bitterness of people toward themselves.) We cannot thrive when we break the standards we hold for ourselves in most aspects of our lives – standards of respect for ourselves and others, standards of honesty and reliability – in our most intimate actions. We sense this internal disintegration – this dishonesty toward and division within ourselves – and we begin to disdain ourselves and others for it.

Today’s young people still aspire to be men and women of integrity. So it comes as no surprise that an increasing number of them are growing tired of the college hook-up scene and disillusioned by its empty promises. Casual sexual encounters may deliver some immediate “benefits”, but these are overwhelmed by all the ways in which hooking up stifles personal and social development. Respect for ourselves and for others demands more than mere consent. It demands an integrity where the intimacy of our behaviors is consistent with the level of intimacy in our relationships. That’s sexual integrity. And yes – it does still matter.

Cassandra L. Hough is the Founder of the Love and Fidelity Network and currently serves as Senior Advisor. Posters for the Words That Still Matter campaign were designed by Jason J. Bach. Read more about the campaign here. View the campaign website www.wordsthatstillmatter.com.

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Some Words Still Matter

By: Caitlin Seery

Romance is in the air this week. Or, at least what the card industry would have us call romance. We’re inundated with cheesy love poems and all things pink, red, violet, and chocolate. In the midst of all these so-called accoutrements of romance, sex seems to be on display everywhere we turn. Victoria’s Secret has their email blasts going. The card industry is playing its part with crass humor lurking behind seemingly innocent messages of tenderness in the Valentine’s aisle. Advertisements and drug store displays encourage men to buy their lady friends lingerie and fuzzy red sex toys as tokens of affection.

Nowhere is this more prevalent than on college campuses, where Valentine’s Day is used as an excuse to hang posters with images of intimate scenes, host pornography screenings, portray barely-clothed students in campus newspapers, advertize female orgasm seminars, and give out chocolates shaped like unmentionables. Not that colleges need Valentine’s Day as an excuse, but the culture of consequence-free casual sex seems particularly loud around this time of year.

Which is why we need to make our own message even louder this month as well. And what is that message? That young men and women are worth more than the hook-up culture makes them out to be. That the hook-up culture forces students to settle for less than what they want and for less than who they are.

We believe students can and should strive for Integrity, Dignity, Strength, and Romance when it comes to love and relationships, just as they do in other aspects of their lives. We believe that by aspiring to these age-old ideals, students can live up to their true worth—and avoid the personal and social harms that come from pretending sex can be consequence-free.

This year our annual Valentine’s Day campaign focuses on the realities of the hook-up culture and the raw experiences of those struggling inside it. Through campus newspaper advertisements, over 4,000 posters, and the campaign website www.wordsthatstillmatter.com, the Love and Fidelity Network and students on 25 campuses are challenging their peers across the country to reflect on their experiences with the hook-up culture—and challenging them to connect those experiences with their desire for Integrity, Dignity, Strength, and Romance.

We put this campaign together because we believe these words – these aspirations – still matter. Especially when it comes to sex, love, and relationships.

Throughout the rest of this Valentine’s week on State of Affairs students and recent alumni will share their own reflections on why each word still matters to them. We hope you will check back here to read their stories throughout the week. We invite you to explore the stories featured on the campaign website in the coming days and perhaps share your own experience, so that together we might expose the hook-up culture for what it is, and recognize a better vision for love and relationships that follows through on its promises.

Caitlin Seery is the Director of Programs at the Love and Fidelity Network and Editor of State of Affairs. Posters for the campaign were designed by Jason J. Bach. Visit the campaign website. Read more about the Words That Still Matter campaign here.

