for: Courtship (Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode)

Courtship is the traditional dating period before engagement and marriage. During a courtship, a couple dates to get to know each other and decide if there will be an engagement. Usually courtship is a public affair, done in public and with family approval.

It includes activities such as dating where couple go together for a dinner, a movie, dance parties, a picnic, shopping or general "hanging out", along with other forms of activity. Acts such as meeting on the internet or virtual dating, chatting on-line, sending text messages or picture messages, conversing over the telephone, writing each other letters, and sending each other flowers, songs, and gifts constitute wooing.

Courtship traditions

In some societies, the parents or community propose potential partners, and then allow limited dating to determine whether the parties are suited. In Japan, there is a type of courtship called Omiai. Parents will hire a matchmaker to provide pictures and résumés of potential mates, and if the couple agrees, there will be a formal meeting with the matchmaker and often parents in attendance. The matchmaker and parents will often exert pressure on the couple to decide whether they want to marry or not after a few dates.

In more closed societies, courtship is virtually eliminated altogether by the practice of arranged marriages, where partners are chosen for young people, typically by their parents. Forbidding experimental and serial courtship and sanctioning only arranged matches is partly a means of guarding the chastity of young people and partly a matter of furthering family interests, which in such cultures may be considered more important than individual romantic preferences.

Over recent decades though, the concept of arranged marriage has changed or simply been mixed with other forms of dating, including Eastern and Indian ones; potential couples have the opportunity to meet and date each other before one decides on whether to continue the relationship or not.

Modern dating

Main: Dating (activity) Before the 1960s, dating as we know did not exist. Those who dated did so with the intent of finding a future marriage partner. Today this is referred to as courting.

After the women's movement, the men's movement, the sexual revolution, and other movements that have influenced modern Western culture, this "old-fashioned" form of dating waned in popularity. Formal dating consists of one person (usually the male) contacting another person (usually the female) to arrange a date.