Relationships/Courting

[TLFisher]

On the topic of relationships/courting this doesn’t apply to many of us anymore, but this post is for those who are still single.
It’s been touch already in different posts, but I did want to comment further on the matter of relationships/courting in the local churches. For good reason dating isn’t encouraged. Not in high school and not in college. Yet sound explanations aren’t always provided why by serving ones. You will be told as I was many years ago, not until you’re ready to get married. Who makes that determination?
When that time comes, how to you get to know someone well enough to determine if there’s something there to be built into friendship and beyond? When I was a single brother, it was a difficult issue to deal with. I’m sure other single brothers and sisters grappling with the same problem.
The system produced such weirdness. How to relate to one another without being so weird? How to speak to one another as we really are? It’s as if there’s a magnetic field that prevents the humanity of brothers and sisters from shining through as they actually are instead of what groupthink dictates how a single brother single sister should speak and act. Groupthink meaning spiritual is good and the soul is bad. Brothers may have the concept to be a good brother your have to be for the ministry. If a brother bears his soul, he’s a worldly brother.
We are social beings, but in the local churches have become segregated socially to only those of our respective genders. As a result single brothers and sisters are unable to be unprogrammed from the teaching “don’t talk to sisters” or “don’t talk to brothers” as they enter into the workforce.
I’ll stop here for someone else to continue with the conversation.