The Psychological Affects of Dating and Courtship in the 90’s
By Eric Swanson
Dating in the 90’s for America is one of the most important aspects of social life. Everywhere you look on the TV, radio, or in the newspapers dating, relationships, or the effects of it are exploited in America. The driving emotion of dating is love. Love with its varying degrees, definitions, and end results makes the attractions of two people of the opposite sex a rollercoaster of emotions. Most everyone finds this ride exciting while it goes, but once the ride comes to an end, deep negative emotions can set in and destroy a person. These rollercoaster emotions and the negative results question the validity and soundness of this popular dating craze. Why would someone knowingly give the control of their emotions to someone else, then have it abused at the end, and then to have it done to them again, by dating over and over? Is this dating craze the best for a person or a relationship? Or is there a better way? Courtship is a growing trend in some social circles to be the answer to attaining love without the negative psychological emotions. This paper will explore the need for love and the different ways in which we as humans can attain it without the negative emotions.
Dating or courtship the end result is to give and receive love. The best expression of this relationship is to enter into a marriage. However, in America now, the break up of a legally and morally binding contract of marriage is rising. This fact can be understood by the statistics found by the U.S. Census Bureau. In 1996, there was 193.2 million adults surveyed in America (7). Of those, 116.4 million adults were married, and 18.2 million were divorced at the time of the survey (7). This fact shows the popularity of consummating a relationship to marriage. However, the study also considered the percentages of those numbers for the past 15 years, and it was found that the percentage of married adults were falling and the percentage of divorced adults were rising twice as much (7). The Census also considered the percentage of female family households in America over the same 15 years. It was found that the percentage of female family households had risen dramatically for the never married and divorced categories, while it stayed the same for the widow category (7). This shows that a greater number of females are leading households without the natural male figure there due to divorce or just plain not getting married. One last fact from the Census is that 16.4 percent of married men were in the 35-44 age group (7). However, the amount of men in the same age group saying that this was their first marriage drops down to 7.1 percent of the population (7). Continuing on in the same age group the Census finds that it jumps to 33.8 percent of the married men population say that the marriage they are in is a remarriage (7). This fact shows the large percentage of men remarrying and accounting for the large amount of married couples. These facts show that even though marriage is the final step of dating and courtship, the same marriage does not last for a great amount of couples in America. To understand why couples decide to even take that final step, the understanding of child development is needed.
Children come into this world needing and wanting certain things and emotions that usually can not be found anywhere besides marriage. When a child is born it learns three basic emotions which are fear, rage, and love (2). Love right from the beginning is something that they receive from their parents which is warm and sustains them. Without love and companionship a baby could actually die. Once the baby grows into a child and tries to explore its new world on its own, it still recognizes the need for love and companionship from it s parents. Soon this child understand the four basic drives of man which are preservation, recognition, procreation, and self-expression and tries to gain each by leaving their parents hold (2). Once the child is a teenager the teenager fully understands the four drives of man and with the onslaught of puberty the drive of procreation seems to be an overwhelming drive. As the teenager matures and understands the social norms, this teenager finds that marriage creates an opportunity for the fulfillment of the basic needs of love and companionship from childhood and the drives of procreation, self-expression, and many times of recognition. This teenager seeks marriage by accepting the socially popular norm of dating. However, the teenager does not fully understand the ramifications of dating due to pressures of friends, family, and society. The teenager jumps into dating and continues dating with many partners till finding “the right one”. Once this person has found “the right one”, the person tries to fulfill its needs and wants, that date back to its entry into this world, but find it hard due to the psychological negative effects of dating. So as it was stated, that marriage most likely will end in divorce.
How is that dating causes such negative feelings that remain through marriage? Is there a way to satisfy one instinctually needs and drives without risking the psychological effects of dating? To find the answers to these questions, this paper will now explore dating and courtship as possible venues to marriage.
Dating, on the surface, is nothing more than two people getting together for a good time. Webster’s Dictionary defines a date as “an occasion of social activity arranged in advance between two persons of the opposite sex.” (4) This definition trivializes dating to a social activity. However, many teenagers, still adapting to their emotions, do not understand this concept of dating and the effects of it on their emotions.
So, let’s create a scenario; for this scenario, we will use Shelly, a woman in her early teens, starting out on the adventure of dating. Shelly casually dates with many boys during her junior and high school years. During this time, she finds that just casually dating does include an emotional attachment to these boys. She dates many boys and each one she has an emotional attachment with including trusting her boyfriend with personal secrets, getting physical intimate, and having her sociably accepted for “dating”. The emotional attachment was severed during her break up. So during her freshman year of college Shelly believes she finds, “the right one”. After a year of dating, they decide to be completely intimate by having sex. For different reasons, after a few months of being sexually active with “the right one” he breaks up with her. Shelly is crushed, but after several months she heals her wounds and starts to date around again still looking for “the right one”. By the time Shelly is married to “the right one” she has had three other serious, and sexually active boyfriends.
