“Quaker Dating” by Betsy Blake | QuakerYouth
“Quaker Dating” by Betsy Blake | QuakerYouth
I would *totally* sign up for a Quaker dating site. As a matter of fact, I have. I’m not convinced yet about http://www.quakersingles.org – they have 65 registered users, and no way to filter search results by age or location. In the meanwhile, I’m using http://www.okcupid.com (where I’m registered as heaventwig).
I’ve been thinking, for a couple of years now, about a Young Adult Friends (YAF) workshop on Quaker romance. I was hoping this blog post might talk about such a thing, or try to address some of the questions that come up for me about what it means to date as a Friend. I guess you did that to some extent in raising the issues of discipline and the desire to pair with another Friend, which both seem relevant to me.
I’m curious, though, to get feedback on this workshop idea. My brainstorm thus far involves watching movies together, followed by worship sharing and/or discussion. (Possible movies to watch: “The 40 Year Old Virgin” and “Me and You and Everyone We Know”.) Maybe include some recommended reading (the closest thing I’ve found to a book on Quaker dating was “If the Buddha Dated” by Charlotte Kasl – which is quite good, but not quite Quaker).
What do you think, Betsy? Others?
Any other books you’d recommend? Movies? Any good queries to suggest on the topic?
December 10th, 2007 at 03:04
I found that whenever I tried to find a Quaker to date it ended up badly. Too many people “looked good on paper” but were incompatible in some indefinable way.
I finally just decided to live my life and assume that I’d bump into someone else living their life in a similar trajectory. The irony is that although my final love was more involved and informed and committed to Quakers than just about any YAF I’d ever met, after a few years of marriage she left Friends. It’s good to find someone with compatible values but it’s important to remember that you’re not marrying someone because their identity at-this-moment-of-life completely matches up with your identity at-this-moment-of-life. No matter how compatible someone is, they and you will change and you have to find someone whose approach to life you’ll find interesting twenty, thirty, forty years down the line. If it were me, I’d skip the movies and organize something like a Habitat-for-Humanity project: seeing who’s committed, works hard and knows how to use a hammer seems more important now than someone who knows how to hang like a YAF.
There are some good sexuality resources over on the Quakers spirituality/sexuality site. I would really recommend the 1998 YAF epistle. Insider YAF groupings can become… well, predatory is probably the best word… when they’re used as dating forums. They’re great places to meet prospective partners and there are plenty of successful marriages that started in YAF dorms but they can be dangerous places too. Rapes can and do happen, newcomers can and do get treated like “fresh meat,” spiritually unhealthy attitudes get all mixed in with the healthy ones, etc. (I’m speaking from experience of what happened in the years of the last strong FGC YAF community). If there is a kind of renaissance of conscious Quaker dating I hope it might include some soul-searching about the darker side that comes with being a tight spiritual community. Most of it’s great of course and I’ll always be happy I kept the elevator open for that cutie I saw coming through the front doors of the 2000 Gathering YAF dorm!
Good luck and keep your finger on the elevator “doors open” button! Martin at Quaker Ranter
December 10th, 2007 at 06:12
Have you seen this book Listen with Your Heart http://www.quakerbooks.org/listen_with_your_heart.php
December 10th, 2007 at 09:31
Hey Gavin–nice to find your blog! I don’t have any ideas but I am totally in agreement that such a workshop would rock!
December 10th, 2007 at 11:38
The dating world is a nightmare! A Quaker dating site couldn’t hurt matters. But I also wonder if you would put on your general dating profile what the Quaker testimonies are, and see who is interested. Because probably a lot of good people are out there who are also living the testimonies, if not under the Quaker name. If the Light shines in everyone, then it’s entirely possible that a Spark will flicker between two people of any persuasion.
December 10th, 2007 at 11:41
Well, yes, I’m skeptical about my own desire for a Quaker match - I’m quite aware of the analysis provided by a Rabbi some time in the past few decades, who wrote that Quakerism has grown so well in part by marrying outside the faith. Clearly, this Rabbi wasn’t thinking of our older customs around reading people out of a meeting for getting hitched to a non-Friend, but the point remains - we may be better off if we can accept others than if we cannot.
Actually, this brings to mind a conversation I had with a woman I met last Thursday evening, who asked at some point whether I thought I could raise children with a non-Quaker. When I said yes, she asked what spiritual values my co-parent and I would use to raise the kids. I was absolutely stumped, not because it’s a hard question but because it seems so obvious – we would use *our* spiritual values. A spiritual connection is essential in my date-selection process, but I’ve found that I can connect in that way with atheists, agnostics, and pagans just as well as (and in some cases better than) professed believers. The specific words a person uses to talk about spiritual experience are far less important to me than the experience itself.
December 10th, 2007 at 14:38
Gavin-
I totally agree with you that the AYF community at Gathering could benefit from a kind of organized opportunity to thresh these issues together (i know i certainly could!). I also totally agree with Martin about the “fresh meat” and predatory tone that I could imagine coming out if the opportunity to “date” were formalized.
I wasn’t ever really committed to marrying Q one way or the other until I dated a Jewish man who was resolute that, should we get married, I convert. I couldn’t imagine a more fundamentally dishonest thing than converting “just to get married” and our relationship fell apart soon after when it became clear that the letter and the spirit of our various faiths were just incompatible (i don’t mean to suggest that all quaker-jewish couplings turn sour; ours just did).
While I agree that there are other faiths (and un-churched people) with whom we share a lot of the things that seem most important in crafting successful faith-based relationships, some of the “cultural” elements of Quakerism are what make it so important to me now to marry Quaker.
I also realize that some of those things are things that separate us “birthright” from “convinced” just because so much of it is wrapped up in the traditions of Quaker childhood (Q camps, school, 1st day school, going to Gathering, etc.), but that doesn’t make them any less important to me as an individual so I’m not willing to discard them.
The query that I find most useful to myself when I’m in relationships (or considering one) and the one that I use with my own sexuality workshop is:
“Does this relationship/hookup/whatever honor that of God in the other person? Does it honor that of God in ME?”
I think I know what that of God within me looks like (or feels like) and I want to make sure that people I’m dating can see it–and appreciate it.
I find that there is such focus among Quakers on recognizing that of God in others that we may fall into relationships where that of God in US is not honored. Learning how to even recognize that is really difficult and, I think, came with age for me.
Okay…I’ve written too much!
Guli
December 11th, 2007 at 10:03
I admit I know nothing about online dating. I met my husband at coffee hour after meeting for worship in 1992. Here is a post I wrote that is a little about our courtship. How I Came to Love Meeting for Worship
The first place we announced our engagement (after the phone calls to our parents) was at a 15th St. Meeting YAF bowling party.
One of the most important things for me about being married to another Quaker is that Quaker time and family time are not separate. I don’t have to choose between going to Quarterly Meeting or spending the weekend with my family. It is part of our family’s identity.
One of my ulterior motives in working with children’s programs at Quaker gatherings is that there be enough Quaker children who grow up to be adult Quakers so that my children could choose to marry other Quakers. Not that they have to, but I want it to be an option for them.
I keep meaning to write a post about plain dress and romance: are they compatible?
December 11th, 2007 at 23:18
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