Courtship today: the view from academia

In this view, close relationships are significant only insofar as they generate worlds of meaning that enrich and enhance the self. Close-relationship theorists develop models to chart the "self-enhancement" component in close relationships, and argue that these relationships are "one especially satisfying, useful, and human means of expanding the self through including each other in the self." Close-relationship advocates Elaine and Arthur Aron cite the ancient Upanisadic axiom that "all love is directed toward the Self." Even in loving, the self is still profoundly self-referential.

Microwave relationships

In close-relationship theory, romantic relationships are said to constitute the "formation stage" of sexually based relationships. For these theorists, courtship does not point toward a specific end, such as stable, successful marriage. The intense, fluid, exploratory world of courtship-as-romance--not courtship leading to marriage--is the paradigm for all sexually intimate relationships, including marriage.

And so marriage lands finally in a very curious spot. Instead of courtship being defined by the goal of marriage, marriage is defined by the dynamics of courtship. Close-relationship theory agrees with the old cosmetics advertisement slogan: The test of a good marriage is its capacity to maintain the "thrill of courtship." The phrase "You would never know they are married" becomes the highest praise for conjugal love. Of course, intense courtship cannot be sustained forever. But it may be precisely the necessarily limited duration of courtship that makes this bond so fascinating to close-relationship theorists. Close-relationship theory tends to focus particularly on "initiation" and "disengagement," since these are "particularly striking phases" of intimate relationships. It tends to pass over the dreary world of "relationship maintenance" (marriage).

The relational self is supremely adapted to an endless ebb and flow of romantic encounters and liaisons. In the postmodern world, "Purpose is replaced with pastiche." Relationships are pastiche, marriage is purpose. Gergen and Walter exclaim the wonders of intense, but fragile, romances. These passionate liaisons are "joint creations" that otter accelerating, mutually generated forms of "reverberating activity"--"my pleasure increases as I experience your pleasure, yours increasing as a result of mine, mine increasing further because of yours, and so on."

Gergen argues that courtship now refers to an ongoing process that involves the formation of many different sexually bonded relationships throughout life. He defines these interactions as "microwave relationships"--cooked up fast, served, and consumed. The layers of emotional residue left by the multiple passages through episodic relationships are not lamented but celebrated: "The pace of relationships is hurried, and processes of unfolding that once required months or years may be accomplished in days or weeks ... The single person may experience not a handful of courtship relationships in a life time but dozens."