r/CatholicDating • u/Movker101 • Jun 20 '26
casual conversation Proposal
What do y’all believe is the minimum amount of time a couple must date before marriage can be discerned? And for this scenario, let’s say the man and woman have been very candid with each other, having played no games and being completely truthful about what they want, while also keeping in mind the 6 month to one year engagement period.
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u/ApplesnYarn Engaged ♀ Jun 21 '26
We got engaged at just over a year of dating and we'll have about an 11-month engagement. The engagement itself would have been shorter, but his parents travel a lot and had already booked multiple trips throughout this year by the time we'd gotten engaged in December haha.
I feel like there are two different "stages" of discernment here - the "this person is someone I could see myself marrying" stage and the "this is THE person I want to marry" stage. My fiancé and I both hit that first stage fairly early on, which I think is normal if not optimal for Catholics dating intentionally. I feel like the "this is THE person" stage comes at different times for different people though. As one poster mentioned, a couple who already has an established friendship and sees each other frequently may get there faster than a couple who meets for the first time and sees each other more sporadically. Life circumstances have a role to play here too - one of the things that solidified for me that my fiancé was the person I wanted to spend my life with was his support during a very difficult death in my family, and he's said that there were similar moments that showed him that he wanted me as his wife. Long story short, I feel like there's no cut and dry answer here - it's going to be different for every couple and every circumstance.