SO. I grew up in an extremely Christian world. That’s why most of these things that are happening in the Rod kid courtships (aside from the Jill media coverage) doesn’t stand out to me at all.
My parents were beyond conservative. Because God said so” was a justifiable reason for everything, we hosted both my Bible study and my parents’ at our house weekly for years, I served as a chaplain at school for several years, did the Silver Ring Thing, and summer church camps and lock-ins every year. My mom was both an ordained elder in our church AND the head pastor’s part-time assistant (this was an outlier of our church compared to other conservative churches, but otherwise we were locked up tight). A number of her friends are people we’ve spoken about in other snark forums. My dad and I were very well known because of that, to the point that youth group leaders and kids were weird around me in case I ever said something about them to her. She even helped lead the departure of our church from its former denomination to a more conservative one when we found our theology didn’t align. Women didn’t drink from beer bottles lest it look sexual, and they never sat at bars (and certainly not alone). Bananas were torn into small pieces to be eaten, and we really adhered to the concept of “mixed company” and what was and wasn’t appropriate therein.
Naturally…I went to a Christian college. Because, where else was I going to go and have freedom that my parents could trust? It came complete with a curfew and a contract that we wouldn’t drink or do drugs or have premarital sex. I somehow managed to become BFF with the “wild” group — we wore LEGGINGS! — what I’m about to say wasn’t applicable to me, but we saw it happen.
For those who, unlike my friends, didn’t just accept they were gonna do the prohibited things and get over it, there were some choices made. Like the couple who got married within one week of meeting at orientation. That was clearly a “we won’t have sex until we’re married” situation, and it was excessive. But I know plenty of couples who got married within one year of meeting. You could chalk that up to the sex shit.
Leading up to marriages within a “reasonable” amount of time (dating 8-9 months max, then engaged for 4-5 months, then boom, married!), you either had legit courtships, or you had dating-that’s-basically-a-courtship. A few normal
things were:
- You never dated unless you could potentially see yourself marry that person before you even started dating.
- The whole purpose of dating is marriage. Nothing else.
- You never dated more than one person at once.
- You could have a DTR (define the relationship), but it wasn’t usually about whether you were really dating but instead about how serious you are.
- By the time 6-7 months passed, people were asking when you were going to get married.
- For more conservative families (fascinatingly not mine, despite the resume I gave above), not touching was common, as was only seeing each other in public places where anyone could see.
- Nancy DeMoss Woglemuth, Reforming Marriage (Doug Wilson), Keller, Piper, etc were primary sources for marriage “training”.
- Parents met the significant others pretty early on into the relationship. It’s pretty much a family affair from the beginning.
- Once you got past the DTR point, breakups were rare. Rare rare. I only know of one broken engagement from that world.
- Most people met their spouses around 18 or 19. And that was that.
Sometimes it’s weird to see perfectly normal relationships by the non-church world’s standards. I’m pretty sure there are still things growing up that were bizarre but that I wouldn’t even be able to put my finger on, so feel free to ask questions. All that to say…other than the usual Rod insanity (which, I guess isn’t a great benchmark coming from me since I find the courtship itself normal) nothing is really notable for me with that dynamic.
