SHOULD WE BRING BACK THE ART OF COURTSHIP?

“Are all the men here gay?”

“Excuse me?” I responded, wondering if some bleach had leached into my brain. My Iranian hairdresser put down her comb and looked me directly in the eye through the mirror in front of us.

“In my country, we don’t have any rights... but we have RESPECT. I’m not allowed to drive a car... but I have power.”

This was a conversation I’d started at my local hairdresser in Sydney, Australia, and it had suddenly taken a very intense turn. I’d casually asked her if she was enjoying Australia... and this was the epic response:

“Are all the men here gay?”

“I went to a party a few weekends ago,” she said, returning to my roots. “Some guys invited us. They asked us to bring our own drinks!”

She looked at me in horror. “So, I arrive with the drinks and there’s nothing prepared—no food, no anything!” she continued with my hair half-heartedly, unenthused about her new life in this free (and apparently very gay) country. “The next weekend, I was out at a bar and a guy was flirting with me and then he asked me to buy him a drink. It’s so confusing!”

This stunning woman—fine-featured, with a river of shiny black hair running down her back—was describing the dating experience I had been living my entire adult life in Australia. In our demands for equality, in our need to be exactly the same, all of the art of seduction had been sucked out of any intimate situation, and the sexes were left in no man’s land because all the male energy had left the room.

All of this had left the women feeling flat and the men appearing... gay. More interested in football and the boys than the divine energy of the opposite sex. Any interest in women was for a short and very primal interaction.

Women were still getting dressed up, going to the hairdresser (!), still putting effort into their appearance in the hope of entrancing and maintaining a man... but men had never been taught the art of courtship. They’d been expressly told NOT to show interest in women. And women had been expressly told NOT to entertain a man showing up this way. They had been told to NOT want what they very naturally wanted.

And I’ve also heard of another theory that could have turned men and women off each other—the Bitch Shield. As we have sexually “liberated” women in our modern culture, instead of doing what almost every other culture in history has done—protecting and honoring their sexuality—women have created their defense mechanism: the “Bitch Shield.” As men always seem to be after one thing, a quite natural spiky and terrifying defense has gone up to stop unwanted attention and affection.

And as a result, we get these very awkward and nonplussed interactions.

Limp lettuce “love,” I call it.

My experience in the 2010s dating world was meaningless, artless, and always involved an avalanche of alcohol. I had not learned any other way.

In 2015, destroyed by a decade of dull or outright dangerous dating, I took respite in a pilgrimage: The Camino de Santiago. I was embarking on this walk to help myself let go of the idea of love. Grow up, I told myself. It was clear that no man was coming to sweep me off my feet, so I’d better get used to walking on my own. And by the end of the month, I was emotionally settled to live the life of a spinster. That was until the last few days of The Way when I met a man who would become my husband.

A classic gentleman from the south of Spain, his manners were so obviously different. He was polite, forward, direct, and honest.

“Can I please sit with you?”

He offered to pay for my lunch and told me unflinchingly that I was very beautiful. When I got up to leave, he immediately asked for my number with great confidence. As the day progressed, we walked together, chatting, and he slipped into the conversation that the woman who would come to be his wife would have to accept that his firstborn child would have his name. What?

This guy knew he would have a family and was openly and honestly searching for it. He was also openly and honestly informing me of the expectations. All of this was so beyond anything I’d ever encountered with a grown man that I felt like I’d fallen into the nineteen-fifties.

He invited me to Madrid, where he showed me around the city. He selected the restaurants, the food, the wine, the museums. The men from Spain were raised to express serious interest in a woman. And the experience was heavenly. I could let myself fall in love knowing I was constantly being caught.

Any woman would want this from a handsome, successful man, but we have been taught to say, “Yeah, but I can pay for myself, thank you very much.” However, the reality is that we all want to be swept up. We all want the signs of courtship that have been designed to signal, “I’m serious, I’m interested, I have the means to financially take care of you and our children.”

At one of these dinners during this courtship, my husband said, “You look so nice this evening, thank you so much for going to the trouble of dressing up for me.”

Feminism would teach me to respond, “It’s not for YOU, it’s for ME!” But we all know who it’s for. We all know what all of this means. We only pretend that we don’t.

I left Madrid with a suitcase of gifts he had bought for every single one of my family members and the promise that if I made the leap and moved continents for love... he would support me.

