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One of the highlights of the “Encounter with Chabad” was the audience that the students had with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, of righteous memory. The audience with the Rebbe transpired at the end of the weekend.

This audience is from the year 1963. This particular encounter consisted of mostly students from the same university in New Jersey.

The group appointed a representative who taught them about Judaism in the past, to commence the audience.

Representative: The students have two or three problems [that they would like to discuss].

Rebbe: They only have two or three? That would be quite good!

Student: What is your opinion concerning dating for people our age?

Rebbe: Every boy and girl looks forward to a happily married life, but this starts only after marriage. For if you try too much before [the relationship with the girl/boy], this influences all of one's married life. The relationship between a boy and girl should be only in the same measure as the relationship between boy and boy, and girl and girl. But if more is added - and usually after a while much more is added than at the start - then you are taking away very much from the relationship between this boy and girl after they marry.

All relationships make people closer. Everyone wants to be happily married; the idea of trying in a certain measure before marriage started a few decades ago, or less. Nevertheless, there have been happy marriages for thousands of years. This is just an experiment of a few years' duration, and it is very difficult to be sure about the effects. The effects can show strongly non-beneficial results of "going steady" before marriage.

Student: Isn't there a difference between relationships before and after marriage? Isn't this the way that society accepts?

Rebbe: I'm speaking of the personal feelings of the boy and girl themselves - not whether society will be happy or not. Nowadays some are happy with the extreme right, some, with the extreme left, or any level in-between. Society is multicolored and different shaded, and every kind of behavior is tolerated.

My opinion is that this influences the feelings of the married couple after their marriage. They hope for a marriage for many decades or years, and it is not worth allowing the pleasure of a few months to spoil something for decades, for tens of years.