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ROMANCE &
DATING
In a world where so many people live together, divorce is common and teenage pregnancies abound, Kristina Cooper asks if Christians have any wisdom to offer the world in the area of romance and dating?
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Some years ago huge controversy was stirred up in the United States by a book by Joshua Harris, called “I Kissed Dating Goodbye”. It was a surprise best seller and sold a million copies. In the book the author, who was only 21 at the time, questioned the whole assumption of dating if marriage was not particularly on the cards. He commented in an interview, “I had been going out with a girl in my youth group, and I was acting like a typical High School Christian kid. I knew sex before marriage was wrong, but I was involved in this dating relationship where we were pushing the line, and we were being dragged down spiritually. I remember my youth pastor saying how he hadn’t kissed his wife until he got engaged, and I just laughed at that: “O my goodness, get real! “At the time God began to work in my life. I ended that dating relationship and began to ask some serious questions about my lifestyle. I had wasted two years of my life – in terms of time, emotional investment, and energy. The relationship had been my focus. I realised I had promised my former girlfriend a lot of things – and I hurt her because I was the one who broke off the relationship. The more I thought about these issues, the more I realised there is something wrong with the way we do things. The reality of the gospel should have some effect on our relationships. But you look at a Christian couple in a dating relationship and you’d be hard pressed in a lot of cases to see the difference between that couple and a non-Christian couple.” Separated the pursuit of romance form the pursuit of commitment “Take my own mistakes: I separated the pursuit of romance from the pursuit of commitment. I think that’s the root problem. We’ve bought into the idea that romance is in itself something that we all need when we’re young. We need to be able to pick the right spouse, so we need to experience multiple relationships, so it is fine to pursue romance and that kind of passionate, intimate relationship even if you have no desire or intention of becoming more committed.” Fr Tom Morrow, author of “Christian Courtship in an Oversexed World,” blames Hollywood in particular for people’s desire to immediately move into intense one-to-one relationships the moment they meet someone and start going out, rather than to take things more slowly. He comments, “More and more young men and women are examining their own dating behaviour and realising that some major changes are needed. “Would not my spiritual life be better and my life as a medical student be simpler if I just developed some good friendships for a while, and didn’t rush into an intense relationship when I’m a few years away from being able to marry?” More and more people he says are “seeing the value of slowing down, and smelling the roses in the garden of friendship.” This would seem to be born out in the experience of many Christian covenant communities and their attitude to dating and relationships between the sexes. Eanna Johnson one of the founders of the Community of Nazareth in Ireland, which belongs to the Sword of the Spirit network of Christian communities, explains the approach to dating and courtship that has developed in their community. “The basic Christian teaching of no sex before marriage would be taken as a given, and a lot of our guidance to young people would be to help support them in living this out until they get married.” About 12 couples over the last 21 years have benefited from this, he says. Discourage pairing off too young before people are ready to marry Like Joshua Harris the community discourage pairing off one-to-one in an intense way when people are too young and not in a position to consider marriage. The rationale explains Eanna is two-fold. “From the point of view of maturing as a person we believe that young people mature better if they are exposed to lots of different people and that intense personal relationships far from being beneficial can cut them off from others. We thus encourage young people to go out in mixed groups so they can learn about each other in a non-exclusive way. Also it’s matter of simply being realistic and protecting people from the danger of sin. The natural human tendency to want to take a relationship to its logical human and sexual completion is very strong. If you know marriage is coming up, you can restrain yourself, but if marriage is nowhere on the horizon, it becomes an unrealistic pressure.” Aware that much of today’s focus on the desirability of a potential marriage partner is linked to money and appearances, the community try and encourage young people to look for deeper qualities in potential partners like steadfastness and sincerity and unselfishness and qualities that will help create a stable marriage. Once someone is ready to marry, they are encouraged to discuss this with either a parent or pastoral leader in the community. The aim, says Eanna is not to tell them whom they should or should not marry, but to help the person to consider if they are ready for marriage- ie financially viable, finished their education etc. Observing other married couples at close quarters After a time of pre-engagement, once a couple have decided to marry, long engagements are not encouraged. Part of the community practice during the prenuptial period is for the couple to go back to their own families or to spend time with a community family for six months or so before the marriage. This is so they can observe with new eyes a marriage at close quarters and begin to see the sacrifice and commitment that is required to make a successful marriage. “They learn a huge amount at this time,” says Eanna. (see overleaf for Cliona’s testimony) Spiritual intimacy can unwittingly open the doors to sexual intimacy The Cor et Lumen Christi Community in Chertsey which began in the 80s also realised early on that they needed to offer guidance to young people with their relationships. Damian Stayne, the founder comments, “When we started we had lots of young people. We were all living residentially in mixed households so we had to be particularly careful. Our experience was that because the spiritual, the psychological and the sexual aspects of our personality are so strongly linked, when you develop very close spiritual intimacy, you can find that unwittingly you have opened a level of access to these other areas of your life too, which wouldn’t normally happen in ordinary social situations. We realised we had to be aware of this and not be na?ve, just because people had good motives and wanted to follow Christ. Thus we were quite strict and had rules such as no talking between people of the opposite sex in bedrooms with the door closed. Obviously if people were intent on sex they would have found somewhere to do it, but this at least protected people from falling into sexual activity.” Chastity rules helped ensure trust between sexes This strictness in chastity in sexual relationships extended to those living outside the residential community. Damian explains, “Early on we consulted a moral theologian about “heavy petting”. He told us that bringing each other to orgasm through heavy petting outside of marriage was morally just the same as having sexual intercourse outside marriage. Thus right from the beginning, as part of our community commitment, which we demanded from people wanting to join us, as well as having certain prayer and service commitments, they had to promise not to indulge in any kind of genital activity. Some people no doubt thought we were a bit extreme, but it helped to sort out those who were really serious about wanting to be disciples from those who just liked hanging out with other young people. It also helped establish tremendous trust between the men and women of the community, particularly those who had come from promiscuous backgrounds and had turned away from this and wanted to follow Christ in a radical way. This community ethos of chastity helped create a supportive environment for us all. Getting to know each other as special friends As in the Community of Nazareth, members were discouraged from casual dating and to consider going out with someone only if they were ready to settle down. An intermediate step in this was the practice they developed called “companioning” whereby two people who found themselves mutually attracted would privately agree to go out with each other for three months as special friends, with the knowledge of their pastoral leader. During this time there was no physical contact. Instead the time was an opportunity of mutual discovery and to see if there was a long term potential in the relationship. Because the relationship was above all one of friendship, if nothing came of it, there was not the same wounding and fall out as if it had developed into a more physical boyfriend/girlfriend one. Damian comments, “the fruit was fantastic even in those cases where the relationships didn’t work out and because nobody else knew about them people were protected from unnecessary humiliations. About 6-7 very solid marriages also resulted from this.
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In
the West it is almost expected as soon as you hit your teens that you
will pair off with someone of the opposite sex and have a boyfriend
or girlfriend. This makes those who don’t have one feel there must
be something wrong with them and spend their teens and twenties desperately
looking for someone on their arm or in their bed to prove that they
are loveable. In our sexualised society it becomes increasingly difficult,
moreover, to keep these relationships chaste. Parents often wonder about
how far their children are going with their boyfriends/girlfriends,
what boundaries they should enforce and what they should do about it?
But is there an even more radical solution? 