Playing The Field Can Be Respectable
Long ago, during the unenlightenment, romantic popularity was not necessarily considered a sign of moral depravity. Thoroughly respectable people (along with some others) thought it desirable to encourage more than one smitten prospect to hope and hang about.
Why any particular individual attracted a crowd of admirers might have been the subject of unpleasant speculation, Miss Manners admits. (It often was, human nature being what it is.) But there was no blanket condemnation, as it were, of heart-collecting. On the contrary, everyone, prissy or not, acknowledged that it was only reasonable to collect as many hearts as possible before discarding the extras.
Those old enough to remember the custom and reckless enough to recommend it to the young are in for the shock of finding themselves thought-shocking. The parent who says, “You may not be crazy about him, but if you go out with him, you’ll meet his friends and you might find someone you like better,” or “Why do you have to tell her you’re also seeing someone else?” encounters the terrible moral outrage of youth.
The belle and the ladies’ man are in such poor repute that they are only spared being condemned as vicious if they avail themselves of the modern escape clause of claiming mental illness. Romantic capriciousness has become an illness.
It is therefore with some misgiving that Miss Manners admits to harboring a wicked thought: Is it so terrible to indulge in delicious and prolonged hesitation before making a choice? Perhaps long before making a choice?
Well, yes, among those who have made promises or vows to the contrary. And yes if one uses the opportunity to make lots of choices at the same time.
Miss Manners understands that a lot has changed, notably the speed at which courtships travel and the way they keep lingering at rest stops rather than proceeding to the traditional goal. If we are to have what was once quaintly known as “trial marriage,” we can at least keep it free of trial adultery.
Nevertheless, Miss Manners does not see that morality has been well served by condemning flirtation and indecisiveness in innocent courtship. Commit and Switch fidelity, when every attraction becomes an exclusive arrangement that must be severed before another is begun, seems to have led only to Commit and Switch marriage.
The multiple courtship system may also eventually lead to marital problems, Miss Manners recognizes: anything can. It will certainly produce heartbreak: every method of courtship does. She is not so foolish as to imagine that there is any foolproof way of domesticating the more explosive human emotions.
She does notice, however, that when they explode is directly connected with how much social havoc they inflict. People who play the field before marriage cause less wear and tear on others in particular, and the society in general, than those who do so afterwards.
Dear Miss Manners: I have heard that when you give a greeting card to someone directly, without mailing it, you do not seal the envelope. Rather you simply tuck the flap into the envelope. Is this accurate?
Gentle reader: Yes. This isn’t one of the strictest rules of etiquette - Miss Manners has not heard of anyone’s feelings being destroyed by being forced to unseal an envelope when no protection is needed to get it through the mail - but it exists nevertheless.
A slightly more important rule, but only slightly, is that one does not seal an envelope that is given to a friend to deliver to a third person. This one is ever so slightly more significant, because it demonstrates trust that the messenger will not peek. All the same, Miss Manners does not advise sending secret messages by this method.