Courtship 2.0: Practical ways to find the right marriage partner

with Peter Falkenberg Brown
https://peterfalkenbergbrown.com
Part of "The Love, Freedom, & the World Project."Show more

THE QUESTIONS:

Many young people today have given up on marriage and are even questioning if they want to have children.

To many, marriage and family life seems to be broken.

Is there a way to restore hope and viability to the concept of marriage?

Will it help marriages last longer and provide more happiness if we approach marriage with more clarity and with new ideas?

THE DISCUSSION:

My topic today is:

Courtship 2.0: Practical ways to find the right marriage partner without the emotional baggage of premarital sex

This content is included in a book I've written called "The True Love Thing to Do: Finding Love and Preparing for an Enduring Marriage"

You can read more about that book at worldcommunitypre ss.com/tl.

It's probably a safe bet that today's teenagers and young men and women never give a moment's thought to the words "courtship" and "courting." Young ladies who have seen Keira Knightley in her role as Elizabeth Bennet in the movie Pride and Prejudice might recognize the term, but only as a quaint tradition that has absolutely nothing to do with the twenty- first century.

One can hardly blame them. The idea of meeting Joey in the family parlor (if today's houses had a parlor) is hard enough to wrap one's mind around. To then have to put up with a chaperone and finally to ask one's parents for permission to marry is impossible to imagine for Western young people.

I don't recommend that we turn back the clock and revive courtship as it used to be. The many traditions connected to courtship are not necessarily good. Depending upon one's parents and requiring parental permission to marry, for example, can be a cause of great pain and tragedy. Historical courtship was far more complex than the simple dictionary definition of "the wooing of one person by another."

Yet I believe that some elements of courtship are worth reviving and reshaping into a new twenty-first- century tradition of courtship. Let's explore if "Courtship 2.0" can be a way to prevent marriage problems before they start, by finding the right marriage partner without the baggage of premarital sex.