Book Reviews

The Development of a Relationship

“Love without Truth is Lu*t”
“Truth without Love is Harsh”
“If you marry on the strength of puppy love, you’ll end up leading a dog’s life.”

Infatuation

From their many years of experience as counsellors to thousands of couples, various practitioners came to more or less a similar conclusion:

Markus Bishop describes the first stage a marriage goes through as the courtship stage in which you are totally smitten with lovesickness. Tim LaHaye calls the period immediately after marriage the adjustment stage and found through his experience that this stage usually takes about three years. Psychologist Dr Dorothy Tennov concluded that the average life span of a romantic obsession is two years. Dr Peck states that falling in love is not real love, but it is a genetically determined instinctual component of mating behaviour.

Is your current relationship or intended marriage based on infatuation or love?

The phases of the relationship and growth of physical intimacy

First, the couple meet and interact as friends in a platonic friendship. As the couple gets to now each other a little better, they show some more interest in each other and start dating often, which leads to a steady or exclusive relationship.

The desire to be in each other’s company grows and soon the couple gets engaged, which in most cases will then lead down the aisle to conclude a marriage.

In contrast to this, now consider the growth path of physical intimacy. First the couple holds hands and soon they walk with their arms around each other. Almost parallel with this, they sooner or later kiss with a growing degree of intensity. Now follows a period of “necking” during which the couples caress each other in areas above the shoulders. As the couple spends more and more time alone, a period of light petting follows during which areas above the waist line is fondled and kissed.

The hormones get all excited and push the couple into a period of heavy petting where the whole body is stroked and petted. Naturally, full intercourse is not far away.

The dilemma

Here then is the dilemma many couples struggle with. How do you synchronise the phase of the relationship with the natural growth in physical intimacy? When may we do what?

In the book “Singles Ask”, author Harold Smith addresses these and other tough questions regarding relationships and se~ual issues. He offers a practical guideline that you should rather ask yourself, “how far should we go?”.

It is very important to discuss these matters before you reach a point where the making of good choices is significantly reduced by a hormone flood tide.

It might also take a very long time before two families are comfortable enough to merge – will you be able to time and control your needs?

Let’s push the “Reset” button and have a good re-look at Friendship, Courtship and Engagement.

Friendship

In his book “Waiting and dating”, Dr Myles Munroe describes the development of a friendship in stages over four levels. Following are a synopsis of the four levels of friendship:

Acquaintance

A friendship of acquaintance is based on occasional contact with very basic and general knowledge of each other and very basic topics of discussion.

Casual Friendship

A casual friendship is based on common interests, activities and concerns. Contact is made more frequently at venues of common interest and conversations include questions concerning personal opinions and beliefs.

Close Friendship

A Close friendship is based on mutual life goals and involves common fellowship, motivation, assistance and commitment.

Intimate Friendship

An intimate friendship is based on intimacy of spirit and mind and a commitment to the development of each other’s character. Conversation includes the sharing of deep thoughts, dreams, aspirations, fears, weaknesses and desires in open honesty with discretion.

Courtship

In his book “Boy Meets Girl”, Joshua Harris relates the development of his own relationship with Shannon who became his wife, as well as several relationships of his friends and those of people who wrote to him after completion of his first book.

Joshua teaches the true intent of Romance as created by God, and how to let the development of the relationship be under God’s control. Following are several extracts from his book, compiled into a “definition” of courtship:

Courtship is:

• a commitment and a promise not to play games with another person’s heart.
• making sure not to promise or imply a deeper level of commitment or confidence in the relationship than you really have.
• dating with a purpose.
• a romance guided by wisdom to set a way in which to be careful with the other person’s heart while opening up your lives together to God’s joyful best.
• the time during which two people grow in friendship and get to know each other’s character.
• the time to see how they interact as a couple and to consider the possibility of marriage.

Engagement

Engagement is the period during which the couple makes practical preparations for the marriage relationship, other than the wedding preparations for the wedding day. It is the preparation time for a binding contract between the two people. To this effect, engagement is thus the first stage of marriage. The man and the woman are now exclusively committed to one another but they are not yet free to have s~xual relations. This commitment to your fiancée is as strong and binding as if you are already spouses.

Conclusion

To summarize, Stormie Omartian in her book “The Power of a Praying Husband”, says:

“There is the anticipation of oneness in that first moment when you sense you were destined to be more than friends. There is the sense of oneness in the courtship. The promise of oneness in the engagement period. The declaration of oneness in the wedding vows. The thrill of oneness on the honeymoon. The excitement of oneness as a home is established.”

References:

- Singles Ask, H I Smith, ISBN 0-8066-2379-9, Augsburg Publishing House

- Waiting and dating, Dr M Monroe, ISBN 0-7684-2157-8, Destiny Image Publishers Inc.

- Boy meets girl, J Harris, ISBN 1-57673-709-8, Multnomah Publishers Inc.

- The Power of a Praying Husband, Stormie Omartian, ISBN 0-7369-0532-4, Harvest House Publishers

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