Whatever Happened to Courtship?

I once said that if I ever lacked for a good rant, all I had to do was read a William Raspberry column in the Washington Post and all would be well.

Well, today’s one of those “Signs of the Apocalypse” days where you should check occasionally for rains of frogs or plagues of locusts. Why? Because today Raspberry has a column with which I completely agree.

Today is Valentine’s Day and Raspberry takes on a question I’ve wondered myself for more than a couple years: what the heck happened to courtship?

Maybe Valentine’s Day is a good time to talk about something that’s been on my mind for a while: the alarming decline of courtship.

Calling it alarming, of course, places me firmly on the old-fogy side of the discussion. The youngsters I talk to at Duke University don’t seem particularly alarmed, though a few will acknowledge some discomfort, some disappointment that they find themselves in a world in which boys don’t come courting. They are, willy-nilly, in a hookup culture that they (the girls, at least) don’t remember asking for but feel powerless to change.

And though he mentions only the girls as the “victims” of this culture, it’s also the boys who feel pretty locked in too, as he mentions later (and shame on you, Mr. Raspberry, for trying to eke out a little sexist hay in that paragraph, too).

What I have found surprising is their willingness to talk about the trend. Several young men — after first giving an enthusiastic thumbs up — admitted that the new culture leaves them off balance, too. Several young women said — sadly, I thought — that they don’t really expect to find their future husbands in such encounters. They see it, they told me, as a college thing, a phase. Grad school is soon enough to start taking relationships seriously.

Still, more than a few young women see their “liberation” as tinged with awkwardness and shame.

Again, I quote from my student’s paper:

“I walked home late at night by myself. He offered for me to stay at his place, but I said that I would just walk home. He responded with false concern, asking if I would be OK going back by myself. I promised him I would be fine. This dialogue is standard. The boy cannot appear too apathetic, the girl cannot act too needy and dependent. We are afraid to forfeit the independence that took so many years to acquire in return for an escort back to the dorm.”

Then this:

“He and I could have a future together, but we will never know. There will never be a next date. If he were to ask me out next weekend, he would appear weak. I could not ask him out again for fear of appearing obsessed.”

And that’s what it comes down to – appearance and the acceptance of your peers. Who wants to look different when you’re in college? For all the talk about being independent and charting your own course, the truth is that young folks (and some not so young folks, too, might I add) find it far more important to belong than to be independent. That’s not new news, though. Humans are social animals and we need to belong; young people moreso than the rest of us. Belonging is what helps you ultimately find your own identity.

Still, the question remains: whatever happened to courtship? What happened to guys asking women out on actual dates? What happened to the time-honored tradition of picking a woman up for her date, opening her door for her, going to a dinner and a movie, taking her home, walking her to her door, and hoping that the date rated well enough for a hug or – joy of joys! – a goodnight kiss?

I think that “tradition” word is the key to wondering where courtship went. Courtship was a dance where both parties had very specific steps. Guys had their part to play and women had their part to play and there were rules. Guys asked for the dates and held the doors and paid. Women…well, they had the easy part from my point of view (and I’ll welcome any female insight on this, too). They accepted the date (or refused it with any number of pat excuses that helped the guy save face), were beautiful and charming, and were the final arbiter of whether or not there would be a second date.

Courtship was an audition. Men were the applicants and women were the judges. Men had to show women that they were gentlemanly, capable of providing at least transportation and dinner, able to hold up at least part of a conversation, and maybe that they could dance, too.

Today, though, things are radically different. What’s happened, in my opinion, is that we looked as a courtship ritual that didn’t quite fit our lives anymore and, instead of tweaking parts of it here or there, pitched the whole thing out the window. Sex became the dominating theme of male-female relationships. Women learned that sex was something they could give at will and that it was just fine to give it based on little more than how a guy looked. Men learned that you don’t need to really develop much of a personality or an education to get sex. We removed the long-term value of courtship – relationship and a happy marriage – and turned a date into a hookup. We fed our kids movies where even a first date ends up with the couple in bed and taught them that everything will work out just fine, regardless of how caddish their behavior might be.

Courtship isn’t a sprint, it’s a long run through a pleasant park and we just don’t put much value on anything that takes longer than a month to build.

What happened to courtship? We decided that it cramped our new free liberated style and we threw it away.

I, personally, would like to get it back.

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Category: Pop Culture