As one well-versed in the modern courtship ritual, I believe that it can be used wisely to help carry out God's plan of married life for you. I question not that dating itself is positive, but rather the mindset of those who enter into the wild world of dating. With a sane approach dating can be a very good method of discerning the call to spend your remaining days on earth with a particular person.  The question is not what sort of fairytale wedding will eternally erase all my grief, but rather whether or not married life is my God-given vocation. Every good Catholic should spend the first several years of his or her adult life contemplating the question of a possible vocation to consecrated religious or single life.  For as St. Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians, "he who marries does well; and he who refrains from marriage will do better." (1 Corinthians 7.38) There is nothing more miserable in life than to dwell upon a religious vocation that never was and never will be once the ring is upon the finger.

Together with your discernment regarding state of life goes an attempt to uncover what sort of saint you might be if it weren't for your heaping pile of sins, emotional baggage and general bad habits. Jerry Seinfeld once put it best when he raves that he has found the perfect woman because she is just like he is and then a week later dumps her upon realizing how much he hates himself. Individuals tend to attract people who will be able to feed into their own dysfunctions. The most productive thing that anyone can do toward finding a good mate and living out a happy existence together is to ruthlessly uncover and rout out the infection of sin and weakness that keeps them from becoming whole and healed people rather than wounded leeches. 

Dating essentially should be no different from a close friendship except that there is a real element of discernment regarding God's call to deepen that friendship through marriage.  In a sense, dating should be much like the novitiate. There involves a certain level of commitment to the idea while there remains a distinct difference between those that are still discerning and those that have taken their final vows. Where it would not be "impatience" to begin to visit and acquaint yourself with various religious communities while discerning a religious vocation, it is similarly acceptable for a Christian to seek out and get to know people with whom they might like to spend their life.  The openness to God's will in any relationship involves a serious commitment to prayer as individuals and as a couple, detachment - God may give or take away at will, and complete honesty about yourself and about the other person. The thing to remember is that true love is not a honey flavoured walk in the clouds, but the desire to embrace a cold and lonely crucifixion for another.