The art of courtship

Conduct in Public.—An engagement is a pledge, mutually given by two people, that their courtship is to terminate in mating or marriage. This is both a private and a public matter. Personal reasons may make it necessary to keep this secret, at least for a time. It is preferable, from many standpoints, that it be announced as soon as possible. Intimate friends, at least, should be let in on the secret. Whenever possible, it should be made public. For it affects other people, and their conduct toward the engaged couple, as well as the two themselves.

An engagement, luckily for men and women, is not irrevocable: I will take up the breaking of engagements later. But it should not be entered upon too casually. This is especially true when, for instance, two men woo one girl. If one man persuades her to decide in his favor and against the other man, he should weigh more carefully than usual his proposal. For, if he gets her to surrender something tangible—the courtship of the other man—for his own courtship, it is less fair to her thereafter to break the engagement. She has actually surrendered something; it may be impossible for her subsequently to accept the attentions of the other man, who will not renew an offer once rejected. A breakage in such cases should only be urged by the man, when the happiness of both clearly demands it.

The matter of an engagement ring comes up, as the conventional way of announcing to the world that the girl is engaged. There is a decided feeling today against wedding rings, originating as symbols of servitude; and this extends, among some girls, to a dislike of engagement rings as well. For all their jeweled state, they represent a subjection, a surrender of freedom to the other party. The sting of the subjection is lessened, if both man and woman wear wedding rings, and both wear engagement rings. Yet there are men who are not willing to wear rings: and, if the girl objects, it may be better for neither to wear them. As to choice of ring, the girl is wisest who makes sure that the young man does not exceed his legitimate income for spending, in purchasing her a ring. The object should not be to secure a ring slightly larger than any worn by her girl friends; it should be to wear an attractive token of an inner affection. There is no sense in going into love blindly, even at this stage: it is the girl’s duty to find out what her fiancé’s financial prospects are, and for him to find out hers. Since they propose to share financial life together, there is no sense in even starting this blindly.

As to the ring, it is true that it symbolizes a loss of freedom. But it is also true that this loss of freedom is an actual thing. Parties to an engagement must of necessity surrender much, when they decide to proceed with a courtship into a mating or marriage. Before the proposal is given and accepted, the man and the girl as well have the whole world of women and men to choose from: the proposal and its acceptance definitely mark a surrender of all the other possibilities, in favor of this one. When you scan a menu of desserts, you can select pie, ice cream, pudding, or many another choice. The choice of one, as a rule, must mean the surrender of the right to choose any of the others. This is, as a rule, as true of lovers as it is of desserts. Since, then, the loss of freedom is actual, there is no great extrinsic objection to the custom of the wearing of rings by both.

The compensations for the loss of freedom should overbalance the surrender. A man cannot forever balance in his mind the rival possibilities of settling in Florida, California, Chicago, New York, or some village: he must sooner or later make up his mind, choose one, and do his best to make his life a success there. It is so with love. The engaged couple have given up the rest of the world as potential mates: and they step at once, and increasingly, into the pleasure-garden of mated human love. A mere choice of all the women in the world is not to be compared with the actual embrace of the one among these that you desire. Only the man or woman with an insatiable physical wanderlust will prefer the wandering to the arrival at the goal of love.

Mating does not mean slavery to the other party: it means, as a rule, exclusive physical love with one person, but constant human intercourse with many more. There is not even the slightest ethical offense in a girl’s acceptance of attentions from other men, which stop short of the erotic. She can go to dances, plays, meals, with them; and a man can do the same with other girls. Life after mating will be monotonous enough, in most cases: if the engaged couple dance exclusively with each other, the monotony may commence so soon that it will frighten the pair off from ultimate marriage. As a rule, other people incline to leave an engaged couple alone anyhow: it will be up to the man and girl to encourage reasonable attentions from others.

This is theoretically sound: but the element of human jealousy must be taken into account. If either of the parties is excessively jealous, since the lover’s desire is to remain attractive in the eyes of the other lover, there must be some compromise. Jealousy partakes of the nature of a malignant disease: rooted in a normal desire to possess the loved one, it may degenerate into an insanity that wrecks all happiness. If the jealousy of the other party is increasingly extreme, our advice is to end the relationship. If the decision is to continue it, compromises will have to come in: and the girl or man will retain the right to go with other people, only to the extent that the jealous one can be persuaded to permit. This calls for all the tact and sympathy in the world.

In Private.—The conduct of engaged people in private must keep in mind the purpose of the engagement. This is the great testing period of compatibility and mutual adaptability. If both parties are not adaptable, a heavier burden is laid upon the one who is. If the burden of adjusting oneself to the whims, caprices, and crotchets of the other is too great, there is still the chance to terminate the engagement. And, if neither party is adaptable, there seems no other happy way out of the situation.

The chief problem confronting the engaged girl is to what extent she will experiment physically with love. As stated, many doctors say that most engaged couples, before marriage, have experienced love fully. This is not an indictment, but a statement of a fact. There are strong arguments in its favor. If a man and woman are not physically pleasing to one another, the happiness of the marriage is doomed from the start. If, for instance, one of the mates is sexually frigid, and one passionate, it is almost impossible for them to satisfy each other: and the constant temptation will be present to try to find satisfaction outside of the mating relationship, a temptation that is often yielded to, at times to the wreckage of the relationship. There is no way for people to know the physical nature of the other, without physical experimentation.