“I’m so excited about us sharing the rest of our lives together,” he said days before I arrived.

I have been so swept up in this romance with all its beauty and challenges for the last ten years that I’ve scarcely noticed the serious trouble Love—and the concept of courtship—is in.

According to Pew Research (2023), 63% of single men under 30 are single by choice or apathy—not actively seeking a partner.

A Stanford study found that dating app fatigue is real—over 80% of users report burnout or “ghost fatigue.”

In a 2022 UK survey, 54% of women said romance is “dead,” and 40% had never received flowers.

“I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love with all one's heart,” wrote Van Gogh to his brother.

And like with all art forms, it appears that we are beginning to feel that this one is fine to throw into the bin.

Both sexes are petrified of being vulnerable. Men are afraid of offering attention for fear of rejection, and women are terrified of the suffocating awkwardness of unwanted affection.

Men: Women might laugh at me.

Women: Men might kill me.

These are two deep fears that courtship and love present to men and women, and the media, feminism, and modern culture are whipping them into a frenzy.

Feminists like to think that their fear of being killed is more founded in truth and more important... but a man’s fear of being laughed at and humiliated is also a serious death threat to him. A man who can not find a mate would find himself at the end of his family line. These are serious fears, and both should be considered with love and respect... not fed.

These fears and awkwardness must be overcome. If we confront and manage these fears, we can eliminate the dragged-out heartache and ghosting that is now the norm in the modern dating world. People are in perpetual pain because they won’t say clearly the very uncomfortable, “I’m very interested. You’re everything I ever wanted.” Or the equally horrific, “I’m sorry. Thank you for all of this, it’s an honor to be considered, but this union is not for me.”

In our search for freedom from commitment and awkward moments, we have pulled apart our traditions and social structures.

But I think we have to bring back courtship.

We must resuscitate romance.

As birth rates decline, we can call this a life-or-death situation.

Louise Perry does an exquisite job of offering her thoughts on all of this in The Case Against The Sexual Revolution. This liberation has left both men and women lost, unsure, unenchanted with each other, if not outright exploited.

Maybe we should take a small step back? Maybe we should remember, as Louise Perry reminds us, that stories that shaped our social understanding—shows like Sex and The City—were created by gay men and not heterosexual men and women trying to do the very difficult thing of falling in love, starting a family, making it last, making it mean something.

Spring has sprung where I live in Spain. Soon, in the south, men and women of all ages will be preparing for Feria: a two-week festival in which all the women dress in bright flamenco dresses and put flowers in their hair. They look exquisite. The feminine beauty is jaw-dropping.

The entire community comes together to dance the Sevillanas, the traditional dance that every single person knows. This is the moment of the year when men and women can safely flirt and send signals. An environment of colour, flowers, food, dance, music, and life, in which all of the family are out together.

I don’t mind how old-school this sounds—we need to bring back traditional community dances that take place in the light of day.

These festivals are life-affirming and give men and women a safe environment to let their love out. What’s more, everyone is flirting and dancing with everyone. The air is alive. “Aren’t we beautiful,” this type of festival insists. “Isn’t life—and spring—a short season?” The courtship between couples is still alive and well decades after the ring is on the finger.

In our sexually saturated culture, we need the colour of love to be painted for us again. The utter joy and life found in romance.

The sensuality is light, playful and alive, and not taking place in the back of a dark and dingy nightclub, nor through a back-and-forth chat alone in one’s room.

So let’s embrace the masculine and the feminine instead of pretending the two forces that create life itself don’t exist. Let’s help create spaces for young people to find each other and sparkle.

Now, of course, I’m aware we cannot spread this joyful Spanish tradition overnight—and maybe some wouldn’t want to. I do live in reality, but the reality is that most singles are living and trying to love in an artless wasteland.

They need light.

After listening to Father Chad Ripperger’s talk on the four stages of courtship, I’ve put together The Courtship Handbook—a collection of thoughts, stories, and practical wisdom I’ll one day pass on to my son when he sets out to find the woman he’ll build a life with.

I’ll be posting it next week, so please stay tuned.

And in the meantime—stay curious, stay courageous, and stay falling in love.

If you enjoyed this piece, consider subscribing or becoming a patron. It helps me find the time to seriously think about serious topics like…Love.