Do Amish and Mennonite girls get to pick their husbands?

 I grew up in a plain hybrid Amish/Mennonite community in Michigan that was part of a larger church in Pennsylvania called Charity Christian Fellowship. People did not date in these plain religious communities. Instead, they did something called courtship or courting.  

My first personal interaction with this process was when my favorite big brother decided to marry when I was seven years old. The first thing he did was go to our Father and ask what he thought about the young lady from the church he’d been praying about getting to know better. 

Our father gave his blessing and went to go visit the young lady’s father to inquire if he was open to marrying his daughter to my brother. Her father gave his blessing and said he’d ask her if she was open to entering a courtship with my brother with the goal of marriage within 6 months. 

She said YES when her father asked and their courtship officially began. 

My brother and now dear sister-in-law were made for each other across time and destiny. He sent her a bouquet of flowers filled in with broccoli and cauliflower (two veggies she hated with a passion) in the first week of courtship AND she only liked him more than ever and was thrilled. 

During courtship, they were always required to be at least 6 inches apart and never allowed to be alone together. All interactions together were done with other people from the church present and watching closely. They married within 6 months of both sets of parents' approval and have now been married for 20 years, quite happily I must add. 

Soon children followed as birth control was forbidden and as a child, I honestly thought something was wrong if a year after a wedding there were no babies yet. I would get dreadfully perplexed (not knowing how babies came to be) if one did not appear within a year and thought they must be sinning or not walking with God. 

This is a happy story of two people who grew up under peculiar circumstances and now living their own “modern” lives independently in love and partnership with each still after 20 years of marriage. But, such stories are quite rare and far and few between. 

The reality is few men are as understanding and intelligent as my brother and few women are as sweet and giving as my sister-in-law. Especially in the context of the strict patriarchal gender hierarchies we were raised in these plain fundamentalist churches. Men are taught from childhood they are the head of the home and have God-given authority to make decisions for the women and girls in their lives. Women and girls are taught from childhood it is their God-ordained role in life to be submissive helpers to their father's or husband's wishes and dreams. 

Two years later my sister married. The young man first went and asked his father for permission to pursue a courtship with my sister. The young man then went and asked my Father for permission. My father then went and told my mother who gave her a blessing. My parents sat my 19-year-old sister down and told her to tell them who in the church she wished to marry one day. My sister did not want to disclose her crush or future hopes. Yet, my parents refused to tell her which young man had inquired about receiving her hand in marriage unless she told them who she liked. My sister gave in and shared to happily hear the news the very same man she liked was the one who had asked for her hand. 

Like my older brother, they were also always required to have a chaperone and never be closer than 6 inches to each other before the wedding. Our mother didn’t bring up the subject of sex with a new husband until the morning of my sister's wedding. This is typical for most plain girls in Amish/Mennonite hybrid communities. 

Now it is breaching privacy to share any particulars in regards to intimate matters in familiar cases such as these in a blog post. And my now brother-in-law is a kind and smart man that I respect, who demonstrated the utmost understanding to my sister and they are still happily married today. HOWEVER, such circumstances are rare and not guaranteed or even necessarily expected. 

With the freedom to speak in the context of other individuals, there were many women or girls rather married off in these years who were forced to perform wifely duties the day of the wedding despite not really understanding sex and the MAJOR difference between men and women in going from zero physical context ever to love making within hours. 

There is no such thing as marital rape in these isolated religious communities. 

Furthermore, even very young girls are sometimes married after a short courtship to an older man. I recall an instance growing up where a girl who had just turned 15 (that month) became betrothed to a man 9 years her senior. In every other state in the U.S., such a circumstance would be considered criminal sexual conduct. But, then again, as it still breaks my heart to this day, these communities refuse to allow women and girls physical or mental autonomy over their own lives.