A Manifesto in Defense of Courtship

Today the Honest Broker gives love advice

I can’t hide it—my romance credentials are a bit rusty.

The last time I went on a first date was, let’s see. . . [Ted checks his calendar]. . . okay, it was April 14, 1990.

Gas was 78 cents per gallon back then. The Berlin Wall was still standing. And “The Humpty Dance” kept playing on the radio (but never for long—because I’d change the station).

And on that chilly April evening, I was sitting (for the first time) with my future wife at a restaurant in Manhattan.

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That was a long, long time ago….

So If I possess any high level game in dating, it would be like those other forgotten games—cribbage, backgammon, Parcheesi—gathering dust in the attic.

But I must have done something right in the romance game. Tara and I hit it off, and we got married 16 months later.

We have continued to go out on romantic dates during the intervening 34 years.

Here we are, Tara and I, back in the day.

And I do have some theoretical expertise in the subject, as well.

I devoted a decade, more or less, to researching a multidisciplinary book on love songs.

This forced me to learn the history of dating, marriage, and sexuality—going back thousands of years.

So I read all the experts on the subject—Stendhal’s Love, Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, Plato’s Symposium, Dante’s La Vita Nuova, Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving, José Ortega y Gasset’s On Love, Andreas Capellanus’s The Art of Courtly Love, C.S. Lewis’s The Allegory of Love, and lots of others.

I’ve read too many books about love.

I learned stuff on love you wouldn’t even dream of.

I memorized the naughty details of the Sacred Marriage Ritual of ancient Sumer (2300 BC). I kept careful notes on what Socrates learned about love from a clever woman named Diotima—although it didn’t seem to help his marriage. I studied the great seducers, and found that they often play the lute. And…

Well, I could go on and on.

Watch out for lute players!

But all that history is beside the point. That’s because I want to talk about the state of romance today.

It must be in short supply, because I hear lots of complaints from singles. They tell me it’s not easy to find a good partner for a relationship.

I don’t pry. But people want to tell me things. The latest incident was yesterday evening.

Tara was out of town, so I went to a restaurant with only a novel for company—Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo. A young guy took my order, but then he started up this conversation.

WAITER: So what’s the book about?

TED: About young people in relationships. But they always have problems—otherwise it wouldn’t be much of a story.

WAITER: You mean like dating apps and texting and that kind of stuff?

TED: Yes, that’s it. I don’t know much about any of it—I’ve been married for decades. The only thing I swipe is the towel when I’m drying dishes.

WAITER: Let me tell you, it’s really a nightmare. People from your generation have no idea.

TED: I’d think all the apps would make it easier.

WAITER: No, no, no. It just creates so many distractions. You had a much simpler situation, with just a small network of people.

TED: Yes, I met my wife on a blind date—we were set up by a mutual friend.

WAITER: It’s different now. Just too many distractions….

I could tell that he had strong feelings about this subject. I think he wanted to talk about it more, but his boss gestured for him to take care of another table. Otherwise he would have had a lot more to say.

I should add that he is a young, good-looking guy. It’s hard to imagine him having much trouble on the dating scene. But he clearly was.

I’ve heard similar stories from so many other people lately. They hate dating apps, but they don’t know any better way of finding somebody.

And how do you break out of the app cycle? Some people are starting to take desperate measures.

I keep coming back to the paradox. Apps make things easier—so why are relationships getting harder?

As I mull this over, I’m reminded of something I studied while researching the history of love songs. But it’s never mentioned nowadays.

It’s called courtship.

When was the last time you heard somebody use that word?

Maybe you hear it in a movie about romances from the distant past. But you can watch a whole season of The Bachelor or The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and courtship won’t make a single appearance.

I bet the spellcheck on my iPhone won’t even recognize it.

Courtship? Did you mean to write Court-Issued Restraining Order?

It seems such a silly and old-fashioned concept. Why bother with courtship when it’s faster to do a hookup?

Hey, I’m no prude. I’m not doing abstinence training here. Nobody’s saying you can’t do what you’ve got to do.

But let’s give courtship its due.

1. It brought couples together for more than a thousand years. We wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for those courting couples.

2. The rules of courtship embrace ritual and gracious behavior. These “rules of the game” provide guidance and impart structure (as well as add spice) in an otherwise unstable process.

3. You become better and more attractive yourself by following these rules—because they impose a discipline and aura of courtliness on your own actions.

