Fresh Modesty and Cover Up for Christ Chat on Courtin'

[nelliebelle1197]

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cover-Up ... 0482256678

Olivia and Bree chatted on Facebook the other day about courting, even though they have never courted (been courted? gone-a-courtin'??).

Olivia's answer to everything seems to be to seek the advice of a father or a pastor or a man of some kind. I wish we had been able to infiltrate!

[Firiel]

Oh gosh. One of the links posted during the conversation is this one:

fortifyingthefamily.com/betrothal.htm

Courtship is too worldly. It should be straight from friendship to a committed betrothal.

[MamaJunebug]

Oh gosh. One of the links posted during the conversation is this one:

fortifyingthefamily.com/betrothal.htm

Courtship is too worldly. It should be straight from friendship to a committed betrothal.

That could be exactly what's needed to bring this ridiculous patriarchy to an end. Who would agree to that method of determining one's future?!

[Rebelwife]

Oh gosh. One of the links posted during the conversation is this one:

fortifyingthefamily.com/betrothal.htm

Courtship is too worldly. It should be straight from friendship to a committed betrothal.

You know, IF the people in question were actually allowed to have friends of the opposite sex, then I think this would actually be better than courtship. People can get to know each other as friends and then either stay friends or become a committed couple with no outside pressure. Courtship just brings all the other fundies up into your business.

However, we know that men and women aren't allowed to be friends, just friendly (non-touching) acquaintances. :roll:

[alba]

He makes the same point I've seen here about courtship being worse than dating because a courtship is viewed as a precursor to marriage right from the start, so any break up is worse than ending a dating relationship where neither party expected it to lead to marriage.

The difference is that FJers who make this comment are arguing in favour of dating, not in favour of something more extreme.

[MissA]

Oh gosh. One of the links posted during the conversation is this one:

fortifyingthefamily.com/betrothal.htm

Courtship is too worldly. It should be straight from friendship to a committed betrothal.

Wow, that article is bizarro. In what universe do people so religiously conservative that they mandate courtship for their children not have the thought process: "Hmm, we're Baptists. And that other family is Presbyterians. We have fairly different theologies. But I see no problem in our son courting their daughter until the point of engagement at which point all of a sudden I'm gonna flip out."

[louisa05]

I just can't comprehend this notion that a break up is so devastating that no one will ever recover and people must be protected from ever experiencing it at all costs.

I can look back on a couple of break ups that devastated me at the time and say "yeah, dodged that bullet". Those guys were not right for me and (yay, social media) where they are and where I am are light years apart now. Dating was not "practice for divorce", it was preventative.

And we don't go to great lengths to protect everyone from every other pain in life. I would say that statistically, nearly all children outlive their grandparents. Josh and Anna Duggar haven't kept their kids away from Michelle and Jim Bob to prevent them from having to mourn them one day. But if no one can handle the loss of a relationship, shouldn't they be doing that?

And the whole "pieces of the heart" thing...Michelle uses the exact opposite analogy to defend having 19 children. So we have the capacity to love more than one child, but absolutely don't have the capacity to ever love more than one person in an intimate relationship over the course of a life time? How does that make sense? And how do they justify that their movement does not ban second marriages in the event of a death? Hasn't the previously widowed spouse already lost the pieces of his/her heart thus rendering them incapable of another good marriage? Because that's what courtship rhetoric says. How do they work around that? Or does God magically give them back if and only if the spouse dies?

And betrothal guy's logic falls apart on the whole "you don't know each other" issue, because in a healthy dating relationship, you move on from the early "impress each other" stage and get to know the real person. Part of that (for most people--yes, I know some here have had very short dating periods prior to successful marriages) is time. When you are together for a longer time before marriage (my husband and I were together over two years, for example), you know each other well and have had a lot of experiences together. Courtship and even his betrothal alternative do not allow for that with the insistence on chaperones, family being present, and short time periods. I know a fundagelical couple that met in early August and married in mid-December. I assume they had to stop a few weeks into the marriage to say "oh, yeah, what does your family do for the holidays?" My husband and I had already navigated sharing the holidays between families before we were married. That's just one example.

Sorry for the rambling....