The danger in the procedure is that the man may turn out to be a predatory male, who becomes engaged to girl after girl for the mere pleasure of temporary enjoyment of her. This is a danger that the girl must run; and, if she has made it her task to study the man’s nature carefully, she should know by now whether or not her intended mate is to be trusted. There are many women who believe that, if a man is once given the ultimate favor, he at once regards the girl as cheapened in his eyes. The consensus of intelligent opinion seems to be to the very other extreme: that that many a girl has wrecked her chances for happiness, by refusing to grant the ultimate favor. Only an abnormal man will habitually regard a woman who yields to him as cheapened. As the time for the final mating draws near, and the mutual desires rise toward their crest, he may regard it as utterly unreasonable for the girl to withhold longer. The man is usually the aggressor in such cases; and, if the woman is the aggressor, she will have the same opinion of the man.

Yet, since there are risks on both sides of the matter, it remains a subject on which the wise will give no advice, but will leave it to the two concerned to work out their solution as wisely as they can, with the facts spread out before them.

It is a matter concerning the private relations of the engaged couple, when the attentions of outsiders pass the stage of the non-erotic, and approach the erotic. Whether a man should be engaged to two or more girls, and a woman to two or more men, at the same time, affects the parties concerned too intimately to be regarded as a matter of outsiders. Theoretically, there is much to be said on both sides. A real engagement—a definite pledge to marry—cannot coexist with an engagement to an outsider. The laws do not permit polygamy in this country. Yet what are we to say of a provisional engagement, where the parties merely assure each other that they think they will marry each other, yet at the same time offer themselves to the world as engaged? If such is the agreement, there is less objection to concurrent engagements. From the standpoint of education in sex, there is something to be said for the idea. Common sense would favor it, yet human nature runs counter to common sense too often to let us stop here. It is better, perhaps, to let the concurrent courtships take place before the formal engagement; and then let the choice, for the time being at least, be an exclusive choice. If either party is attracted outside, to the extent of believing that more happiness lies in the love of another, the engagement may be broken, and the other relationship commenced and tested.

Termination of Engagements.—Should an engagement be short, or long? What is the proper length, for the happiness of the parties involved?

We have scriptural authority for the engagement lasting fourteen years: the story of Jacob can be stretched into this interpretation. Jacob, who loved Rachel, agreed with her father to serve seven years for her. Frankly, we have yet to meet the woman who is worth such a sacrifice; and, in this case, at the end of the seven years Jacob, tricked by his prospective father-in-law, found himself married to the elder sister Leah, instead of to his beloved. Accordingly, he put in another seven years serving for Rachel, and, fourteen years after his engagement started, was wed to her.

Especially in old-fashioned country districts, long engagements are often known, and laughed at. There is the story of the countryman who courted a schoolmate for years—until, in fact, both had drifted from youth toward the end of middle age.

“Why don’t you marry Sarah?” he was asked.

“Marry her!” in surprise and dismay. “Why, if I got married, where in tarnation could I go to spend my evenings?”

Long engagements are not wise. If the two are separated by distance—if, for instance, the young man goes to the city to make his financial way, so that marriage is possible—there is strong chance that either he or she will find a more suitable mate. In such cases, if the original engagement is carried out, happiness is almost inevitable; and the breaking of the engagement may bring unhappiness to at least one of the parties concerned. If the girl and man remain in the same city, they gradually grow old, apart from each other. Their little tricks and idiosyncrasies, which living together could have smoothed out, become permanent—hardened into unbendable things. They come to regard each other as matters of course, without the exquisite physical thrill which love should mean. They have, in brief, all of the discomfort and monotony of marriage without any of its joys.

Too brief engagements are at times more dangerous. This is especially true where the man and girl have not known each other before. If they have been raised side by side, there is small danger of being mated to a person who will turn out, on closer acquaintance, to be everything unworthy. The wisest thing is to let the engagement last a month or longer, and then, if the mating is desired, take the plunge even on a moderate income, than risk the danger of letting the engagement become a tedious habit.

The normal termination of an engagement is marriage. Any book of etiquette will tell you the formal ways to accept the mad gamble of marriage, with all of the frills of such service, receptions, honeymoons, and the like. The honeymoon, it may be pointed out, or the period in which the deluded man and woman try to live on love alone, is one of the most cruel inventions ever made by man. Its almost invariable result (unless it be merely a brief trip, or a trip which the parties desired to take anyhow) is to send them back to the city thoroughly bored and disgusted with each other, and avid to interest themselves, perhaps unduly, in parties outside the mated relationship. For those who do not like the antique pomp of the marriage in church, there is always the simpler ceremony of being married by a justice of the peace, mayor, or alderman.

And there is, luckily for men and women, another termination possible, and that is to break the engagement. This should not be done without grave reason—but far more frequently than the actual breakings of engagements, such a reason exists. The problem simply is, which is better: to act wisely and terminate an unwise mating, which would result in unhappiness, at the cost of some slight temporary unhappiness; or to enter upon a life-time of unhappiness, or at best a long stretch of it, breakable only by the costly and elaborate method of separation or divorce, which may require the assumption by one party or the other of a guilt not actually earned. Where the case is so clear, there should be no hesitation: the engagement should be terminated, the man accepting the blame out of a chivalrous insincerity socially understood, and the parties parting, if possible, as friends. If the matter is still uncertain, better a postponement than a marriage, which may be repented soon enough. Only a mating which will bring increasing happiness is wise, for that is the object of life, and of its playtime, courtship.