The essentials of courtship
“Before
marriage, a man will lie awake all night thinking about something you said;
after marriage, he'll fall asleep before you finish saying it.”
Helen
Rowland (1876-1950)
To understand the essentials of courtship, you must consider the basic character of both men and women. Millions of years of evolution have produced creatures with certain fundamental and immutable characteristics. One of these is that all males have the hunter’s gene within them. They are the hunters, the pursuers, the competitors. Men have hunted and competed for everything throughout the ages from the haunch of a wild boar on the tropical plains of Africa to the possession of a pigskin on a gridiron. Of course one of the greatest prizes that men have always pursued is the affections and attentions of women. Thus, women can be seen as the prize for which men compete, they are the pursued.
Men will work to overcome all manner of obstacles in order to successfully gain their prizes. The gaining of the prize itself though is not always what it seems. Men do not value or respect that which they have won too easily. While prehistoric man would indeed hunt slower, tamer animals for food, it was the hunt of the more ferocious carnivorous animals that would dominate the folklore and lend itself to the creation of art & ornamentation drawn from the slain animals’ remains. Likewise no modern professional football player would value an easily gained victory against a local amateur team. It is the hard-fought victory over equal or preferably even greater odds that has value. In a similar vein, the woman who offers herself too quickly and too easily to men is seldom respected or valued. Many women would no doubt be familiar with acquaintances in their school years who would willingly and eagerly have sex with numerous young males, so-called “easy lays”. These young women would invariably find themselves not respected or highly valued by the men who would so readily partake of her sexual favours.
Therefore we can see that men will value the prize that they pursue in direct proportion to the amount of effort necessary to achieve that particular goal. It is also obvious then that the effort that a man is willing to expend will increase according to the value of the prize he is pursuing. Bringing ourselves back to our courting discussion we can now see that in order for a man to win the prize of his lady, he must expend effort. In most cases a great deal of effort. As discussed the more effort he must expend, the greater will be his perception of the eventual prize. Thus when seeking that most wondrous of prizes, a female’s attention, men are willing to expend prodigious amounts of effort. This is essentially what we see in the dating/ courting phase of male/female relationships. So when we now consider the dating behaviour exhibited by your husband that we discussed at the beginning of this article we see that he was engaged in a chase with your attentions and affections as the prize. For a male there is no greater symbol of the winning of that chase than that of achieving a sexual relationship with his desired woman.
Thus as we can see male sexual desire is, stimulated by challenge. Yes, that's right. The greater the challenge, the greater the sexual desire. No wonder then that marriage becomes stale. When your husband no longer has to pursue you for sex he loses passion. Your desire for his attention only leads to frustration and disappointment for both of you.
Returning to the concept of courtship, we can now see that effort is an essential element of courtship. A man does not pursue that which he already has. This is the key concept in the loss of courtship in most marriages. Too many marriages proceed on the assumption that the romance has been won, the prize awarded, the chase ended. The most tangible attribute of the romance, sex, may be fun and enjoyable but much of the passion is robbed by the certainty of sex in marriage.
The key to rediscovering courtship in marriage is to withdraw the certainty of the consummated romance. This simple idea leads in all sorts of interesting and exciting directions. The purpose of this article is to explore some of these, to point you in the direction of others and to enable you to rediscover courtship in your marriage and thereby bring back that excitement and passion that has been diminished or lost.
As we move forward in this discussion, I would like all my female readers to understand this is not a one sided campaign. This is fun. F-U-N fun! Whatever you do, both you and your husband will do it together because both of you want to make it happen. You and your husband can really add new dimensions to your marriage and turn each day into a new page in an ongoing novel of romantic play.