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Why Men Want Commitment Too (Or Should if They Knew What Was Good for Them)

By: Matthew Dugandzic

The desire for commitment in relationships is often thought of as feminine. Men are thought of as desiring sex for its own sake – with as many different partners as possible. The modern feminist movement, by judging women by masculine standards, has convinced many women that this “sexual freedom” is what they should want as well. It is indeed a shame that sexual purity is seen as oppressive. If only women could free themselves of the emotional shackles of their sexuality! The manifestation of this mentality in our western culture has resulted in a hook-up culture that many women, despite the modern feminist environment in which they were raised, recognize as harmful to their psychology, spirituality, indeed, their very being. While women are the obvious victims of this exaltation of frivolous sex, I think that men are also harmed by it. In fact, I think that the hook-up culture harms men even more than it harms women.

To begin, I’d like to talk about some of the basic differences between male and female psychology. Even from a young age, boys are interested in things, and girls are interested in people. Imagine two young boys, Joey and Billy, who are both about 10 years old. Joey has a video game system at his house, and he often invites Billy over to play with him. Joey may like Billy, he may like being in his company, but when he invites Billy over to play video games, it is for the sake of the video game, not necessarily for company. Joey finds video games more enjoyable with another person around, and so he likes playing with Billy. Joey and Billy could probably play for hours on end and only exchange a few words. The words that they do exchange will probably be about the video game, not about anything going on in their personal lives. Essentially, they are relating to one another indirectly through the game.

Now let’s imagine Joey and Billy as young adults. They now go by Joe and Bill and attend the same college. They might have matured at this age to the point where they can and do relate to each other directly, but any observer of their conversation would be very aware of the fact that they often talk about things in which they share an interest. They probably don’t make eye contact very much. When talking about say, sports or computers, their eyes focus on some abstract space between them where they visualize the object of their conversation. They still relate to each other in a very indirect way and their conversation is not about relating to one another but about the object in which they are both interested.

Growing up down the street from Joey and Billy are Mary and Sally. Mary invites Sally over on a regular basis to take part in a variety of activities. They like to make necklaces, have tea parties, and play on Mary’s swing set. As they get older, their interests change. However, throughout all this time, the activity that they do together is a mere excuse to see each other. Mary and Sally like their necklaces, but it really doesn’t matter what they do together. When they talk, they look each other in the eye and relate directly to one another. They form a close, personal relationship over time and will probably remain friends even if they both go away to different colleges. Joey and Billy might as well, but they will probably forget about each other as they make new friends in young adulthood. Whether they remain friends or not, the ending of their relationship will probably not be nearly as painful as the pain that Mary and Sally will endure if they cease to be friends.

The result of this psychology, that of men to be interested in things and women to be interested in people, results in very different friendship patterns in men and women. Grown men have friends for sure, but their friendships tend to be very impersonal, held together by common interests and little else. They rarely have close, personal friends in their adulthood. If they do, they usually don’t have very many. Women, on the other hand, tend to have many personal friends. If they need emotional support for whatever reason, they have girlfriends, sisters, and mothers to go to. Men tend to lack this emotional safety net… with one exception. A man’s emotional support come from the woman that he has in his life, be she a girlfriend or a wife.

What does all of this have to do with the hook-up culture? Well, to figure that out, we need to look at male sexuality. As described above, men tend to be impersonal. They do not share their feelings with their friends (unless they are very close, and even then, only on rare occasions) and they are terrified of exposing their vulnerability in public. Men’s emotions are often hidden within their consciousness, and not often brought to the surface. In fact, when it comes to verbalizing their feelings, grown men are hardly any better at this than young boys. Men do, however, have one soft spot. We are helpless when it comes to women.

A woman can turn the strongest, hardest, most confident man into a sappy, weak-kneed, hopeless romantic. I have experienced this transformation first-hand. As a young boy I was very sensitive and cried easily. As a teenager I hardened into a young man who rarely cried, was not easily perturbed, and often was only indirectly aware of his emotions. That is, for example, I would conclude that I was angry from the fact that I was yelling, not because I actually felt angry. The first time I fell in love changed all that. I cried for the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt a surge of emotions that I hadn’t felt before, my feelings found their way to my sleeves, and I even wrote a poem. I had never willingly done that on my own before. All of my poetry had been written reluctantly, under the command of an English teacher.

