Teen-age dating and
Going steady
Jaime B. Achacoso
Why is a priest writing about a topic like this? What does
he know about this stuff? The answer to the latter is simply that I
too was a regular dude once, the campus scene in the early seventies
not being much different from what it is now as far as this topic
was concerned, except that premarital sex was much less then.
After counselling young people for the past thirty years—
especially as a priest in the past twenty—I have arrived at the
conclusion that premarital sex among teenagers can largely be blamed
on going steady. Ultimately, of course, the deterioration of morals
in society should be blamed. However, I am more convinced each day
that the occasion for possible failures in this regard can be
minimized by postponing going steady until after college. This is
the main reason that urged me to write this article.
Why Go Steady?
Before anything else, it is important to define our terms,
given the different stages of the man-woman relationship prior to
marriage. In brief, we can lay down the following:
1st: Dating – the stage of boy-girl friendships, without any
hint of exclusivity or any relation to the possibility of a future
marriage.
2nd: Courtship – the period of mutual discovery of a man and
a woman, the essential qualities of which are the thought of a
possible future marriage and—because of this—varying degrees of
commitment and exclusivity. This stage can be subdivided into:
a) Going steady, the earliest stage of courtship, also referred
to by most teenagers as "being on" or—in its lesser form—as "MU"
(mutual understanding) . It starts when the possibility of a future
marriage is first entertained, and therefore marks a certain degree
of exclusivity.
b) Informal engagement, which follows the moment when a man
explicitly proposes marriage to a woman and at least an approximate
time frame for such is agreed upon privately between them.
c) Formal engagement, the stage after a man formally proposes
marriage, for a specific date, and such is communicated to relatives
and friends.
Most young people go steady for the wrong reason:
a) For companionship – but one does not need to get into such a
semi-permanent commitment for companionship; dating several people
in turn could provide more companionship.
b) For inspiration (to have s special someone) – but at this
stage of development, a special someone is more of a limitation to
friendships with the opposite sex, which is a big part of high
school and college life.
c) For a ready date – which is really what most fellows are
after at this stage, since it's a hassle having to find a date every
weekend.
If I fall in love
"Father you make it sound so cold-blooded"— objects many a
young lady. The fact is, love can be a cold-blooded affair, if it is
true love—that is, an act of the will towards a person who has been
perceived by the intellect as somebody worthy of love. One does
no "fall" in love helplessly. One loves deliberately. Either that or
one surrenders oneself to one's feelings.
Unfortunately, love has been confused with feelings or
affections. These Katter are reactions to sensible good that can
indeed precede, accompany or follow love, but they are not love.
Feelings can be deceiving, since they are only reactions to
sensi8ble goods: a pretty or handsome face, a thousand and one
details that makes somebody nice (or what most girls call "cute"
.
Only the intellect can really judge the overall aptness of a person
for conjugal love. Only afterwards should the will follow: "I love
him, because he has the qualities that I consider indispensable for
the man who will be my husband until death, and who will be the
father of my children."
The failure to distinguish between feelings of love and love
itself is at the bottom of many failed marriages. Consider the
fellow who "falls" for his officemate: she shares his interests
(they're in the same profession), she is supportive (they work
together), and she is very pretty (he only sees her in her business
best). There's just one hitch: he's married, with two kids.
As the song goes: "It's so hard to belong to someone else
when the right one comes along." Only the intellect recognizes that
precisely because one already belongs to someone, then anyone else
coming along cannot be the right one.
So why can't I deliberately fall in love in college or high school?
Because real conjugal love is inseparable from marriage.
Going steady is like getting engaged. The couple are getting to know
each other more, so as to be able to finalize the decision for
conjugal love and marriage. It is not rational to get into this
relationship in college or in high school, because it is too early
for that.
Imagine if a friend tells you he's going to shop for a
computer system. You casually ask him when he plans to make the
actual purchase and he—just as casually—tells you he has no plans
yet, at least not in the next couple of years. You would think he's
nuts. Why shop now if you're not going to buy it in the next few
years? Something like that happens with going steady in college.
