Today’s guest post is by Bishop Bill. I recently read a very interesting article in Time Magazine about the LDS (and Jewish) dating scene. I have a particular interest in this as I have a daughter in her late 30s that was widowed last year due to cancer, and she lives in Utah County.
The article is partly a book review of Date-onomics, a book that breaks down dating trends by demographics. Not only is it harder to find a partner when the numbers are uneven; it radically changes behaviors between the sexes in ways that disadvantage the majority sex!
Highlights of the article:
- In Utah, there are 3 single women for 2 men (active LDS). The gender gap has grown from 52:48 female to male in 1990 to 60:40 currently.
- This has been caused by more men leaving the religion than women.
- The lopsided numbers encourage Mormon men to hold out for the perfect wife, “paradox of choice” I’m dating a 9.5, but I’m holding out for a 9.8.
- Studies have shown that women are more likely to be treated as sex objects whenever men are scarce.
- Salt Lake City residents also spent inordinate sums on beauty products—$2.2 million in 2006 on hair coloring and $6.9 million on cosmetics and skin care products, according to Forbes. By comparison, Oklahoma City, a city with a slightly larger population, spent $172,000 and $594,000, respectively.
- Mormon Matchmaker, an LDS dating site, has 3 times as many single women looking for a match than single men.
- Some interviewees observed that due to the dearth of eligible men, there is an increase in promiscuity in Mormon dating culture.
In short, it’s a buyer’s market in which men are the buyers and women are the commodities. So, in a church so obviously geared toward men, why are so many of them leaving? Ryan Cragun, a sociology professor at the University of Tampa (who also happens to be ex-LDS) considers it an unexpected byproduct of the growing importance of the mission in the life of Mormon men; faced with the choice to serve or not (at a young age when they may not be fully ready to commit), many have chosen to leave. The more pressure to serve, the more they feel obligated to leave altogether if they don’t meet this requirement (rather than remain and lose status in the community). From the article:
Contrary to popular belief, the majority of Mormon men do not go on missions, which typically entail a mix of community service and proselytizing. Mormon men are being asked to serve missions at precisely the time in their lives—late teens and early twenties—when sociologists say men are most susceptible to dropping out of organized religion.
Another problem for single women in the LDS church is that LDS men are delaying marriage more than ever, but they still want the option to have many children–which means their same age female peers are less desirable marriage partners due to fewer remaining years of fertility.
So, aside from boob jobs, what can LDS women do to deal with the new reality? Options seem limited.
- Marry non-LDS men
- Freeze their eggs (the overwhelming advice in the Jewish community)
The article recommends a few things:
- Making missions optional for both men & women, lowering the pressure to serve that drives many men out of the church.
- Giving women more to do in the church rather than just motherhood so that they don’t feel like utter failures if they don’t marry.
Implied:
- Reduce the pressure to marry within the faith.
Clearly, nobody’s clamoring to bring back polygamy. What do you suggest?
- What would you tell your adult daughter?
- What would you do if you were a single LDS woman facing these odds?
Discuss.
I married a good man who shares my values-he converted before we married, and that worked out for us.
But my poor kids-son who fits your description precisely who at 21 is deeply damaged by the whole mission thing and has lost his faith and community as a consequence. Daughter who married out but is a very spiritually motivated person and can’t share her deepest self with her husband. Very sick other daughter who doesn’t look like Marie Osmond. Grandchildren-none.
I’m all out of ideas and feel very torn between my children’s anguish and the temple. I want to be where they are.
“radically changes behaviors between the sexes in ways that disadvantage the minority sex!”
that’s majority, surely?
My advice to my kids would be marry someone you want to be with for eternity, and who is a good fit for you (irrespective of church membership, mission etc). Read somewhere recently about member women ‘marrying down’ in order to get a temple marriage, and was horrified. Completely illogical. You’d rather tie yourself to someone now who isn’t a good fit, potentially forever, than marry a non-member who, religion aside, is in all other ways much better suited to you? I’m heartsick at the thought people are doing this to themselves…
I think Hedge makes a good point: “settling” now and hoping that eternity will fix things, after who-knows-how-long of mortal life marked by at best, boredom, and at worst, misery and abuse, is a recipe for disaster. More victims of superficial Kimballism and that truncated quote, “. . . any good man and any good woman can have happiness and a successful marriage if both are willing to pay the price” (Ensign, March 1977). President Kimball’s advice was actually much better than that, but you have to read the whole thing.
I lucked out; I found my missionary and my love, got divine confirmation, and am two weeks away from the 28th anniversary of my temple wedding. But in retrospect, knowing what I now know, I would rather have married the right woman outside the temple and taken my chances with God’s mercy and love than married the wrong one inside the temple and counted on my own negligible charm and our chances of suddenly discovering that we really were perfect mates. I can’t imagine anything more sad than to look back on life at something like my current age or later, let’s say 50+, and regret having “settled.” There are no “do-overs.”
The Renlund’s have an unmarried daughter, their only child. I live in an area where women are virtually non existent, so I am at a loss as to what to do. Marry outside my faith? I don’t know.
My heart goes out to your daughter. I almost hold back as I worry she might be reading this. But for a sister that has been sealed and is no longer married, the playing field can be even worse as there are men that “must be able to be sealed” or they won’t consider the person as a marriage candidate. So sad.
Outside the moridor I see somewhat the same breakdown of men and women. I know back a few decades when I was in a singles ward I was shocked at some of the men there that were in their upper 20’s. There were quite a few that left me puzzled as they were sharp dressers, financially doing VERY well, and seemed like their faces were not disfigured. I couldn’t figure out why they were not snatched up. I mentioned this to my sister that would attend during the summer when she was back from Ricks (yes – I am THAT old). She said, “Well you do know they are gay.” So if you through that into the mix, the odds are even a few % points worse for women.