Men need this. This unique emotional outlet lets them feel their feelings more deeply than in any other circumstance. Their sexuality propels them to form a strong, deep, personal relationship with a woman. This is the one place where they can fully express themselves, be vulnerable, and find emotional support. Without this type of relationship in their lives, men will most likely lack the emotional safety net that women attain so easily. Without romance, men will most likely wind up living cold, detached, empty lives.

The problem with the hook-up culture is that it corrupts the natural orientation of a man’s sexuality. Male sexuality is supposed to drive a man to find its completion in another person. It propels him to pursue a women, desire to be with her, strive to win her heart, yearn to know her ever more deeply, and make promises of eternal fidelity. This is what the masculine heart wants. The hook-up culture convinces men that this sort of relationship, which tends towards exclusivity and permanence, is not fun. It’s slavery. Consequently, a man’s desires become orientated towards mere gratification. A woman becomes the means by which he achieves this gratification. In short, she becomes an object. The more a man participates in the hook-up culture, the more this objectification of women becomes rooted in his psychology. His sexuality, instead of prompting him to for a deep, personal, romantic relationship with a woman, encapsulates him within the confines of his own mind. It becomes more and more difficult for him to conceive of women as persons deserving love and respect as they slowly become mere objects of desire.

Therefore, while women are the most obvious victims of the hook-up culture, in that they are easily and evidently hurt by the discovery that their sexual encounters which were thought to be meaningful were instead about nothing but pleasure, men are severely damaged by it in a chronic way. Their ability to form meaningful relationships with women is seriously injured. They therefore lack the emotional support that is so necessary in adult life and they will find it difficult to ever escape their own psychology to find fulfillment in another person. The way for them to avoid this disastrous situation is to commit. Commitment prompts a man to channel his sexuality toward finding completion in another person to whom he will grow closer throughout his life. In doing so he will find the emotional support he needs and be able to live a life worthy of a human being.

Matthew Dugandzic holds a BSc in Biology from Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. He is currently pursuing an MA in Theology from St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, NY. This article originally appeared on his blog Catholic Thoughts.

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Romance Is Risk

By: Margaret Fox

My friends and I have spent a lot of late nights sprawled out on floor pillows in someone’s dorm room, complaining about the pathetic state of ‘relationships’ in college. There’s the casual hookup which becomes a relationship which falls apart within two months, the study session with that cute guy which may mean something more, and of course the ever-maddening ‘just friends’ situation. Do you think he likes me? Should I say something?

None of us ever have all the answers, just advice and sympathy—almost all of us have been there. And guess how this particular conversation almost always ends? It ends with my friends and I telling one another, ‘don’t worry, things will be different once we’re out in the real world.’

By ‘different’, we mean men will make their intentions clear, bravely demonstrate their admiration, and risk our rejection. In a word: ‘court’ us.

To a college student like myself, the words ‘after graduation’ have a magical quality to them. They’re loaded with all kinds hopes and expectations. Even when you’re terrified about heading out into a daunting, unfriendly universe, you can tell yourself it will all be worth it to enter that fairy tale world: adulthood.

That’s why this article was such a depressing revelation. Things don’t just magically transform after graduation. The same people hooking up in dorm rooms on Friday nights are going to be working in my office building. The same guys who never put their hearts on the line and take a girl out to dinner, are going to be clumsily texting me, ‘what are you up to tonight?’

So much for different.

Frankly, it’s a shame. I know that asking a girl out must be hard. Vulnerability is terrifying, and always has been. But it used to be that women expected it. If a man was interested in a woman, he had to step up and show her he valued her. So the real question is, women: why are we putting up with so much less than we deserve?

I don’t think it’s low self-worth or desperation, the go-to critiques of modern femininity. It’s not that we doubt the guy’s interest in us; what we doubt is our very desire for true romance.

In the Times article, the writer explains how guys are hesitant to do things ‘the old fashioned way,’ for fear of being offensive. But I think women are just as conflicted. We grew up steeped in a culture that values change, improvisation, and creativity, a culture certain that the world is transforming for the better.

