Love Courtship and Marriage

Three General Principles

Always Keep Your Courtship on a High Plane Keep sex in the background! It must not dominate your thoughts and dictate your conduct. The physical must be subordinated to the spiritual because man is a spiritual creature and not mere animal. Allowing your courtship to degenerate to the physical would mean a loss of honor and respect. An attraction which springs largely from the physical element of sex is an insecure foundation for enduring friendship and conjugal love.
Pure love is the foundation of a happy courtship. The reason why there are so many sinful, saddened hearts in courtship is because too many young men and women fail to distinguish clearly between love and lust; and yet they are as completely different as day is from night. True love is pure, beautiful, noble, self-sacrificing. It is dominated by mutual respect for each other’s character, not by mere emotion, passion and lust. True love is unselfish, thinking only of the good of the other; it would rather endure any self-restraint than harm the other in any way. If love-making does not rise above the mere thrill of bodily sensations, it can be no more than indulgence in passion, which is lust.
Lust, on the other hand, is ugly, base, selfish, impure; it seeks nothing outside itself. All fine promises and sweet expressions of love are but lies. A beautiful friendship is marred because the boy and girl permit indecent liberties which are like vicious cancers eating their way into their very hearts and destroying virtue, peace and happiness. Pure love is the best preparation for marriage; lust draws down God’s curse upon it. If by company-keeping you are encouraged in purity, the true love is the basis of your friendship and enduring affection will be the result. If through company-keeping you are encouraged to impurity, then lust, not love, is the foundation of the friendship and evil will be the result. There is a natural and necessary relationship between your conduct now and your status later in marriage. If a young man is selfish, loose, crude, unreasonable now, do not expect that he will be unselfish, high-minded, spiritual and controlled in marriage. The Sacraments do not change nature; they elevate it if it is disposed to be elevated.
A foul love must be driven out by a fair love. In the pure love of a young man for a virtuous girl, he finds a shield against unchastity. Reverent love will be a protection for both. If a boy wants the girl he goes with now to be the best wife she can be for his children; if he himself wants to be the best husband he can be for her and the best father he can be for his children, he must respect that girl before marriage. He will do everything he can, in a positive way, and at any price, to retain or regain his personal purity and to protect the modesty and loveliness of the girl he respects, even as Joseph kept himself spotless and safeguarded the virginity of the Mary. Consequently, you need not resort to lust to enjoy one another. You will find untold happiness in the mere presence of the one you really care for—happiness which arises from the contact of mind with mind, of heart with heart, of personality with personality. This is infinitely more satisfying and enduring than mere contact of bodies. Wondrous beauty can be found in the character of any good boy or girl if you will only patiently look for it. A young man will surely win the heart of a girl if he always acts as a gentleman and places her upon her rightful pedestal of innocence and queenly modesty. In like manner, a girl will command the respect and win the love of a boy if by words and actions she makes it clear that she will tolerate no Compromise with her ideals of honor and integrity. Any momentary weakness may be implied as an invitation to dangerous liberties.
Direct your friendship so that it may square with Christ’s law of honor and purity in a chaste and noble love. Elevate your love to Christ that your love may be sweeter and more enduring. Then leaving one another, you can walk to the Communion rail and receive your Eucharistic Lord with reverent minds and chaste hearts. Where chaste love fills your company-keeping, courtship becomes an aid to virtue and an encouragement to holiness.

