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Dating advice

Dating as an Orthodox college student in America

Keeping your faith and dating sensibly at university: finding a parish, OCF chapters, dorm life, fasting in a dining hall, and dating inside a small group.

By Orthodate Editorial13 minute read

Leaving home for an American university is the point at which a great many Orthodox Christians either become adults in the faith or quietly stop practising, and the deciding factor is almost never conviction. It is logistics: whether you found a parish in the first month, whether anyone knew your name by October, and whether the nearest church was reachable without a car. Dating sits on top of that, with its own particular problem — the Orthodox group on your campus may contain twelve people, and everyone will know within a day.

At a glance

Key takeaways

  • Find a parish and work out the transport in the first month, because the habit formed in September is the one that survives finals, and the one deferred rarely starts.
  • An Orthodox campus group is small enough that dating inside it is a community decision as much as a private one, and discretion at the beginning costs nothing while repair afterwards costs a great deal.
  • Fasting, Holy Week and Sunday mornings collide with dining halls, exams and student hours, so the workable version is the one agreed with a priest rather than the strictest one attempted alone.

1. What to do in the first month

Before you arrive, find the parishes within reach and work out how you would actually get to one on a Sunday morning without a car. This is the step people skip, and it is the step that determines everything: a church twenty minutes away on a bus you have already located is a habit, and a church twenty minutes away that you have not worked out is a plan you will have abandoned by November.

Then go, in the first two or three weeks, before the workload arrives. Introduce yourself to the priest afterwards and say you are a student. Parishes near universities are used to this and are frequently delighted; a fair number will find you a lift, feed you, and know your name by the second visit. That last part matters more than any of the rest, because the thing that keeps a nineteen-year-old going back is being expected.

Look up whether your campus has an Orthodox Christian Fellowship chapter, and if it does, go to the first meeting even if it turns out not to be for you. If it does not, ask the local priest whether students gather anywhere; a group of six meeting in someone’s apartment is not less real than a chartered organisation with a budget.

2. What campus ministry actually is, and what it is not

Orthodox Christian Fellowship is the official campus ministry of the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops, which in practical terms means it is pan-Orthodox: Greek, Antiochian, OCA, ROCOR, Serbian, Romanian and everyone else in the same room, which for many students is the first time they have experienced that. Chapters vary enormously, from thirty people with a chaplain and a weekly meal to four people and a text thread.

A good chapter does three things: it gets people to services, it feeds them, and it makes the group the sort of place where a student who has drifted can come back without an interrogation. It is not a replacement for a parish, and a chapter that has quietly become one — meeting on Sunday mornings, running its own devotions, rarely going to Liturgy — has lost the plot in a way worth noticing.

It is also, inevitably, where most Orthodox students meet other Orthodox students. That is fine and it is one of the reasons the thing exists. The caution is in the next section, and it is not an argument against going.

3. Dating inside a group of twelve

The arithmetic is unforgiving. If the Orthodox group on your campus has a dozen members and half are not plausible candidates for reasons of age, attachment or inclination, you are looking at a very short list, and every person on it is someone the rest of the group sees weekly. A relationship that begins and ends inside that group does not end privately.

This is not a reason to avoid it. Plenty of marriages start exactly here, and pretending otherwise is silly. It is a reason to be quiet at the beginning. Do not announce anything in the first month, do not conduct it in front of the group, and do not put the chapter in the position of having a view. Ordinary discretion buys you the room to find out whether this is anything, and it costs nothing if it turns out to be something.

If it ends, the rule is one sentence long: neither of you leaves. The most common casualty of a campus break-up is one person’s entire Orthodox social life and frequently their church attendance with it, because it is easier to stop coming than to be in a small room with someone. Agree in advance, if you can bear to, that whatever happens you both keep going. And if you are a bystander, do not pick a side; a group of twelve cannot survive a faction.

4. Dating outside the group

Most Orthodox students at most American universities will spend four years surrounded by people who are not Orthodox, and a good number will date some of them. This is worth thinking about in advance rather than discovering your position halfway through a relationship.