Unfortunately, that pep talk of a worldview comes with a caveat: anything ‘traditional’ is code for ‘backwards’. Any set way of doing things is suspect. Deep down the woman who wants a man to buy her flowers and take her out to dinner, can’t help but wonder, is she asking for too much? Is she betraying the women who fought for her vote and her equal pay, by asking for the trappings of an archaic, paternalistic system?

If a man comes along willing to take the lead in their relationship, this well-educated young woman is careful to remind herself that it’s just because he’s the product of an intrinsically sexist society. And as an emancipated woman, she knows that it’s the more honest man who skips the dinner and just texts her with the oh-so-romantic message, ‘My place at 10?’ At least he gets straight to the point.

If our parents were overly optimistic, self-deluded hippies, we’re the opposite extreme. We set our expectations as low as possible. We’re careful not to expect too much from our careers, our government, or our marriages—we’ve seen too many go wrong. Sure, we can watch sappy romances, but only if we’re appropriately embarrassed about it. We can want love, sex, and even marriage, but only if we do all three the ‘modern’ way: minus unrealistic expectations.

As it turns out, the ugly side of progress is cynicism. And cynicism is the death of romance.
But people, cynicism is not going to get us anywhere. It may masquerade as common sense, but in reality it’s just a self-defense mechanism. I know, because I use it all the time. Set the bar low and you can’t be disappointed. Don’t expect too much, and you can’t be hurt. With all our texting and our ‘hanging out’, we’re just tip-toeing around one another trying to care as little as possible. God forbid we put all our cards on the table by actually making an effort to win someone over.

Maybe all our efforts pay off and we avoid the risks. But we also miss out on the rewards. Come on men, be honest: you want to be brave. And women? You want to be pursued. Yes, it’s scary, but it’s worth it. The kind of frightened, half-hearted courtship that’s becoming the norm is a sham romance, and no one is really satisfied with it.

Love is not cynical. Romance is risk. So women, start raising your expectations. When you’re feeling used and taken for granted by this culture, don’t second guess yourselves. Ask for more. You deserve to be respected, treasured, and pursued. And if you doubt that there’s a man anywhere who will honor you like that, your greatest weapon is the single word that shatters the cynic in all of us: hope.

Margaret Fox is a senior at Princeton University. This piece responding to the New York Times article The End of Courtship? originally appeared at PUREhope.

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Yes, Virginia, Culture Does Matter

By: Cassandra Hough

At our 2012 national conference, Dr. Robert P. George noted that the sexual revolution was spurred by an idea – the very bad idea that freedom and happiness are found in a lifestyle of casual sex and promiscuity. In order to challenge the ideology of the sexual revolution and overcome the ruin it has left in its wake, it is similarly going to take the propagation of an idea – the very good idea that people and society do best when the integrity and dignity of sexuality is respected.

Ideas form culture. And we currently find ourselves at a cultural and ideological crossroads, where two powerful ideas are competing with each other. To some, the culture of the sexual revolution appears the more attractive and seems to be winning out. Even those who support and advocate the idea of sexual integrity occasionally seem stumped about what a culture of sexual integrity should look like.

But we need not be stumped. Last month, as I reflected on how I wanted to celebrate and explain the Christmas season to my young daughter, I was struck once again by how centrally important the life of the family is. Although there are many other people within a given community who influence the education and formation of children and young adults, the family is the first teacher of the next generation – it is the seat of culture in society. It is from this starting point that we are introduced to the world around us and that we learn what to value and how to act within that world.

This relationship between family life and culture should not surprise us. The social sciences give us a quantitative translation of this relationship through studies that show how the stable and intact family structure is repeatedly correlated with the best outcomes in children’s physical health, emotional health, sexual health, academic achievement, law abidingness, and general well-being. Qualitative study further reveals the positive effects that father involvement, family dinners, and regular family prayer have on individuals. When we piece together these data trends with our own personal, lived-out experience, we get a clearer picture of what it takes for couples, children, and society to flourish. And a healthy family life – where mom and dad are committed to each other and together committed to their children, and where parents are involved in their children’s lives and family members spend time regularly with each other – is central to a healthy culture.