Follow a “Hands-off” Policy

The purpose of courtship is to prepare you for marriage by enabling you to find the boy who will one day be your partner in life; hence it is to be spent in the manner God has intended. Anything that is contrary to God’s holy law in courtship should be avoided, lest the devil, and not God, rule your friendship and lead it most certainly to moral disaster.
Too many perfectly decent and innocent girls do not understand a young man’s problem of selfcontrol. Many dangers and temptations will be avoided if you remember that the physical element of sex is more highly localized in man and that he is more easily aroused, while the psychical element is more pronounced in woman. Actions and contact which leaves you undisturbed may greatly arouse the passions of your companion. Consequently, be considerate of him as well as of yourself and discourage any liberty which may be an occasion of sin. An earnest word, a look of disapproval, a sudden change in the conversation, a quick and determined step away will be a hint that a decent young man will not fail to take. With his senses restored to him, he will appreciate this firm yet sympathetic gesture and will admire you all the more for it because he will see that you really want to keep your courtship clean. On the other hand, if you yield to his entreaties for certain liberties, he will be ashamed of himself for his humiliating defeat and disgusted with you (though he may not show it) because you occasioned it. You will equally share in this feeling of shame and disgust, especially if you realize that your womanly modesty should be your greatest treasure.
It is therefore wise and even necessary for you to follow a “hands-off” policy. Respect the person of the friend with whom you are keeping company and make him respect you. Do not try to set him —and yourself as well—on fire by exciting desires which cannot be satisfied save at the expense of all that you both should hold dear. Love should occasion happiness, not pain; so do not torture your friend by inflicting on him restlessness and a disturbed conscience. To refrain from the defilement of the good and to allay lust in the hearts of men is the greatest human victory that woman can win over man. She then becomes close to the angel in appeal.

Plan Your Dates

If you have to plan for the prolonged date that is marriage, you are smart if you plan for even the brief date of a day or an evening together. A marriage without interests or things to do is dull and dangerous. To go off on an unplanned date with nothing in particular to do is also dull and often dangerous. At the end of the date the boy finds that he has spent a lot of money on a lot of things that did not give either of you a great deal of fun. The girl finds that she is expected to accept or is forced to resist a vigorous effort on his part to fill out a flat, unplanned date with adolescent love-making.
Dates are successful when they are planned. That means that you ought to look around for unusual and interesting things to do, novel places to visit, pleasant things to talk about. But a date is not merely a recreation quest—dancing, the theater, the movies, going places. A date really is anything that two or more people enjoy doing together. Real fun is found not on dates where a lot of things are done for you, but on dates where you are doing things yourself.
Dates lose their charm if you assume that they must be expensive. You can have more fun walking with someone you like than you can dining at a fashionable restaurant, paying a heavy cover charge and checking an expensive menu merely to impress somebody who may not even want to be impressed. A bank-roll is not the essential factor of a good time. A girl who has to have a lot of money spent on her before she has a good time on a date will make a nagging, money-digging, selfish sort of wife. A boy who will not ask a girl out unless he has a pocketful of money is a show-off. Worth-while girls do not expect a man to spend a lot of money on them. Be honest about the fact that you have not a lot of money to spend. Your city is full of places to go and things to do that do not cost much more than a little walk or carfare. You can spend very happy hours wandering with a pleasant companion through a park, an art gallery, a museum, an industrial center, a beautiful church, or listening to a good lecture or a band concert. Hobbies can enter into the schedule of dates—things you do extremely well, things you are interested in collecting. A girl should be interested in what interc ~ts the boy she likes. A boy probably gets more zest out of his hobby if he thinks that some pleasant girl is interested in it, too.
It is often advisable to add another couple to your dates if you find each other a temptation and danger; this is better than giving up dating altogether. This self-chaperoning often eliminates a lot of problems for both the boy and the girl. Be interested in foursome or sixsome dates. Talking is simpler and there is more fun. It ceases to be a dialogue, or, worse, a monologue. Double dating need not be expensive if expenses are shared. Temptation is much less likely when there is a small crowd. Then, too, a foursome or a sixsome on a date can take part in games, which are often very exciting. All this means more dates at home; more dates where money does not have to be considered; where the radio brings the music of the greatest name orchestras in the nation right into your living room; where a recording machine and a supply of records keep a crowd going for an evening; where a homemade sandwich tastes delicious; where the piano becomes the center of fun, and a crowd put their heads together to sing to their own delight. Thus dates could be built around that very normal love that both boys and girls have for good youthful talk. This sort of date will cut the occasion for adolescent love-making to a minimum.
Your dates will be happy if they are sinless. The people you go out with should be better because they were with you. Do not permit yourself to be touched by any of the things that make so much modern dating ugly and perilous—too much drink, dirty stories, disgusting dances, questionable taverns and roadhouses, sin and all its ugliness. Foresee and guard against the dangers that might spoil your dates.
Always take Jesus along with you on your dates. They are deeply happy to see you happy. There is something terrible in the thought that, while sorrow often drives young people to the feet of Christ, good times are often occasions for driving Jesus from His side, when they hold out their arms to evil. When you are going out on a date, why don’t the two of you make a call on Christ in the tabernacle? Make a date to go to Church together before you start off on your hike, your picnic, your day in the Country. You can do nothing better than to make dates that include Jesus. There is no better company! Nothing could make your date happier.

