🫣 TREE 610: JG – one of the dumbest things I’ve done

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Remember Bill? From the beginning of his ministry, Bill fancied himself as a marriage guru. He had whole seminars about how to be married. (Fun fact: he taught that the man should always be on top and the woman should be on her back and presumably it should be all over before the godly couple have a chance to think of any other interesting positions.)

One day in the late 80s he looked around and thought to himself, I need to work on fixing marriages before they even start. He decided that as a middle-aged, never-married man he was ideally suited to sort out America’s dating problems.

Armed only with a convenient translation of the Hebrew word for strange and some positive opinions about arranged marriages, Bill invented Courtship. There are several books, but here’s the short version: Courtship According To Bill means that you treat all girls as if they have highly contagious terminal death cooties until your parents find you the girl of unquestionable character that you are supposed to marry. Then you go and hang out with the unquestionable girl’s dad until he agrees to let you marry her so that you will stop hanging out with him.

Bill explained it more convincingly than that, and I drank the kool-aid. I categorised all women as Strange-According-To-Bill until The One came along. I kissed dating good bye and became a Courtshipper.

One day, I was at a party and I looked up and I noticed that my sister’s scruffy little friend was no longer scruffy and little. She had breasts and a sweet smile and a nice personality and breasts. She did not appear to have any terminal death cooties, so in my infinite 17 year-old wisdom I realised that she was the girl for me. She was The One.

Next step: Lunch with her dad.

And so I began two years of causing her to hate me, obsessing, waiting, watching her fall in love with another guy and generally being a stupid, unhappy fool, hoping for something that was never going to happen. I thought I had to because Courtship was the only right way to do it. And she had no cooties.

I don’t think dating as it is generally practised is perfect or even great, but it does have this going for it: I could have found out she wasn’t the girl for me in two dates or less, instead of two years or more.

The day I finally realised that she would never love me was one of the happiest of the first 20 years of my life. The two years leading up to it are my greatest regret.

Fortunately, once she was rid of me, she married a really good man who she loved.

If you would like to become a Courtshipper, the organisation Bill founded is still flogging a limited selection of how-tos, some by the Duggars!

The only song I could think of that goes with today’s post is one that really annoys me. Here’s a good song instead.

Beware of guaranteed formulas for sale. Whether they are for your marriage or for multiplying your social media reach by 1000. They are most of all for making the seller rich.

Grow slowly
Jeff