Pre-courtship interviews- how mean is too mean?

[SpeakNow]

Lousewife posted a story written by a father of a daughter. The father talks about how he grilled a young man who was interested in dating his daughter. Surprisingly, commenters on her blog disagree with the father's tactics.

"I don’t understand why Mr. Morris has his daughter tell boys who want to date her that they have to talk to her father if he has no intention of letting her date. Why put the boys through that and laugh at them afterwards? Wouldn’t it be much kinder to teach his daughter to say “no thank you, I am not allowed to date� It sounds like Mr. Morris humiliated the boy."

"The young man is courageous enough to show up at the house to be grilled by the young woman’s father, a gauntlet he’s almost certainly never even heard of before, and Mr. Morris rewards the young man by laughing in his face and then turning his grilling into a light and, he apparently thinks, funny story of him online."

Not surprisingly, lousewife thinks the father is 100% correct.

"The point in sharing this story online was not to humiliate the boy but to describe what Mr. Morris no doubt knows is a very unconventional and unacceptable approach so that others can think about it. If a boy is so easily hurt by an encounter like this, I would suggest he needs some toughening up.

By the way, I don’t mind your objecting to Mr. Morris’s approach on the ground that he was too stern or rude. However, I very much mind your stating for no reason that he is incapable of Christian charity. That shows a serious lack of courtesy. Please don’t write again."

thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2013/06/a-baffled-suitor-requests-a-date/

[SpeakNow]

Someone posted this in response. I can't stop laughing!

"Roger G. writes:

MY AUNT

My aunt! my dear unmarried aunt!

Long years have o’er her flown;

Yet still she strains the aching clasp

That binds her virgin zone;

I know it hurts her,– though she looks

As cheerful as she can;

Her waist is ampler than her life,

For life is but a span.

My aunt! my poor deluded aunt!

Her hair is almost gray;

Why will she train that winter curl

In such a spring-like way?

How can she lay her glasses down,

And say she reads as well,

When through a double convex lens

She just makes out to spell?

Her father– grandpapa! forgive

This erring lip its smiles–

Vowed she should make the finest girl

Within a hundred miles;

He sent her to a stylish school

‘T was in her thirteenth June;

And with her, as the rules required,

“Two towels and a spoon.â€

They braced my aunt against a board,

To make her straight and tall;

They laced her up, they starved her down,

To make her light and small;

They pinched her feet, they singed her hair,

They screwed it up with pins ;–

Oh, never mortal suffered more

In penance for her sins.

So, when my precious aunt was done,

My grandsire brought her back

(By daylight, lest some rabid youth

Might follow on the track;)

“Ah!†said my grandsire, as he shook

Some powder in his pan,

“What could this lovely creature do

Against a desperate man!â€

Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche,

Nor bandit cavalcade,

Tore from the trembling father’s arms

His all-accomplished maid.

For her how happy had it been!

And Heaven had spared to me

To see one sad, ungathered rose

On my ancestral tree."

[JMarie]

Children of divorced parents shouldn't be allowed to date, since they'll only repeat their parents' "mistake"? How can she make that statement and not double over laughing?

[Guest]

Children of divorced parents shouldn't be allowed to date, since they'll only repeat their parents' "mistake"? How can she make that statement and not double over laughing?

Sadly, I've heard that argument used against me more than once. People with divorced parents will "see divorce as an option." :roll: