The kind of love that we’re looking for isn’t easy to find. So, let’s define it as best we can. If you wanted to be really pure and traditional about it, you’d be courting. This means that your family and the family of the person you’re interested in are both heavily involved. Hopefully, you actually like the girl you’re pursuing. It’s a more formal, more public kind of process of getting to know one another, and it shows a great deal of respect to the parents.
There is a Palestinian lady in my church who explained courting in her homeland. “If you like a girl, you tell your mother. Then, she goes to the girl’s mother, and they talk it over. The two mothers go crazy running back and forth across town to give gifts and set up a meeting. Then, the boy’s family comes to visit the girl’s family. If they get along, there are more visits, and then they can get engaged, which happens at the girl’s house, and the priest blesses it. Then, the girl and boy can go out on dates, but only with a chaperone from her family. That last part has changed since I was a girl – now once they’re engaged they can go to restaurants alone.”
That’s a pretty good explanation of courting. The idea is to let the young couple get to know each other in a controlled setting to protect their chastity. This same Palestinian lady said to my best friend, when he was single, “We find you nice Arab girl, but you no touch her before you are married or CHOP CHOP!”
Then there’s dating, where the boy and girl find one another and express interest in each other and go out on dates. Usually the boy does the asking. If they’re getting along well, they can decide to see each other exclusively, and some time later, if things are going really well, they can go to meet the parents. Dating can also carry connotations of young people skipping around in casual relationships, having fun and seeing one another. There’s some formality to it (you can say “we’re together for the next three hours”) but the business of dating and commitment develop independently of each other, and sometimes the latter never comes.
If you watch the delightful romantic comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Toula gets in trouble for dating when she and her future husband ought to be following courting rituals. Word gets around the Greek community she’s been smooching with her handsome boyfriend, and her father is offended (even though she’s 29!).
For us Orthodox Christians, it would be easy to extol the virtues of courting as it does provide more protection. But, we live in a culture that mostly dates. Also, if you’re a whitebread convert, how on earth are you going to convince your parents get involved in a formal matchmaking process that they’ve only read about in Jane Austen novels?
I followed the dating pattern, although after the first date, I was so interested in Miri that I didn’t bother calling other girls. They didn’t hear much from me until I sent them wedding invitations.
I think we Orthodox ought to be somewhere in between dating and courting. I don’t know if I’m right about that, but it’s what seems to be going on with young people who socialize at church. Anyway, it’s what I’m going to write about.
None of this is to say that what starts in church stays good and pure. Orthodox people – when they’re drunk, desperate, or both – do a lot of stupid stuff. Casual sexual encounters can start at a church event. Sometimes, the whole “forbidden, secret” aspect of fooling around when your belief system tells you not to can make the moment of “crossing the line” become a rush of passion like a dam breaking.
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