The previous example of a woman’s dating life to marriage in the 90’s seems typical. However, though it may be typical the stories, emotions, feelings, trauma, and scars left behind by the dating experiences takes their toll. Let’s examine some of these emotions during the previous example.
Shelly starts out dating in her early teens to date because it is the socially accepted form of having a relationship with a guy. During these times she is dating, she is accepted by her peers. However, once the break up is over, she finds she doesn’t have the friends she thought she had. Shelly finds that a lot of her friendships are conditional. Understanding this hurts Shelly and makes her angry at that fact. To flee this hurt, she again dates, without resolving the hurt or anger. Basically, Shelly conforms to the society she lives in and is loaded down with the hurt of the loss of friends and knowing some of her friends aren’t if she is not dating.
However, Shelly finds another boyfriend and then is back into the social elite. With this new boyfriend she communicates different emotions, feelings, dreams, and secrets about herself. This is all taken in stride, because Shelly believes she is doing what is right. Soon that dating relationship falls apart and with the break up and the immaturity of the teenage by, he uses those secrets to hurt Shelly. Shelly again is hurt from dating.
However, Shelly learns from this and finds another boyfriend. This time Shelly bottled her anger again, but this time Shelly will release it negatively. She entices her boyfriend to tell her secrets and then breaks up with him. She then tells all his secrets to hurt him as a sort of revenge for others hurting her. Shelly negatively bottles and releases her negative emotions due to dating.
Shelly continues to play the game of dating. She hurts herself emotionally and receives scars and also creates scars for others. So by the time she finds “the right one” she can be compared to a battle hardened, war scarred remnant of love, which she comes to her mate emotionally scarred for her mate to deal with. Unfortunately, her mate most likely played the dating game as well so he too has emotional scars and baggage he brings into a relationship as well. The two will unite to help each other heal each other’s emotional wounds. As Glenn Michaelis says, “Dating is like a princess going through the woods kissing frogs in hopes of finding a prince. She may find a prince. But most likely she'll grow to like kissing frogs so much she'll end up marrying one.” (5)
Emotions and feelings are powerful forces in our lives. In the previous example of Shelly, she had to withstand and deal with the negative emotions and feelings with dating. Those negative emotions scarred her, because of the great strength emotions have in our lives. This is understood by David Viscott, author of the book The Language of Feelings, where he wrote “Feelings are the way we perceive ourselves.” (8) Perceiving ourselves in good light is crucial to emotional health. Since how we feel and how we perceive ourselves and the world around us are so connected, guarding against negative feelings that would cause unhealthy emotional stress would naturally be a wise decision. Again, Viscott writes, “When an emotional injury threatens, our natural reaction is to avoid it.” (8) We should, in turn, try to avoid this emotional pain. “I am not recommending, therefore, that we build walls to protect ourselves from pain, but we must understand that emotions are unreliable and at times, tyrannical...[This] means…if you follow blindly the dictates of emotion instead of controlling them with your will and intellect, you are casting yourself adrift in the path of life’s storms.” (3) writes Dr. James Dobson author of Life on the Edge. This last statement can be best understood with the following examples.
Shelly, having a normal dating life, eventually reached her goal of finding “the right one”, but what if she didn’t experience the typical dating life? Many times life is not so predictable. Sometimes things happen that humans can not control. Let’s now understand some dating examples that aren’t so normal, but still experience and valid.
Shelly growing in maturity and age finally finds that first “right one” and decides to have sex with him, as was stated before. Again, they do break up. Understanding that “sex is a physical act, but it affects us in a deeply profound manner.”(1), Shelly is crushed by the breaking of the trust she had with “the right one”. So much so, that Shelly falls into depression. Her reaction is similiar to what Viscott said about when emotional injury threatens that a persons “natural reaction is to avoid it.”(8) He also states that “Anxiety is the fear of hurt or loss. Hurt or loss leads to anger. Anger held in leads to guilt. Guilt, unrelieved, leads to depression.”(8) It is easy to see that Shelly could eventually lead to depression from the emotional pain that such a profound act, such as sex, could cause.
Another very viable emotional pain that Shelly could experience while dating is experiencing date rape. Date rape is a more prevalent crime than some might realize. In a survey of 32 campuses Mary Koss, professor of family and community medicine at the University of Arizona, “found that 25 percent of the female college students she surveyed were victims of rape or attempted rape.”(6) Of these women, “one out of every three women who are date-raped consider suicide.”(6), says Koss. With 25 percent of women at college campuses, or one fourth of all women being date raped this a very widespread problem, and with one in three wanting to commit suicide this is a very dark problem. Date rape is a very terrible problem that is only caused during the dating time.
