187: Courting Vs Dating // What We Would Do Different

Now That We're A Family

Elisha and Katie Voetberg

Kids & Family, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 December 2022

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What are the benefits of courting and how to talk to family members who think your child should be allowed to date?

We had a 10 month courtship (our first time around) and then a typical dating relationship later. We would not necessarily recommend courting, or at least the way we did it. We don’t want the dating model for our children though either. It’s not to say that a lot of harm can be avoided, but we think it can be so uptight and intense. It can also lead to not developing a great friendship or ground level relationship before you dive into marriage. Getting alone to have one-on-one raw, meaty conversations is a healthy part to getting to know someone before deciding to spend the rest of your life with them.

We think it’s more helpful for the guy and girl to explore a relationship together in terms of hanging out a couple times together, asking people who know them questions, asking each other questions, seeing if your personalities connect, seeing if you have fun together, and ultimately, seeing if you want to make this work in the infancy of the relationship. After you’ve done that and you think this person is worth fighting for, then bring them into the family and start putting them through the paces. I think when you put them through the paces before both people are even sure they want to pursue the relationship, it can just really muddle the emotion and be very stressful on everyone involved.

If you want to be married to someone of integrity, someone who protects, cherishes and is faithful and loyal to you, you would want there to be this open line of exhortation and discernment from the parents as soon as possible. We think courtship can be a beautiful thing, if you realize as the parent that you are the counselor and your adult child needs to make their own decisions and come to you and you don’t try to control the situation. We want to raise our children in a way that they value our opinion and discernment and be able to trust them, trust their standards and desires for a relationship and marriage.

To answer the second question, our parents would say, children don’t need to date. You date to get married. When our child is old enough, an adult and ready to get married, then that’s when they will date. When the time or person is right, then we would definitely encourage them to date. You also don’t need to answer to anyone how you parent your children. You answer to God.

To sum it all up, we aren’t bitter at courting and don’t think dating is great. We are somewhere in the middle! :)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	So today we're doing a mixed bag episode, some might call it a Q&A, but we're answering
0:05.0	three questions and a few offshoots off of those questions. We're talking about
0:09.2	courting. The benefits of courting specifically is what someone asked about. We're going to talk
0:14.4	about vices that we are currently trying to overcome. And we're going to talk about hormones
0:19.7	and how do you determine if that is a sinful nature or like physiological state coming into play
0:28.4	there. So anyways, I'm excited to talk to you guys about these. Hopefully this will be a
0:32.1	quick and snappy episode. Our kids are out playing in the snow and we don't want them to freeze.
0:42.2	The now that we're a family podcast. Katie, actually our listeners know that you went to extra
0:48.8	lengths in preparation for today's episode and your appearance anyways, because we are about
0:54.4	to record. We are about to press record. I look that bad. No, you looked amazing, but then you
1:00.2	realized that the pants that you were wearing, you had worn for numerous episodes. And you said,
1:07.6	the last thing I want or you said something like this, the last thing I want our listeners to think
1:13.2	is that I'm becoming apathetic in how I come across to them and my appearance towards them. I
1:17.8	want them to feel respected and appreciated in how I put myself together. So you went and you
1:22.6	changed your pants. Yeah, I said nothing like that, but that is why a Lysha would have said if he
1:29.6	had done what I did. I think I was running downstairs. I go, I gotta get some pants. I wore those
1:36.8	in the last episode. But yeah, well good. I'm glad that I'm just really, you should speak for me
1:44.5	all the time because I liked how eloquent and gracious you are. No, I have the fortune of listening
1:50.7	back to each one of our episodes, the good fortune of listening back to each of our episodes. And
1:55.3	hearing you communicate, I think when we're and then letting myself go on my nerve. So it's a
2:00.5	next bag. It's a misfortune and a fortune. But I feel like when we're recording in real time,
2:06.8	I won't always appreciate and even like comprehend and register a lot of the things that you're saying.
	...

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