What does this have to do with a culture of sexual integrity? The culture of the sexual revolution is a culture of one – it is a me-centered culture. Events like Brown University’s “Sex, Power, God” – where students, stripped down to their underwear, dance and hook-up in the pitch dark – remind us of that: Who the other person is is not supposed to matter.

But sexual integrity, while respecting personal dignity and individual freedom, emphasizes the importance of the other. At its heart, a culture of sexual integrity is one where men and women respect themselves and each other, and where they learn to love with a selfless love that incorporates erotic love, but is not corrupted by it.

The family is the first place where we learn how men and women interact and love. As men and women enter adulthood and form friendships that progress into romantic relationships, the family—both one’s own family and the families in one’s community—continue to provide a necessary and crucial example (and crucial advice) for how we are to grow in friendship and in romantic love.

One of the obstacles of college life is that it often removes young men and women from their families and natural communities. In the absence of these examples, the culture of the sexual revolution can be quite persuasive and overwhelming.

If we are to foster a culture of sexual integrity, we must recognize that a life of sexual integrity does not happen in a vacuum. We can only love another person well when we first learn that kind of love from those around us. To build a culture of sexual integrity, we must take our cues from those relationships we most admire, and value family life as our first teacher, our inspiration, and our goal.

Cassandra Hough is the Founder and Senior Advisor of the Love and Fidelity Network. She resides in Princeton, New Jersey with her husband and their two children.

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Three Cheers for the End of Courtship?

By: Caitlin Seery

We are all up in arms about courtship this week, it seems. Over at the New York Times they’re lamenting its demise while cheers of good riddance can be heard from the female millennials over at Slate and HuffPo.

The debate has gone something like this:

“Texting and Words with Friends and Grouper have ruined courtship.”

“Hooray that texting has sent courtship packing. We never wanted it anyway. Now we can be free to date however we want without artificial gender norms!”

“But it would be nice to go on a real date. One where the guy shows up at some point.”

“I’m SO glad I don’t have to sit through fancy meals like women used to be forced to do. What a relief.”

Nothing we haven’t heard before, of course. As a fellow single millennial female college-educated where the hook-up scene was second to none, I can’t help but notice a rather gaping hole in this conversation. It’s been entirely focused on “dates” as in the activities. But what about “dates” as in the people? Isn’t getting to know people what the whole process is supposed to be about in the first place?

Let’s back up for a second. This conversation is about courtship, right? You know, that old fashioned way young men and women met, got to know one another, got to know one another’s families, shared laughs and adventures, talked about life, and ultimately decided whether they wished to marry each other – and either did so or moved on. (Christmas wasn’t that long ago – think of George and Mary’s romance in It’s a Wonderful Life. That’s courtship.) So I guess that’s what we’re talking about. I guess that’s all gone. I guess no one’s going to lasso the moon for me. I think I can live with that.

But that’s not the courtship that the Times has now declared a thing of the past. No, the Times has redefined “traditional courtship” (perhaps as a sister effort to her attempt to redefine marriage) to mean simply “picking up the telephone and asking someone on a date.”

So it’s not just traditional courtship that’s out the window, but basic manners and dating as we knew it. And that’s hardly surprising, as Donna Freitas notes, since kids growing up in a college hook-up culture can hardly be expected to learn overnight how to start actually dating each other. That would mean learning to treat each other (regardless of gender) with basic courtesy and respect when no one has ever shown them how.

And the Times certainly clarifies that any remnants of courtesy and respect are over, too. As Manhattan 20-something Joshua Sky observes of himself and his contemporaries “you only want to invest in a mate you’re going to get more out of.” All that matters now in the whole dating game is that I get something out of it. That it fulfills me.

