Sean and Josh discuss dating in the third installment of our series on identity and marriage. In this episode, we talk about what it means for Christians to date in a hookup culture, and provide some tips on how to date with intentionality and focus towards a big vision both for your relationship and for your life with Christ.

The history of dating (from Tim Keller’s book, The Meaning of Marriage):

* In the”late ninetheenth century, the motive of marrying for love became more culturally dominant, and a system of “calling” (sometimes called “courtship”) came into being.

* Interestingly, women initiated: A man was invited to call on a young woman, and they spent their time together on her family’s front porch or in the parlor. In short, the man was invited in to the woman’s home. There he saw her in the context of her family and her family saw him.

* Modern “dating” developed after 1900, with the word first appearing in print with this meaning in 1914. Now the young man did not so much come in but instead took the woman out to places of entertainment to get to know her.

* This individualized the whole process, removing the couple from family context. It also changed the focus of romance from friendship and character assessment to spending money, being seen, and having fun.

* Not long after the turn of the twenty-first century, the “hook-up” culture emerged.

* In one of the first reports on the shift, a New York Times Magazine article reported how teenagers found members of the opposite sex to be annoying and difficult, and dating involved you in the hard work of give-and-take, communication, and learning to deal with someone who was different. To avoid all this, a new form of meeting partners was developed, one that went straight to sex.

* The advent of hook-up culture has meant to some that we have one of the first societies with no clear culturally supported pathways for single adults to meet and marry.

Brain science on Infatuation:

* Why is romantic love so powerful?

* “Psychologists liken infatuation to an addiction; indeed, it affects the same regions of our brains as cocaine or gambling…I don’t want to diminish the mystery and poetry of a truly delicious romantic attachment and “soul connection,” but in reality you’re living through a fairly predictable and observable neurochemical reaction.” Gary Thomas, Sacred Search

* “The way God made our brains, infatuation resembles an hourglass. The moment you become smitten by someone—the second you find yourself deeply “in love”—is the moment that hourglass gets turned over. There is enough sand in that hourglass, on average, to last you about twelve to eighteen months.” Sacred Search

* C. S. Lewis on the thrill of Romantic Love:

* “it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction…But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.” Mere Christianity

* “Throughout history,