With these two extreme examples we can understand the previous statement by Dr. Dobson, that if one blindly follows their emotions by dating, that that person is “casting [themselves] adrift in the path of life’s storms.” (3) Not to mention all the psychological problems and scars a person receives from dating and having a normal dating experience, than add upon that the extremes that dating can lead to depression and date rape, one could wonder why one would even date. But the need to find “the right one” is still implanted in our minds. Since dating is so destructive is there a better way? Let’s now explore the definition and consequences of courtship.
Courtship is the process of acquiring a mate for marriage with a total commitment during the dating process. Webster’s dictionary defines courtship as “the process of showing attention to and affection for another person with intentions that involve marriage or other intimacy.” (4) Unlike dating’s definition that was rather sociable in intent, but in reality caused deeper emotions and feelings than a usual social get together between two people, courtship is intended to have deeper emotions and feelings. This difference means that instead of going around from partner to partner giving and receiving emotional pain and scars, two people agree on courtship and eventually marry. This means that two people agree that each other is their “right one”. This agreement usually lasts till marriage. Though sometimes it doesn’t work it out, the psychological pain and scars from a courtship are not as bad. This is because of the nature of the agreement. Let’s explore this with Shelly choosing courtship instead of dating as a viable way to finding “the right one”.
Shelly in her early teens decides to follow the courtship process and wait till she finds someone she can spend her life with. Shelly still falls in love, but keeps her love as a friendship with those she falls in love with. Therefore, she finds during her years of junior and high school she had many true meaningful and deep friendships with people of her own and opposite sex. These friendships help sustain her during her school time. She is pressured many times to conform to society and to date someone, but she refuses. This does make for some rejection, but since she has so many deep friendships, she is able to correctly release her anger over being rejected. During college she finds a wonderful man. Instead of jumping into a dating relationship with him, she really gets to know him as a friend first. Knowing each other inside and out through their friendship they eventually decide to court each other. Shelly doesn’t get very physical with him, because the relationship is based upon allowing time to help her realize if this person is “the right one” by thoroughly getting to know each other. Eventually they do, and Shelly is married to “the right one”.
During this time that Shelly chose courtship, she experienced a great deal less negative psychological emotions or none at all due to her decision to court to find “the right one”. Though she was rejected by some for her convictions, the courtship process allows for deep friendships that aid in dealing with any psychological problems. Secondly, if Shelly ever decided the one she was courting was not “the right one”, she only lost a friendship, not a heavy physical, or sexual lover that would be more devastating psychologically that would come from dating.
The difference in dating and courtship is the level of commitment. With this true commitment to each other, all the negative psychological effects from dating, as compared to courtship is not experienced. So, therefore, two people joined in marriage under courtship do not need to come into marriage with as many emotional scars and baggage. The two united people also truly know each other deeply due to courtship. Unlike dating which “creates an artificial environment for evaluating another person’s character.” (5), courtship depends on time getting to know each other. With time, many mistakes of choosing the wrong “right one” can be diffused. The commitment in courtship allows for more emotionally healthy people and relationships. By choosing courtship people will have less emotional baggage and scars, and will really understand their mate even before the marriage. In turn marriages will then have a better survival rate than what they are experiencing right now in America.
Dating and courtship in the 90’s have opposite psychological effects. Dating creates very negative emotions and feelings, while courtship only encourages positive emotions. With courtship emotional scars are avoided and people are more able to be productive citizens. Of course, with courtship the needs and drives of mankind from childhood can still be achieved. Accordingly, courtship is the best way to a psychological freeing marriage in the 90’s in all respects.
1. Booher, Dianna Daniels. Love. New York: Julian Messner, 1985.
2. Cox, Dr. “Child Development Psychology” Lecture on Introduction to Psychology. Central Texas College. Camp Pendleton, 28 Sep 99.
3. Dobson, James. Life on the Edge. Dallas: Word Publishing, 1995.
4. Grove, Philip Babcock, ed. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. Springfield: Merriam-Webster Inc. 1993.
5. Lang, Jay. Dating? http://hometown.aol.com/JLang22/dating.html. 6 Oct 99.
6. Mufson, Susan, and Rachel Kranz. Straight Talk about…Date Rape. New York: Facts on File, 1993.
7. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States; 1997 (117th edition) Washington DC, 1997.
8. Viscott, David. The Language of Feelings. New York, Arbor House, 1976.
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Date this page was last updated: 12/06/2002