The ladies over at Slate and HuffPo – who I have no doubt are lovely young women with whom I likely have much in common – are glad that these bastions of the ancien regime are a thing of the past. The old ways of courting imposed restrictions based on arbitrary gender roles, forced us into constructs we might find uncomfortable, made us think not as individuals, but according to a gender stereotype. Now, we are free to explore whatever kind of dating will make us happy. Men can ask women out. Women can ask men out. We can all go to a bar together and sit around texting people at the bar two blocks over. We can Words-with-Friend each other. We can tweet each other. We can Angry Bird each other. We can split the bill and fight over who pays and spend half of a first non-date wondering how to interpret his interpretation of our wine-picking-gender-role-selection preferences because we are unique individuals!

With all this freedom, who wouldn’t find ways to date that make us happy? The options are endless.

And yet, I’ve never heard anyone say – ah, now, I have found the way I like to date that makes me happiest. I think I will settle down on this type of dating and date this way only, at least until I find another way of dating that suits me.

I wonder why.

Perhaps because the whole point of dating isn’t to find the most preferable way to pass your time. It’s to find the person whom you’ll choose to love. For the rest of your life. But with all the big bad constricting rules off the table, we are forced to spend a painfully disproportionate amount of the time we devote to our love lives (which is limited by all the “career grinding” we millennials are known for) just learning whether and how we are dating (or hanging out, or courting, or tweeting, or whatever). And that leaves little time to focus on who we are dating.

And that’s the problem. If we are going to grow up out of the hook-up culture that surrounded us in college, we need to start focusing on people. On getting to know them. On learning to love them—and not out of our own self-interest. And definitely not on the dates themselves.

Those “restrictive” rules might constrain those of us women who like to choose our own wine (I’ll have the Malbec, please) or prefer to start with something less intimidating than a fancy dinner, but these are really small sacrifices to make when we consider that they free both parties from agonizing over the minutia of the dating process, and allow us instead to focus on the part that actually matters—getting to know the man or woman behind that new face across the table.

Caitlin Seery is the Director of Programs at the Love and Fidelity Network, Editor of State of Affairs, and a firm believer that men ought to pick up the phone and call to ask women on dates.

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Recipe for Success: Marriage Edition

By: Amanda Brennan

Student Fellow Amanda Brennan reflects on her experience at the Love and Fidelity Network’s annual conference last fall.

Uniting with hundreds of other young minds to discuss the current state of marriage, family, and sexuality left me hopeful and invigorated about the future. Man is made for relationship, and that was made ever clearer during this November weekend. Although the signs and statistics of the culture often appear bleak when it comes to traditional values, nothing can stifle the impassioned spirit of young men and women who support one another in a cause founded on truth.

Dr. Patrick Fagan opened the conference stressing that “young, intact, married families that worship weekly” are the nucleus of a flourishing society. Little did I know that what I learned over those two days of philosophical discourse would come in handy so quickly! Shortly after getting back to campus, a friend and I struck up a conversation comparing today’s marriages to those of our grandparents’ generation. How is it that our grandparents continue to celebrate their 40^th, 50^th, and even 60^th anniversaries, while over half of marriages today end in divorce, we wondered. Obviously, something in the marriage recipe has been altered over the years, and the results have not been advantageous.

Society constantly tells young people that they need to earn a certain income, attain success in their career, discover themselves, and play the field before ever stepping into a commitment such as marriage. A dose of prudence is always smart, but sometimes it can be taken to extremes. The ingredients in our grandparent’s marriage recipe included fidelity, sacrifice, and the desire for the beloved’s good. Now, those elements are an added bonus rather than an expected norm.

Today’s recipe includes a dramatic shift in attitude, one that focuses on self-love over self-gift. Additionally, divorce has become an acceptable, casual, and easily obtainable option. Straying from the traditional marriage vows of fidelity and life-long commitment has ultimately given us unacceptable divorce rates, broken families, and a disregard for human life—to name just a few.