The Problem of Serial Monogamy
Another consequence of teen-age steady relationships is the rise of
mentality which has been called serial monogamy—i.e. , such steady
relationships do not last, averaging anywhere between a year or two.
Granted within those two years the couple may really feel in love
with each other and thus practice fidelity with each other (hence re
monogamous in a sense), nevertheless, since they are too young to
really commit themselves to each other for life, the relationship is
not indissoluble. Thus, in the span of the decade or so prior to
marriage, the unwary young man or woman might go thorough several
monogamous but dissoluble relationships. Such serial monogamy prior
to marriage is the breeding ground for a divorce mentality
afterwards, since conjugal love has been equated with monogamy
alone, forgetting the aspect of indissolubility. Real marital love
is for keeps. As the old song goes: "If I fall in love, it would be
forever. Or I'll never fall in love."
How long should the courtship be?
When I ask young ladies this question, they invariably answer "a
long time." I always have to stifle a chuckle, since quite often the
young lady in question would be in her late teens and "engaged," and
of course most girls nowadays are not really contemplating marriage
before their 25th birthday. This is quite logical, since most girls—
at least in the urban setting—go to college, and would therefore
want to experience a bit of their professional career before they
settle down to the more serious business of raising up a family.
Hence, the young lady is not answering my question, but is rather
thinking of how long it will take her to be old enough to get
married. If she's only nineteen, and she wants to enjoy her
professional career until she's twenty-five, it stands to reason
that she and her boyfriend will have to wait at least six years
before they can marry.
Rephrasing the question normally unravels the fuzzy logic. "If you
were twenty-six—I ask—and you start going steady with a twenty-eight
year-old fellow who is professionally stable and well off, how much
time do you think will you need to make up your mind about each
other?" She normally answers: "A year."
This is the crux of the matter. A couple going steady are calling
each other up daily on the phone, probably going to and coming home
from office together, spending the whole weekend together, meeting
each other's family—it's a super-exposure to each other. If they
can't decide in a year or two whether they are meant for each other
or not, there's something wrong with their thinking process.
Why long courtships are unhealthy.
What's wrong with starting the courtship I college or in high school
and just prolonging it all the way to marriage at a much later date?
The answer has to do with physiology and psychology—specifica lly
male physiology.
Most girls are not very aware of this, but any red-blooded
human male will immediately empathize with what I' going to say: Man
is a very sexy (albeit rational) animal.
Girls and women are perfectly equipped by the Creator to be
loving and caring—also with the opposite sex—without getting sexual.
This is part of their femininity, which is relevant to their role in
society (especially connected with child-rearing and caring for the
family). Hence nurses have traditionally been women
Thus in a boy-girl relationship, the girl can be
affectionate in many ways—words, looks, affectionate touches,
gestures, attention to details—without getting sexually stimulated.
But not a boy. A fellow's threshold level for sexual arousal
is pretty low, so that for most teen-aged boys, a physical display
of affection is almost concomitant with sexual stimulation. It's a
matter of physiology and psychology. Thus, a boy is not designed to
spend many years with the object of his affection—his girlfriend—
beside him, day in and day out, without getting on with it. Either
that or he is subjected to a terrible strain to control his sexual
drive.
Thus, a steady relationship at college (worse in high
school) can be proximate occasion for going too far—at least where
the guy is concerned. But since a steady relationship always
includes a girl (hopefully!) , then the principle applies to both.
The moral principle is that to deliberately open oneself to a
proximate occasion of doing something wrong, one needs a
proportionate reason—i.e., proportionate to the gravity of the wrong
that one is exposing himself to.
So when can one start going steady?
Human acts are for their end: to act rationally, one must have an
end in mind, and orient his action according to that end. Now what's
the end of courtship?
Marriage is the end of courtship, just as final purchase is
the end of shopping (even when one is just window-shopping at the
moment, he is normally looking forward to buying in the near
future). Thus, when to go steady is a function of the decision—
approximate as it may be initially—of when to get married.
As previously mentioned, most girls don't want to get
married earlier than twenty-five; some even much later. Hence, the
healthy age for girls to start going steady can be roughly computed:
Nevertheless, girls can really be quite flexible in their
target marriage age: as soon as they have the right fellow, they
really can get married.
