Being Home-Schooled Taught Me How To Find Love Without Dating
By Lyz Lenz. Posted on .
When my friends reminisce about childhood days spent getting sent to the principal's office, or instigating playground drama, or going on awkward middle school dates to even-more-awkward middle school dances, I have nothing to share. I was home-schooled.
Growing up, my siblings and I took classes through local zoos, museums and even home-schooling co-ops, where parents got together to teach classes on art and science and everything in between. But, in the end, I was primarily educated at the kitchen table, taking notes on a lecture from Professor Mom. Celibacy, Sex And My Christian Punk Youth
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At home, I learned more than the usual reading, writing and arithmetic. I memorized lessons in life and love. Lessons that directly influenced the way I approached dating.
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Long before I was old enough to have a crush on anyone other than Jonathan Taylor Thomas, my parents talked to me about dating. They assured me boys were a distraction and warned me about the emotional roller coaster that accompanied falling in love. They gave me books with titles like I Kissed Dating Goodbye and When Dreams Come True: A Love Story Only God Could Write. They packed my seven siblings and I into our 15-passenger van and hauled us off to see speakers who championed purity and finding love the "right way"—God’s way. Can A Non-Believer Date A Practicing Christian?
Throughout all of those books and speakers and family heart-to-hearts, I never heard anyone say anything positive about dating. According to my parents, it was one big mess that I should avoid at all costs. They didn’t believe in dating, they believed in "courting": a ritualized, highly supervised imitation of dating where the man asks the father if he can court his daughter and the two go on supervised outings until they get married. No sex. Very little hand holding. Kissing is frowned upon. I Was Taught That Dating Is From The Devil
