The prevailing wisdom about how to find romantic love today seems entirely foreign to how it had been done throughout human history. And that’s worth highlighting as our society now seems to be suffering an atrophy of romantic love and, especially, marriage. According to one survey I read, nearly half of Gen Z adult males report having no romantic relationship experience. Compared to baby boomers, who reported that nearly 80% had dated someone before adulthood. That’s a pretty big decline in just a few generations.

As Catholics, we should have answers to these difficulties and while we’re holding firm on certain teachings, culturally, we’ve adopted a lot of the same mistakes – one of which is dating. By dating, I mean going on dates with people you otherwise have no social contact with. For example, you might go on a dating website, find someone who matches with you, and then go on an actual date with this person.

So, what’s wrong with that? I’d start by pointing out that it escalates the status of a relationship from complete strangers to potential romance in an instant – which is way too fast. The social whiplash from this pacing is the reason dating advice has always been so profitable and yet, the need for that advice never seems to recede – suggesting that the advice isn’t working.

Take a stereotypical scenario that I strongly sympathize with: a woman agrees to go on a date with someone and quickly realizes, the chemistry isn’t there, yet he’s still interested. She now has to navigate the enormous responsibility of rejecting him while observing Christian charity – a task that appears almost impossible from where I’m sitting.

She’s been put in a position where she now bears a responsibility for the psychological condition of an otherwise complete stranger and because the relationship is so superficial at this stage, she’s likely going to fumble this obligation. We should never have that kind of responsibility for strangers and the reason it has been dumped on the young lady in our scenario is because we skipped an important step.

Courtship should arise out of existing relationships. Traditionally, before people had mass media, you sought your spouse from a sample size of people that you already knew. You didn’t have to take the risk of a blind date to see if someone was a good fit. You likely already knew them quite well and had some existing relationship prior to it being escalated to the romantic level.
And because there would be an existing relationship, the responsibility of navigating potential rejection would be grounded in an affection that actually existed rather than a charity that has to be conjured towards a stranger.
And because the roster of potential romantic partners is already familiar to you, in the traditional scenario, you’re going to be far less likely to waste time going on dates with people you know aren’t potential matches. And that’s a significant cost, because every failed date represents a rejection that is going to carry forward in your ability to persevere in finding your eventual spouse.

We need to focus our attention on building culture and community, as a Church, so that young people can pair off in a way that is an organic consequence of such community. This is why ensuring the authentic Catholicity of our schools and parishes is of such critical importance – if that wasn’t already obvious. Without such attention, young Catholics are going to continue to fall prey to the same difficulties that their secular counterparts are finding when they should have a massive advantage.