“I wonder if anyone even knows where to go to gain a clear understanding on matters of love, sex, and marriage,” says Walt Mueller, founder and president of CYPU (Center for Parent/Youth Understanding). The Love &Fidelity Network provides such a place for university students.
One Valentine’s campaign, “Bring Dating Back,” aimed to help students become comfortable with “casual dating” in a campus culture in which “casual sex” (hookups) is taken for granted. On 36 campuses across the United States members of the Love & Fidelity Network have put up nearly 3,300 posters with tips on dating and organized workshops and presentations including a talk by Dr. John Van Epp, author of “How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk,” who will speak to students at Princeton and Columbia on “How to Follow Your Heart Without Losing Your Mind.” At Providence College the Anscombe Society, a member of the Network, will host a student-led discussion on the question “What is Love?” Students at Brown University will be hosting a screening of the classic romance film “Roman Holiday.”
Going against the prevailing campus culture by “bringing dating back” can help young adults not only to “get to know someone respectfully and honorably,but also to start revolutionizing campus culture” in the words of Lauren Galvan, a senior at Brown University in Rhode Island, USA. Lauren recently founded the newest chapter of the LFN, “Unhooked.”
These tips on enjoying casual, non-sexual relationships may also be helpful for young men and women in cultures in which male-female contact has been taboo and in which therefore there are no guidelines on what is right and wrong.