“Don’ts” on Dates

Though the following suggestions are directed mainly to girls, they are equally applicable to boys, inasmuch as boys will know what is expected of a decent girl and will cooperate with her in preserving her virtue.
Don’t forget that the chastity of your soul and your good name are your most precious possessions; protect them by mutual self-respect. Therefore, always keep your courtship on a high plane and follow a “hands-off” policy and by your manner give men to understand that your loveliness is not to be marred by unruly passion and sin.
Don’t permit expressions of love or friendship for another to be prolonged to the point of danger of lust because all sexual pleasure outside marriage, that is directly willed, intentionally procured or accepted is a mortal sin. A selfish indulgence of your own passions regardless of the welfare of the one you “pretend” to love is not really love, but lust.
Don’t ever permit passionate kissing to mar your date, for true love is dominated by mutual respect for each other’s character, not by mere emotion, passion and lust.
Don’t be so soft as to pay for an evening’s entertainment with cheap kisses, “necking” and “petting,” because a man who is not strong in chastity will probably take all you will give. A decent man, even though he may be weak, does not respect that kind of girl. Don’t give a casual friend the caresses that belong only to the good Christian you will some day meet, who will be your husband and the father of your children.
Don’t be so imprudent and reckless as to date this one and that one without knowing anything about them beforehand. Avoid being alone with strangers.
Don’t consent to keep company in a parked car, for darkness and seclusion are favorable conditions for sin.
Don’t allow your escort to enter your home late at night after a date; this would subject you both to danger and suspicion.
Don’t fall into the bad habit of permitting long “goodnights” and “passionate goodnight kisses.” These have brought about the death of many a friendship and killed many a soul.
Don’t encourage a young man to visit your home too frequently, or to protract his visits far into the night or early morning, to the discomfiture of your family and the detriment of your own and your fiance’s health, virtue, and reputation. Turning night into day three or four times a week in courtship is not a good recipe for the preservation of health or the increase of corporal fitness; this is particularly true if the long visits are accompanied with an emotional strain.
Don’t seek out or continue companionship with others whom you know to be inclined to evil jests and words. Never let your date be marred by a single filthy story, but show your displeasure at once.
Don’t take part in dances that may be a source of temptation to yourself or others. In dancing, don’t hold your partner too tightly, lest you become an occasion or a cause of sin.
Don’t go to see movies which will tempt you to do things that are not prefer ; even those that are partly objectionable should be avoided.
Don’t frequent taverns or roadhouses of questionable character; this is a disgrace to womanhood.
Don’t drink intoxicating liquor; it prepares the way for immorality by arousing the passions, blurring the mind, and weakening the will.
Don’t dress unwisely so as to invite lustful interest, but becomingly, so as to accentuate your best gifts.
Don’t smoke, not because it is morally wrong, but because it cheapens your personality and detracts from your womanly charm.
Don’t hold to the opinion that the only enjoyable date is an expensive date. Real fun is found not on dates where a lot of things are done for you, but on dates where you are doing things together. Get interested in foursome or sixsome dates; they cut the need for adolescent lovemaking to a minimum.
Don’t fail to avoid dangerous occupations in courtship, or permit yourselves to be too much alone. Rather, take part in healthy worth-while hobbies and pastimes which you find mutually delightful and in which you can indulge without loss of mutual esteem or virtue. Enjoy good music; read and discuss worth-while literature; attend respectable dances and social pastimes, preferably such as are given under Catholic auspices and with proper supervision; frequent unobjectionable shows on the stage or on the screen; go on hikes with other young people and take an active interest in various wholesome sports.
Don’t be so snobbish as to think that the social activities of your parish church are not good enough for you. You should feel privileged and honored to contribute to others’ success by your presence and cooperation.
Don’t get involved in a friendship that may result in a mixed marriage, for married life is difficult enough without having a difference of religion and moral outlook as a cause for further trouble, such as the question of divorce, birth control, Christian education.
Don’t disregard the voice of your conscience upon returning from a date. If that voice is joyous and peaceful, your company-keeping is good and clean. If it is sad, remorseful, accusing, something is wrong in your company-keeping, something that must be corrected at once or else the company-keeping must cease. The state of your conscience is a decisive test.
Don’t get serious about a boy who is not willing to prove himself by avoiding sin, especially impurity and drunkenness, frequenting the sacraments at least each month, and spending a reasonable amount of time in prayer daily. Never think of marrying someone who will not be able to make you better for living with him, for the foundation of a happy marriage is a holy love which will enable you to aid each other to practice virtue and fulfill your duties.
Don’t neglect to use the means of grace God has given you to keep pure. The best protection against falling is to Pray and have your daily devotion with God.

