Authors-choice: Hope & Revival

Dating is a process through which a guy and a girl come to marry.  A couple setting out on a date should know 17 things:

1) As between almost any couple (guy and a girl), there is a natural PHYSICAL SEXUAL attraction.  Those starting out on a date should know: we are such a couple.      – A sexual attraction is not sufficient foundation on which to build a marriage.

2) For a marriage what is needed is a MARITAL ATTRACTION – which can only develop and be discovered gradually

3) Therefore, the important issue is not, are we a couple who are sexually attracted to one another (this may easily happen), but are we a couple capable of developing a relationship that cements into a life-union?

4) Precisely because the sex desire is easily awakened and easily grows in intensity, it must be recognized for what it is and treated firmly, keeping it in its place.  If given rein, it grows; a couple can feel strongly sexually drawn to one another as if they were deeply in love; but if they marry just based on that, it may not last; for they never gave love a chance to grow.

5) Love between a guy and a girl, if deep and genuine, normally develops into a desire for UNION IN BOTH BODY AND SOUL. Ideally these two aspects – LOVE OF BODY and LOVE OF SOUL – should be in harmony; in practice they often are not.

6) If the bodily love is let assert itself too much, the love soul may be arrested or even destroyed.  The natural physical instinct of love is to want to possess the body: its natural spiritual instinct is to want to respect the person.  Thu, LOVE, if it is true, quickly senses the danger latent in a touch or a caress, and refrains; or cuts the physical act short once it realizes that what perhaps began as a simple expression of affection is quickly turning into a powerful desire for egoistic self-satisfaction.

7)  If an incipient sexual attraction between a guy and a girl is to lead on to and mature into a marriage with a real promise of happiness to it, the couple need to ensure that the sexual desires – always present and, let us repeat, in itself inclined to quick sex acts- is not let get ahead of the marital decision by which a guy and a girl make a complete surrender of themselves, in body and in person, to one another, so forming a union capable of fulfilling all the human meaning of sexuality.

8)  To give one’s body without giving one’s self is to turn one’s sexuality into a lie; it is to deceive another, and or to be deceived by him or her, in the very truth that human love demands.  To give oneself, temporarily, in and with one’s body, is not really to give but just to lend.  Nothing is actually given, unless it is totally given – for keeps. To “lend” oneself, in the sexual use of one’s body, is to degrade the dignity of self, of body, and of sexuality.

9) So, in passing from friendship to love to engagement, on the way that leads to marriage, it is important to bear in mind that certain gestures have different meanings in themselves, and that even the same sign can be made to express different attitudes or emotions.  A handshake can be cold or warm; an artificially warm handshake tends to introduce an element of insincerity into a relationship.

A kiss between lovers is seldom less than warm; all the more reason for those who are not yet married but both love and wish to respect each other, not to permit an expression of affection that in itself signifies (or can lead on to) a greater and more total dedication than their present mutual situation warrants.  If each is fully sincere with himself or herself and equally so with the other, it will be easier to recognize what is adequate – or not – to the situation in which they find themselves; what is a true expression of their love as it presently exists not just in feeling but in actual personal commitment based on mutual respect, and what would be a false expression, because it seeks to take all it can get without being definitively prepared and pledged to give all it can give.

10) Firmness and quickness on the part of either one of the couple in cutting short something that they sense will lead to sex, which is self-seeking, is a deep sign of respect for the other.  Rather than a refusal to express love, it is an expression of love.  The opposite can be an expression of simple selfishness.

11) When two unmarried persons allow the physical attraction between them to find its outlet in sexual intercourse – in other words, in what of its nature is a marital act – then they are either “playing at being married” (play-acting which has a disastrous effect on the real thing if it comes), or else they are simply reducing the sexual act itself – which is humanly meant to be a sign of total, enduring and unconditional self-surrender – to a mere (though perhaps more intense) expression of what is as yet but a temporary and uncommitted affection.  In either case they have already ensured that their physical union with the person whom they may eventually marry can never be experienced as what it is designed to be: a unique act shared only with the spouse for whom one has kept oneself, and with whom now at last one experiences a union never before known.

12)  The spousal love of an engaged person is meant to have a virginal consummation.  Only those who endeavor to come to marriage as virgins can experience the truly singular joy of marital donation.  This is the positive meaning and value of virginity: to keep oneself so as to give, to have something unique to give, in a gift that is given only to a spouse.  Hence derives the whole concept and value of spousal fidelity.

13) If a person wants to give himself, he must first possess that self.  Self-possession is not shown by promptness of feelings or strength of desire, but by self-control.  A feeling towards another person is seldom to be trusted – and the other person should seldom trust its expressions – unless it has been checked and confirmed by both mind and will.

14) Pre-marital chastity is the consequence of realizing that the sexual attraction is a delicate and precious reality that must be treated with the utmost care.  Carelessness, heedlessness, is a sign of immaturity and can lead to the ruin of that is precious in that relationship.

15)  The passage from friendship to attraction, from attraction to engagement, from engagement to wedding, is the gradual transition – which only in its last stage becomes definitive – from “you and I” to “us”.  The “we” of a married couple is something unique – a “we” that can almost be conjugated in the singular.

The marital instinct tends towards an interpersonal donation and acceptance of a quite singular nature: a privileged and committed choice of a “partner” in a common life enterprise where each spouse “belongs” in a unique way to the other.  The donation is mutual, and implies mutual acceptance.  Mutual gift and acceptance are of the essence of the marital covenant” (Guy and Values)

16)  Dating is the time not so much for enjoying sex, as for discovering love: to discover the extent and depth of love; and the capacity of each one to love. If it is the time to discover love, it is also the time to discover defects because marriage always involves loving a defective person; rather it involves two defective persons loving each other. It is the time to discover and know each other’s weak and selfish points.

It is so important to know one’s defects:

– one’s own

– his or hers

17)  The best way of being able to judge a defective person’s capacity for living unitedly and lovingly with another defective person, is to get to know how they behave in their present family: towards parents, brothers and sisters.  If they are bears in their present family, they will equally bears in the one they form in the future.

Defects are inevitable.  The fact of defects is no argument against marriage, as long as a person is prepared to fight to be generous.

“Incompatibility”; a very relative concept.  Two persons each with a quick temper can have a very close and happy married relationship, provided they are prepared to constantly make up.