In the Victorian era a married woman showed a symbol of maturity in herself and many respected her for this. However, the beginning of a relationship is certainly different than today. While researching, I noticed that in this era, relationships seemed to be the "old fashion" type of romance. Just like in today's society, a relationship begins in 3 stages if a courtship (courtship rules and Victorian era marriages). Starting as a mutual friendship and dating is the first phase. In Victorian times, at this stage, there would have been no physical contact; such as kissing, holding hands, or other sexual contact. Today's society shares some similarities when two people are just friends. On the other hand, the second phase of courtship is the engagement aspect, and the two different eras definitely show that this phase has very drastic differences. The Victorian era was also very strict about physical contact, just like in the first phase. Although this stage allows the couple to have some sort of physical contact such as holding hands, it is necessary for the couple to wait until after the wedding to have sex (courtship rules and Victorian era marriages). This is one of the main differences in each era. In today's society, it is barely known that a couple waits until marriage to sleep together. So even though today's era has improved very positively over the Victorian era, I believe it