The Church’s teaching on marriage is not ambiguous, and it is reasonable to know your own intentions before you are attached to someone. If you would only marry an Orthodox Christian, or would require a marriage in the Church, say so early — not as a condition imposed on a second date, but plainly, when the relationship starts to look like it is heading somewhere. Most people find that easier to hear at month two than at year two.

The rest is ordinary honesty. Explain the calendar before Holy Week rather than during it. Do not treat someone as a conversion project, which is both unkind and, from the other side, extremely obvious. And notice whether the relationship makes it easier or harder to get to church, because that is a real signal and it is available very early.

5. Fasting on a meal plan

A dining hall is a genuinely difficult environment for a fast, and this is one of the clearest cases where the answer is pastoral rather than heroic. Talk to a priest about what is workable, and accept what he says. A student attempting the full monastic typicon on a meal plan, an eight-hour lab and four hours of sleep is not being devout; they are constructing a failure and usually a health problem.

The practical footholds, once you have that conversation, are mostly about knowing the building. Most American dining halls have a salad bar, a plain-rice or plain-pasta station, a bean or lentil option somewhere, and cereal. Campus dining services almost always publish allergen and ingredient information online, which is far more useful for fasting than the menu board, since it is where dairy in a sauce actually appears. Learn where the halal or vegan station is, because it will solve most of your problem on most days.

Do not make it a spectacle. Nobody at a table needs a briefing about why you are eating rice, and the answer to a direct question is one friendly sentence. The student who explains their fast to everyone has usually made it harder to keep.

6. The collisions nobody warns you about

The academic calendar and the church calendar were designed without reference to each other, and they collide in specific and predictable places. Knowing them in August is worth more than any amount of resolve in March.

  • Holy Week almost always lands during the final stretch of the spring semester and sometimes during exams. If you intend to attend the services, the work has to be done in advance; there is no version of that week with a free evening in it.
  • Pascha frequently falls outside the university’s spring break, and in many years does not coincide with the Western Easter that the academic calendar was built around. Plan travel early or plan to spend it at your local parish.
  • Nativity on 25 December or 7 January, depending on your parish. If you are on the old calendar, the university will be back in session and your family may be four states away.
  • Sunday morning against Saturday night is the real weekly test, and it is decided by what time you go to bed rather than by conviction.
  • Theophany, the Annunciation and other weekday feasts fall in the middle of teaching weeks. Some are worth missing a lecture for; ask rather than deciding alone.
  • Studying abroad: find the parish before you go, not after. In much of Europe and the Middle East there are more of them than you expect.

7. Boundaries in a building with no supervision

A residence hall removes almost every external constraint that shaped previous generations’ courtship, and it does so at exactly the age when people are least practised at setting their own. There is no point pretending this is a small matter or that intention alone handles it.

The workable approach is structural rather than moral, because willpower at one in the morning is not a plan. Decide in advance where an evening ends. Keep some of your time together in public places. Notice that a decision made in a library at four in the afternoon is a different kind of decision from one made in a dorm room at midnight, and arrange your life so that more of them happen in the first category.

Say your limits out loud and early, in daylight, and pay attention to the response. That reaction tells you more about a person in thirty seconds than a semester of conversation about theology. And if things have already gone further than you intended, the Orthodox answer is confession and continuing rather than concluding that you have disqualified yourself; the second reaction ends far more students’ church attendance than the first ever did.

8. If you are becoming Orthodox at university

A meaningful share of Orthodox converts in America first walk into a church as students, and doing it at university has a particular shape. You are near a parish, you have time of a kind you will never have again, and you are surrounded by people asking similar questions. You are also transient, which is the complication.

The transience matters because catechesis takes time and priests know that a student may leave in eighteen months. Be honest about your timeline from the first conversation. Most will begin anyway, and some will suggest a pace or a handover to a parish near home. What does not work is arriving in April and hoping to be received before graduation.