But not so with men, normally. Contemporary society imposes
a minimum age for man to get married well—i.e., the age when he is
professionally stable and financially solid. He is expected to be
able to set-up house immediately after getting married—at least to
be able to rent a flat. Otherwise he will be forced to bring his
bride to his parents' home or move in to his in-laws' home. As
Christ solemnly said, quoting Genesis: "For this cause a man shall
leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife." (Mt. 19:5).
In our society, this age is about 28-30 years. It takes that
much time for a fellow to graduate from college (21 years old), find
a suitable job after trying several (25 years old), stabilize
himself in that job and get a few promotions (28-30 years old).
Nowadays a joint family monthly income of P30,000 would barely
enable a couple to rent a humble apartment in the metropolis, or
buy a low-cost house on instalment somewhere in Calabarzon. Thus,
the minimum age for a man to get into a serious relationship with a
woman can also be computed:
Of course there are exceptions—e. g., if either the fellow or
the girl is a millionaire to start with (from inheritance or
otherwise).
Does this mean teenagers shouldn't date?
Of course not. Knowing the opposite sex is part of the maturing
process that coincides with high school and college years. Dating
therefore forms part of a healthy college life. But dating is not
going steady. One doesn't get serious with an occasional date. One
doesn't get intimate with him or her either. Much less would one be
committed to him or her in an exclusive relationship. And this is
the key to the whole thing: non-exclusivity.
Non-exclusivity is the very guarantee of non-seriousness and
therefore non-involvement in those details of physical intimacy
which are the run-up for sexual activity. Concentrating one's
affective capacity on one person leads to developing strong feelings
(mistaken for love) for that person.
Boy and girls should have many friends of the opposite sex
in college and high school. It is part of their educational process
to discover different personalities of the opposite sex, precisely
in order to be able to one day choose a partner for life. It would
be quite a limitation if instead of choosing from a large field of
possibilities, one were to be hitched to one person at sixteen, be
limited to that person until they break-up (statistically they do so
after 1-1/2 years), then get stuck again with one person for another
two years, and this way until finally getting married to one
(hopefully, without having gone into something regrettable with any
of his or her previous partners).
Some girls think that dating several guys would mean they
are promiscuous. Quite the contrary, what such casual dating
accomplishes is precisely that they avoid being physically
promiscuous. Among other things because guys normally behave well—as
in properly—with a female friend; he gets more daring with a
girlfriend.
A last word on teen-age dating. Multiple dates should be the
rule. Not only are they safer—goons will think twice before
attacking two or more couples, they also provide a natural check
against going too far in manifestations of affection.
Conclusion
One of the greatest consolations I my life as a priest has been to
see young people grow—physically and spiritually—into mature
individuals, without suffering the scars of a badly-lived
adolescence. An even greater joy comes from guiding some of them to
lives of dedication to God and their fellow men. No less
exhilarating is to see youthful romances bloom—all in their due tine—
into mature conjugal love and eventually marriage.
In contrast, some of the greatest heartaches I've had to
suffer as a priest have been to see young people get derailed by
premature steady relationships with the opposite sex.
Unfortunately, the past 30 years have seen Hollywood and the
media glorify teen-age romantic relationships. Coupled with an
eroticized environment, this has resulted in what is quite obvious
to everyone now: an alarming increase in teen-age premarital sexual
relationships, a rise in teen-age pregnancy, and on the whole a
deterioration of sexual morality.
I hope reading this piece will make some teenagers
reconsider their position and postpone any serious emotional
involvement with a person of the opposite sex until the right
moment. And if they are already too emotionally involved, at least
to cool off a bit.
But if they are hopelessly in love, then I earnestly invite
them to go to regular spiritual direction, to frequent the
sacraments, and to embark on a no-nonsense struggle to develop the
Christian virtues. That was how healthy teen-age romances were
possible in the not too distant past. Perhaps that's how they can be
made possible again. I, for one, am all too-ready and willing to
help them through spiritual direction.