Dear Teen-ager:

Company-keeping prepares you for marriage. Every date has an influence upon your future. You sometimes need forcible reminders lest wild desire for fun bring tragedy. Right or wrong companions can make or break your life. You should know exactly what is morally right and wrong on dates; this you will learn from the contents of this booklet. Though girls or boys don’t rush madly out to sins of impurity, all too often they are tricked into what they were not properly warned against. Now God gave you a fourth commandment: “Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother.” Your conscience tells you to obey your parents as God’s representatives. They are responsible for you. They are right in fearing moral dangers from “solo” dates and friendships with doubtful characters. They also have a right and duty to make rules regulating your dates, because they really want to protect your fun and your future. The best thing to do is sit down with your mother or father and talk things over. They are your best friends. Let them decide what is right or wrong. Obey the rules they make concerning your life, and dating in particular.
Keep in Mind the Following Simple Suggestions
You must have permission for dates. Permission can be given on a general basis (every Friday night you may attend school games and parties); or on a date-by-date basis (you may go to the basketball dance next Saturday). Your mother and father need not know each detail of dates, but they should have the general picture.
Always ask permission if you intend to be away all night; this should be only with families your parents know and trust.
Your parents have a right and duty to make some rules about cars and about the beginning and end of dates. The boy should call for the girl at her home, come in and meet the folks, bring her home and say good-bye (not at great length) at the door. Prolonged farewells in cars easily become dangerous. It is sometimes best to keep your dates on a group basis, that is, house parties, dances, skating parties. Group dates can be frequent in high school; “solo” dates should be spaced out. Too much dating can very soon breed violent infatuation. And familiarity breeds a lot more than contempt; it leads you into sin. Silly “going steady” (exclusively with one boy or girl) has ruined many a promising youngster and even many a possible good marriage.
Build up ideals in your mind. Obey rules because you are convinced they are sensible; this is far better than blind or reluctant obedience. Obey and respect your parents because they have your welfare at heart and wish to please God and protect your future.
Your best assurance of a pure and happy youth is a close and tender friendship with Jesus. Such a friendship is fostered by our regular prayer, especially the daily Devotion.