On dating during this period: be plain about where you are. “I have been attending since last year and I am a catechumen” is a complete and perfectly good sentence. And be careful of the specific trap of deciding about the Church and deciding about a person at the same time, in the same weeks, with the same emotions. They are separate decisions and they deserve to be made separately.

9. Graduating without losing it

The genuine danger point is not freshman year; it is the summer after graduation. The chapter is gone, friends scatter, the first job is somewhere you know nobody, and the community that carried you for four years evaporates in a fortnight. A very large number of people who practised diligently through university stop within a year of leaving it, and almost none of them decided to.

The countermeasure is unromantic. Before you move, find the parishes in the new city and pick one to visit in the first fortnight. Ask your campus chaplain or parish priest whether he knows anyone there — clergy networks are small and an introduction is worth more than a website. Then go, and go again, and introduce yourself, because the second visit is the one that turns a building into a parish.

The dating consequence is the same in reverse: the person you meet at twenty-four will mostly be met through a parish, a diocesan event or an app, and none of those work if you have not arrived anywhere. Landing properly is the prerequisite for everything else.

Set up your first semester in one afternoon

Do all four of these before classes start if you can, and in the first fortnight if you cannot. The whole thing takes an afternoon and it decides considerably more than an afternoon usually does.

  1. Step 1

    Map the parishes and the route

    Find every Orthodox parish within reasonable reach of campus and work out, concretely, how you would get to one on a Sunday morning without a car: which bus, what time, how long. Pick a first visit date and put it in the calendar before the semester starts.

  2. Step 2

    Find the students, wherever they are

    Check whether your campus has an Orthodox Christian Fellowship chapter and attend the first meeting regardless of your impression of it. If there is none, ask a local priest where students gather; an informal group of six is not worth less than a chartered one with a budget.

  3. Step 3

    Settle the fasting question with a priest

    Before the first fast of the year, ask a priest what is workable on your meal plan, your schedule and your health, and follow that rather than the strictest thing you can find online. Learn where the dining hall keeps beans, rice, salad and the vegan station, and find the published allergen information.

  4. Step 4

    Write the collisions into your calendar now

    Mark Holy Week, Pascha, Nativity and the major feasts against your academic calendar at the start of the term, and note which fall during exams or outside spring break. Plan travel and coursework around them in advance; nothing can be rearranged in the week itself.

Common questions

How do I find an Orthodox church near my university?

Search a canonical directory such as the Assembly of Bishops parish listing rather than a map application, then work out the actual route without a car before term starts. Visit in the first two or three weeks and introduce yourself to the priest as a student; parishes near universities are used to it and frequently arrange lifts.

What is Orthodox Christian Fellowship?

It is the official campus ministry of the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops, which means chapters are pan-Orthodox rather than tied to one jurisdiction. Chapters vary from thirty people with a chaplain to four people and a text thread. A good one gets students to services and feeds them; it is not a substitute for a parish.

Is it a bad idea to date someone in my campus Orthodox group?

It is common and it works, but the group is small enough that nothing about it stays private. Be discreet at the start, do not conduct it in front of everyone, and agree that if it ends neither of you stops coming. The usual casualty of a campus break-up is one person’s entire Orthodox social life.

How do I fast in a college dining hall?

Ask a priest what is workable on your meal plan and schedule and follow that rather than the strictest rule you can find. Learn where the salad bar, plain rice, beans and vegan station are, and use the published allergen information, which is where dairy hidden in sauces actually shows up.

What happens when Holy Week lands during exams?

It usually does, and there is no version of that week with a free evening in it. The only workable answer is to get the coursework done in advance. Mark Holy Week, Pascha and the major feasts against your academic calendar at the start of the term rather than discovering the collision in April.

Can I become Orthodox while I am at university?

Many people do. Be honest with the priest about your timeline from the first conversation, since catechesis takes time and he knows students move. Avoid deciding about the Church and about a person in the same weeks with the same emotions; they are separate decisions and deserve to be made separately.

Sources and further reading

Pastoral practice can vary by diocese and jurisdiction. For questions about your circumstances, speak with the priest responsible for your pastoral care.