wooing

Etymology

verb

1. present participle and gerund of woo
   A man giving a gift of roses is wooing a woman.

noun

1. A courting; the process by which somebody is wooed.
   She felt a little as she had used to feel when she sat by her now wedded husband in the same spot during his wooing, shutting her eyes to his defects of character, and regarding him only in his ideal presentation as lover. 1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, volume 1, London: James R. Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., page 36
   She was like a Beardsley Salome, he had said. And indeed she had the narrow eyes and the high cheekbone of that creature, and as nearly the sinuosity as is compatible with human symmetry. His wooing had been brief but incisive. 1922, Ben Travers, chapter 1, in A Cuckoo in the Nest
   The difference here is that the protagonists in this collection are, for the most part, at the end of their lives, and so the news of familial drama and divorce and the cocktail parties, barbecues and casual wooings of quotidian life in suburbia is given retrospectively, wistfully, presented in the larger context as memories of lost moments and lost opportunities. June 7, 2009, T. Coraghessan Boyle, “The Road Home”, in New York Times