Summary: Many people have an idea of courting as a set of “courtship rules” that everyone is required to follow — a “template” that every courtship should be patterned after.  But every situation is different, so there are actually 4 principles that all courting couples have in common.

One of the most common objections to courtship is that it’s all about rules.  That is, that it’s legalistic.  I think that’s a misconception.  Courtship isn’t all about fussy rules — or at least it doesn’t have to be.  (And, I would argue, shouldn’t be.)

Neo-Pioneers of Courting

When we started to see a resurgence/rediscovery of courtship a few decades ago, this took place among people who (no offense intended) didn’t know what they were doing. They hadn’t seen anyone else do this.  The people around them weren’t doing it this way.  All they knew was that what they were seeing around them didn’t seem like a healthy, God-glorifying way of pursuing marriage, and they wanted something better.

They had no frame of reference; they were creating a frame of reference.

So what the early courtship authors gave us was an ideal: in a perfect world, a relationship would look like this.  Given that this idea was being resurrected largely within certain church communities, it’s possible that this ideal actually worked for most of them in practice, too.  New parents-of-young-adults came along, read these books and, as tentative parents reading parenting books are wont to do, read these ideals as formulas.

As ideals, most of them are just fine!  As formulas…not so much.

Every Situation is Different

Detailed formulas (for anything!) don’t work when everyone’s situation is different.  If you grow up together with someone who’s perfect marriage material, that’s great!  But not everyone has that experience.  So if your idea of courting is that you have to grow up together in the same church with your future spouse, where you then fall in love by way of church activities with both of your families, you’re going to come away thinking that courtship isn’t for you.

The needs of a couple whose families already know each other well are different from the needs of those whose families have never met.  A seventeen-year-old courting has different needs from a twenty-seven- or thirty-seven-year-old courting.  Those who are local to each other will have different needs from a couple in a long-distance courtship.

So courtship “rules” aren’t very helpful.  The best approach is to focus on some shared principles that lead to practical guidelines for your own particular situation.

Courtship Principles…and Guidelines

In a previous post, I made note of 3-4 basic principles that define courtship:

• The goal/purpose of the relationship is the pursuit of marriage.
• Accountability is in place.
• The relationship is not separated from “real life.”
• The woman’s father or (in his absence) another mentor provides oversight.

These are more thoroughly described in that other post, so I won’t repeat myself here.  What I want to focus on is how one might take these principles and apply them practically in a given context.

The first, most fundamental principle is fairly straightforward.  Regardless of your situation, if you’ve started courting, you’re probably already doing this.  It tends to be reflected more overtly in the relationships you don’t enter into than those you do.  But what about the other three?

A Sample Scenario

Let’s look at a situation that’s particularly far-removed from that “ideal” scenario of the two church kids growing up together: a long-distance relationship.  Let’s say our couple (we’ll call them John and Jane) met online.  And to make it even more divergent from the cookie-cutter scenario, let’s say Jane’s father is not in the picture.  What might this look like?

John and Jane can honor Jane’s remaining parent — her mother — by having John ask her mother’s permission to court her.  If Jane’s mother is familiar with the idea of courtship, this will hopefully go pretty smoothly.  If she isn’t, he might have to tell her what he’s talking about.  Something like, “I’m interested in getting to know your daughter better, with the hope that our relationship might eventually lead to marriage.”

If Jane has another man in her life that she trusts, like a pastor, a brother, etc., she might also choose to get his input on the relationship as it progresses, to have a masculine perspective.  Eventually, John will also ask Jane’s mother for her hand in marriage.  This is the father/mentor oversight, and it bleeds over into accountability, as well.

Because the relationship is long-distance, it might be wise for John to have counsel of his own.  Some things that would show themselves fairly quickly in an in-person relationship might masquerade for longer in a long-distance one, and in a multitude of counselors, there’s wisdom.

John and Jane probably don’t need some of the same accountability measures most of the time that local couples might, although they might need chaperones if/when they meet up.  Depending on their particular temptations, they may need to have phone or video chat conversations in public areas (e.g. the family living room, not a bedroom).

It will be more difficult for them to involve the “real life” principle, since the nature of long distance inherently keeps the relationship a bit separate from the rest of life.  This is unavoidable.  It will be wise for John and Jane to be mindful of this, and consider planning for any meet-up occasions to include some real-life activities.  That will give them each an opportunity to see how the other reacts when not “on a date.”

Clearly, this is not “church with both families every week,” but all the same principles have been kept in  mind, and followed as far as the circumstances will allow.  The spectrum of situations between this and “textbook-perfect” can be handled in a similar manner: start with the principles and determine what guidelines your own relationship needs to put them into practice.  (Talk to her mother first.  Don’t go anywhere more than 20 minutes away alone together.  No non-public destinations.  Whatever works for you.)

To an outsider, this might still look like “following a bunch of courtship rules,” but those involved will know that their actions flowed out of their principles; they weren’t ends in themselves.