4. They also provide a sense of safety for both participants.

5. The notion behind courtship is that love is stronger when creating a relationship is harder. That’s true in other spheres of life—sports training, musicianship, education, etc. And it’s easy to understand why: We get stronger at anything by avoiding shortcuts and taking on challenges.

6. Courtship moves step-by-step, and thus provides a chance for ongoing reflection and learning, as well as an easy exit path, before things get too complicated.

7. But here’s the most important reason for courtship: It fosters an attitude of respect, appreciation, and courtesy between the two people.

And that’s exactly what they will need if they decide to build a lasting relationship. You set the foundation for the future with this respect.

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You might notice that I have not mentioned religion or morals here.

I could easily do that—but I think it’s useful to remember that courtship has intrinsic value. So I don’t need to cite sacred texts for validation.

You practice these rules because you benefit from them. When you bypass them, you often hurt yourself—and the other person, too.

Sure, there’s a bit of fantasy involved here. In a courtship you view the other person in an idealized way—up on a pedestal—magnifying their good qualities, and forgetting, perhaps, about their flaws.

But that’s not a bad basis for a solid relationship. You will need to do some of that idealizing on a regular basis if you’re looking for a successful marriage.

There’s a good reason why this kind of idealized courtship still shows up in Hollywood movies. It’s because it creates an intense atmosphere of romance.

By the way, I note that the word courtesy comes from the same root as courtship—deriving from the courts of nobles. When you participate in a courtship, your behavior is elevated, and you are literally acting like a King or Queen.

The troubadours of the late medieval period invented the rules of courtship. And this was the most exciting thing that had happened in Western culture in a thousand years.

It changed everything.

Songs were different after courtship was invented—both more romantic and more realistic. Stories were also different, and so were poems. Even religion changed in the aftermath—the cult of the Virgin Mary in Christendom was a deliberate merging of courtship and spirituality.

It was such an important discovery, that people continued to imitate the courtships of brave knights and fine ladies long after court society disappeared.

When the novel was invented, Cervantes had to convince readers that the stories of courtly love were no longer believable. That was a key reason why he wrote Don Quixote.

But readers didn’t want to give up these stories of courtship. Two hundred years after Don Quixote, Jane Austen was still creating new variations on the old formula.

Many contemporary romance novels are still working from this playbook.

Nobody uses a dating app in these books.

The appeal of these tales is obvious.

I think we all crave a little more of this in our relationships.

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Maybe this is just one more example of apps creating shortcuts, when we might be better off with a longer, more ceremonial process.

We all know that slow food tastes better than fast food. And that’s true in many other pursuits—good things take time. If you care about results, you don’t rush.

So why not try the same in relationships.

We don’t have to slow down to Dante’s pace—nine years elapsed between Dante falling in love with Beatrice and the first time she greeted him. But I note that Dante mentions this fact in a casual manner, as if the slow pace of his courtship were the most normal thing in the world.

This step-by-step process happened everywhere back then, not just in Europe. Consider this account of courtship among the Omaha tribe, from researcher Alice Fletcher:

A young man of the tribe watches his beloved from afar….

and at the dawn his love-song may be heard echoing over the hills. Sometimes he sings in the evening to let the maiden know of his presence. Girls find ways of learning who are the young men seeking them, and they also in their turn watch these lovers secretly and either flirt a little or entertain a serious regard for the young wooer. All this little drama takes place covertly, no elder is made a confidant.

This sounds like it’s straight out of the Romeo and Juliet playbook.

You can see the same thing in The Tale of Genji, written a thousand years ago in Japan by Lady Murasaki. Men schemed endlessly just to get a glimpse of the beloved.

It’s probably wise to speed things up a bit nowadays. We don’t all have nine years to wait for a greeting from Beatrice.

But swiping through partners on an app, with a couple seconds devoted to each profile, is probably too fast. Let’s give this serious matter the time it deserves.

Am I out-of-touch? Probably?

Is my dating game rusty? Certainly.

But I don’t think I’m unrealistic. It’s still possible to have courtship in the 21st century.

We don’t need an act of Congress. We don’t need a Supreme Court ruling. We don’t need to change the world.

Like so many problems in society now, our solution is at hand—but only for those who are willing to operate in defiance of the prevailing dysfunctional trends.

That’s the new reality. In the year 2025, the group mindset fails, but the indie mindset prevails.

After all, it only takes two people to start a courtship. What could be more realistic than that?