One of my biggest literary pet peeves is when historical or history-inspired fiction pretends that "courting" is a synonym for "dating". Usually it's just a one-to-one word swap--in a modern context, these characters would be dating, but this is olden times, so they call it courting instead. Sometimes they'll pretend there's a shade of difference, and that courting is a more serious exploration of marriage or something. But I read a lot of fiction that was actually written during these historical eras, and the word "courting" is never used like that.
Two people do not decide that they are "courting". One person decides to "court" someone else. It's an action, not a stage in the relationship. A man decides to court a woman because he wants to encourage her to have romantic interest in him. He's trying to win her favor. It's not an exclusive relationship--a woman could be courted by multiple men at once. She'll spend time getting to know the guy who's interested in her, but they won't officially define their relationship as one where they only show romantic interest in each other. If they reach a point where they want it to be exclusive, that's when you propose.
There's no middle ground--either you're getting to know each other, or you're committed to marrying each other. This idea of a period where you kind of commit to each other until you decide you definitely want to get married is a modern one, and it occurs in eras where they use the word "dating" to describe it. The closest equivalent I can think of are times and places where they'd talk about a couple "stepping out together", but they're still not calling it "courting". Words have meaning, and the word "courting" has never meant that, so stop using it that way!
the other mild historical disjoint i run into is when people talk about dating in the fifties like it automatically meant exclusivity. the whole reason we have the expression "going steady" is because the default was to or "go around with" or "go out with" multiple people. not in the sense of being in a stable polyamorous vee, but in the sense that archie is actively "seeing" both betty and veronica during the entire time the two girls are competing for his attention and they're both seeing other guys to make him jealous, and nobody involved considers this "cheating."
bizarrely, America has in many ways gotten more conservative about dating since World War II.
I ran into a truly wild cultural misunderstanding with my father some years ago, when I had to explain to him what “hookup culture” actually was, and that the thing he assumed it was was actually what we call “cruising culture”. His response was “how is that different from dating?” and when I explained how it was different, he said, and please note that this a direct quote: “That’s ridiculous! You can’t expect a woman to stop fooling around with other guys for anything less than a marriage proposal. I mean, she’s not a prostitute, you can’t buy her.” Now obviously there’s like… a lot to unpack there, but I think it’s pretty darn illustrative of a substantive cultural shift around the assumption of monogamy!
Also, following this, I asked my mom what her thoughts were on the matter, and she said that while she “wouldn’t put it in those terms” she broadly agreed, and thought that anyone expecting any sort of exclusivity when a marriage proposal wasn’t at least on the very immanent horizon was “nuts, honestly.” I hesitantly asked if she was including relationships with premarital sexual activity in that, and her response was “Of course. I mean, gosh, you know your Aunt Terri used to have a guy for every day of the week before she finally settled down.”
And this was when I learned, to my shock, that the oft-repeated story of how “Aunt Terri used to have a guy for every day of the week” didn’t just mean “Aunt Terri had a full dance card” but rather meant that Aunt Terri had a period of her life where she literally dated exactly seven guys at once, all of whom she was sleeping with (or, my mom was quick to disclaim, “well, fooling around with, I don’t know how far she actually went with any of them, but they were definitely all fooling around behind closed doors”), on a literal weekly rotation. Like, they had a schedule. A schedule that all seven of the guys knew.
America has gotten a lot more conservative about dating, actually.