For all the trials and adaptations, sometimes the original recipe really does turn out to be the best. Young people are realizing that the modifications were a mistake since they are the ones who’ve experienced most personally the ramifications of the breakdown of marriage and families.

The fifth annual Sexuality, Integrity, and the University Conference revealed and revived a desire within students to understand and defend the traditional institutions of society, which root themselves in virtue. As founding father Alexander Hamilton said, “He who stands for nothing will fall for anything.” Let us not fall for the counterfeits the world offers in regards to marriage and family, but fight for those truths that enliven our humanity.

Amanda Brennan is a senior at Franciscan University of Steubenville. She will graduate in May with a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting and theology.

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Getting Rid of Romance

By: Quinn McDowell

Let’s get rid of romance. Or at least quit romanticizing our romantic relationships. We can only start to rediscover the building blocks of healthy relationships once we’ve jettisoned the romanticization of romance. So let’s toss it out the window, and rethink our whole approach to love and relationships—which has for too long been at the mercy of the winds of cultural belief.

Our culture tells us that great relationships are fueled by intense romantic feelings and passion. Enlightenment values have tricked us into believing that relationships exist as a means toward our own happiness and fulfillment. This dangerous idea has not only ruined countless relationships but consistently fails to deliver on its promise to make us happy. Ironically, the more we seek self-realization through our relationships, the less we find it.

Romance and love are able to flourish when they grow from the fertile soil of promise, commitment, and sacrifice. Personal desire and individual happiness make a shaky foundation; any relationship built on it beware. Simply put, a pursuit of happiness for its own sake will never result in the attainment of that happiness. All relationships of reasonable length go through the “falling out of like” stage–that place where the warm fuzzy feelings have left, and the sobriety of real relationship has set in. Over time we come to discover the idealistic picture of our partner has slowly been replaced by a brutally real portrait of a person full of flaws and insecurities—and those initial feelings of love to disappear in the blink of an eye in the face of reality. We struggle to cope with the realization that our partner will never live up to the impossible standard set by our romantic ideals.

Ultimately, desire and passion turn out to be a poor guide in helping us navigate the complexities of relationships. Our need for self-gratification and personal fulfillment becomes the antithesis for a relationship built on love. The minute I begin to think that any relationship exists to serve my needs, is the moment my selfish tendencies start to erode the foundation on which a solid relationship is grounded. Ultimately, a pursuit of personal gratification will only end in loneliness, emptiness, and despair.

Instead of romanticizing feelings of love into a foundation of a relationship, I wonder how our relationships would change if they were founded instead upon the belief that love first and foremost is a conscious choice—and a wonderful romantic feeling only second.

When we start to understand a relationship primarily in terms of commitment rather than passion or desire, we can build that relationship from a position of strength. Promise and commitment are strong enough to bear the trauma (yes, trauma) that inevitably comes when two people decide to combine all aspects of their lives. In marriage when the “warm fuzzies” decide to take a holiday and the stresses of life starts to suffocate marital intimacy, a husband and wife can depend on their immutable commitment to one another– even though they don’t feel like loving each other one bit from time to time.

My intention is not to squash the dreams of lovers the world over or to crush the spirit of hopeless romantics, but instead to offer a vision for a better way forward. These proposals may sound rigid and un-romantic at first. It may sound cruel to force two people to “decide” to love each other. Every. Single. Day. However, the decision to remain faithful to a promise born out of love produces a wellspring of vibrant romance, deep love, and continuous passion. The more couples make the conscious decision to love one another through deed and action – instead of allowing their feelings to guide their choices – the shorter and more infrequent the bouts of “dryness” in their relationship become.

Ultimately, romance isn’t about feelings. It’s all about learning to choose. Real love resides in making a single radical choice in committing to love another person, forsaking all others in favor of the beloved, until death do you part. Now that’s what I call romantic.

Quinn McDowell is a recent graduate of The College of William and Mary with a degree in Religious Studies and Economics. He is a freelance writer and is currently pursuing a career in professional basketball.

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