Protocols

I was just talking with Luke on the phone.  There are things we have always disagreed about, and we've been friends long enough to pick them up and toss them around like an old football if we feel like it, or not.  They are old and familiar.

Here is a way that I am very old-fashioned/modern/20th Century: 

In "my" culture (Brethren/Ontarian), when you see Sarah, a woman you like, and your friend Steve likes her too, you have to check and see if some other guy named Trevor feels he has exclusive rights to wooing Sarah before you or Steve ought to consider getting involved.  If Trevor "has dibs," then if you or Steve for example, send Sarah flowers, or compliment her, you're messing with Trevor.  And that's an affront, and boundaries need to be reiterated or moved around or whatever.  You might not actually fight, but a transaction of that kind goes on.  Because when you step in and there's another guy like Trevor already involved, you're messing with "his thing."  Trevor's ambitions, hopes and plans, that is.  Not that Sarah is "Trevor's thing," exactly, although those lines get muddy fast.  So you establish boundaries.  Not with Sarah.  With Trevor.  Directly.

   And the complications don't stop there.  If Sarah has no such man in her life, but your friend Steve likes her too, it is customary for you and Steve to work out who gets to pursue her.  Otherwise, you may well lose an important friendship with Steve, and possibly not end up with Sarah anyway.  That would suck, and so normally people come to arrangements, which are about as psychologically and ethically sound as calling "dibs" or "I saw her first!"  Luke thinks one shouldn't do damage to a potential wife's familial and friend connections, but should work to help all of that remain intact, so that one not put her in the position of choosing one or the other (husband or family).

   It goes without saying that at the female end of this little tale, if you or Steve like Sarah and start to pursue her, she for her part needs to ensure she doesn't have a sister or friend or whatever who has been carrying a torch for you or Steve, and is eagerly awaiting to be courted.  If Sarah's sister/friend Gloria has been carrying such a torch for Steve, and Sarah "Goes for it" with Steve, this is viewed as completely unacceptable too, and potentially drives a rift between Sarah and Gloria.  

Luke is odd.  He doesn't think like that at all.  Never has.  He says that, if one is to remain "scriptural," there simply aren't all those modern stages or kinds of romantic association.  In the modern world we think we have:

a) dating (not exclusively)/"seeing one another"

b) dating exclusively/being a couple/"going steady"

c) "on a break"

d) living together

e) engaged/betrothed

f) married

g) estranged/"on a break"

h) legally separated

i) divorced

Depends on who you are where, if anywhere, sexual congress begins to occur.  According to Luke, though, if you want to remain scriptural/deal ethically and with God-logic, these are the only "real" states a relationship exists in, in the eyes of God and (wo)man alike:

a) dating (not exclusively)

b) engaged/betrothed

c) married (sexual congress occurring only here)

d) divorced

Anything else is just silly, noncommittal nonsense, according to him.  

   Luke also feels that, if a woman isn't actually married to a husband, it is absolutely ethically permissible for any man to pursue her romantically.  That "Trevor" has no real, binding claims on Sarah at all, not yet, and is still window shopping.  That Sarah really ought to seriously consider all comers.  So, if Trevor and Sarah are doing the pre-marriage, pre-sexual relationship negotiations, Steve should be more than free to toss in his bid to be more suited, more charming, more resilient, more whatever is required, than Trevor.  And Sarah should give Steve due consideration, rather than giving him the old "I have a boyfriend" line, which Luke feels is nonsense.  There are, after all, no "boyfriends" in the bible.  There are only betrotheds, husbands, and men.  And Luke feels that Steve's intervention could well cause Trevor to step up his game a bit, if he has any.  Win-win.

   This is all very against my culture and training.  Against both of my cultures.  Can't really roll like that.
   In Plymouth Brethren culture, they don't really want to accept the concept of (recreational) dating, but they always allowed kind of a "pre-engagement/getting to know one another" process.  It seemed to have most of the rules and responsibilities of actual marriage, and none of the comforts of it.  This process was always meant to be about fairly promptly coming up with a decision to get (or not get) engaged.
   Couples who non-dated for more than a year, but didn't seem to be moving toward or away from engagement, were viewed as dubious.  There was a lot of pressure.  (To say the least.) No wonder so many Brethren people married outside the fold, as it were.  Away from the spotlights.

   (Of course in the actual bible, it's always and only arranged marriage, pretty much.  With a dowry. And maybe more than one wife at a time.  Or so I think. Luke disagrees and says it was about many men choosing wives they wanted, quite frequently.)  We're not that traditional.  We're at best "wearing white at the wedding because Queen Victoria did" traditional.  Nothing really much older than that.

   Luke also has what sounds to me (he wouldn't term it quite like this) like a view that the pre-marriage, pre-sexual relationship, the jockeying for position, aligning and defining of roles, the working out of how the two of you work things out together, somehow "sets in concrete" once you marry.  Like you're kind of stuck with those basic realities, with anything you haven't sorted out beforehand, with only minimal chance of tweaking them.  Like you have to "work stuff out" in advance, or you're pretty much stuck with it.  But upon reading this, he says he's not quite saying that.  Exactly.  Guess I'll have to talk to him another time to get a clearer picture of what he means.