I just can’t imagine a sister “settling” for a mate that they know will not be attracted to them. It breaks my heart to think there are many that have done this in the name of “following the path.” I had better stop and get to work before I start ranting.
It is an interesting article and as a guy who spent a lot of years in the singles wards myself (11 wonderful years), I do feel for my sisters. I always felt and still do feel that they had it tougher. That said, as someone who was in the Mormon singles scene when the article came out I’m not sure I’m persuaded that today’s Mormons are any more “promiscuous” than yesterday’s Mormons. Jana Riess has been doing research on millennial Mormons. Riess acknowledges the dating imbalance, but her data showed two interesting things. First, Mormon millennials are NOT delaying marriage (so the dude not committing to a 9.5 holding out for a 9.8 is not happening as frequently as the article paints it.) http://religionnews.com/2017/05/24/10-things-to-know-about-millennial-mormons/. Two, Riess found no evidence that Mormons (or Mormons in Utah) get plastic surgery at any higher rates than average. http://religionnews.com/2017/03/17/mormon-women-have-more-cosmetic-surgery-or-not/.
Again, this does not mean that being single and being a woman in the church is not difficult. It absolutely is and for more reasons than the article mentions (less leadership opportunities than men, a culture that talks about the late 20’s and early 30’s and beyond as times in which women “may have to get an education and a career if you are not blessed with a spouse and children” and this is always said in very sad, sad tones rather than exciting tones) so, I am not trying to say that my single sisters don’t have it hard, they do! The church could do a lot of wonderful things to alleviate their burdens (namely, treat them like adults and stop insinuating how sad they should be they aren’t married with three kids by 25) but I also think that the date-o-nomics folks are over blowing this.
Nice post Bishop Bill. Another unfortunate problem that I have witnessed is women “succeeding” their way out of the dating market. I spent most of my mission in large DC singles wards. There were hundreds of women in these wards that fit into that “why is she still single?” group. They were smart, kind, successful, beautiful, faithful. Unfortunately it was the successful that made it harder for them to marry inside the faith. They were lawyers or lobbyists or business women. Over and over again the women in the ward who got married were the 19 year old nannies from Provo (they were lovely people too) often to the 30 year old male lawyers, lobbyists, and businessmen. Also those wards were like a fashion show. Every beautiful woman trying to get noticed by the sort of average men. It was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen. They women in the ward often said that they’d been told multiple times by Mormon men that they were looking for a woman who would stay home and clean the house and take care of the kids. High powered career women (even the ones who were willing to quit when the kids came along) were a turn off. It was so sad.
As to your questions, I do have a sister who is starting to feel too old to get married (she’s only 26 but we live in Utah so that seems really old here.) She is already planning that she won’t marry a Mormon. I have also given her the advice that she should start to be happy with the idea of remaining single. She’s made a lot of choices in her life with the anticipation of marriage and children but she says that lately it has become freeing to realize that she can build a happy life the way she wants it without those things. My other piece of advice for her was to leave Utah. There tends to be a bit of a Mormon or Anti-Mormon vibe here so it is often hard to find a nonmember who is supportive of Mormon beliefs and practices.
For LDS women, it’s usually NOT a question of “settling.” Many Mormon women have few/no prospects. It’s a choice between remaining single and celibate (likely for life) or marrying the man who actually proposes.
It’s apparently even worse for single senior women, a secular dating site said there is one 52 year old women for every 52 year old man that wants to date, by age 72 there are four women for each man giving rise to the cougar phenomenon among seniors. So what must it be like for LDS senior women? Also there are reports from LDS women of LDS men who won’t date women who are sealed because they’re looking forward to polygamy in the next life!
I’m with EBK. There’s definitely a disadvantage, likely at any age, if you are a successful (as in, outside the home successful) Mormon woman. I’m sorry, but most Mormon men I know are incredibly insecure about their wives’ successes outside the home. There are a few couples in my ward where the wife is obviously more successful from a career standpoint than the husband, but that’s quite rare, at least in my experience.
Also, speaking as someone who was LDS and single for a bit in his 40s, I noticed that most of the women I dated expressed concern about the fact that they’d only get asked out by men who were a good twenty years older than they were. That seems to be the thing that happens across age demographics.
And on another note, speaking especially regarding people who had been previously married in the temple, I noticed, among both genders, a real difficulty in moving on from a previous temple marriage. We put so much emphasis on it that not only do a lot of decisions about the initial marriage end up being unhealthy (as has already been stated), but also the sense of loss and brokenness after “failing” at an eternal marriage make it extremely unlikely that most middle aged LDS singles are really as ready to find a new partner as they think they are. I just remember meeting a lot of broken people at these singles mixers who wanted more badly to talk about the loss of their marriage than to get to know someone new. When someone has lost an eternal family, telling them to just “move on” isn’t the most helpful thing. The wounds run very deep.
What’s the solution? Take the pressure off marriage like we should take the pressure of missionary service. Lighten up on the abstinence part of the law of chastity, lighten up on the implication that if you marry a non-member, you’re a second class Mormon citizen, and teach MORE things like the importance of companionship and love and how relationships, even if they aren’t sealed/ratified by the temple, are still sacred and important and that God will honor them on the other side of the veil. It’s astonishing to me (though I suppose by this point it shouldn’t be) how self-sabotaging we are as a people. We certainly seem quite adept at short-circuiting our own happiness by embracing teachings that are often contrary to that happiness.
Bill, I am sorry to hear about the tragedy in your family, what a terrible ordeal for your daughter.
I think this is a situation where there is a misalignment between the interests of the Church and the interests of the members. The Church is motivated to maximize the number of its members who marry each other in the temple, creating multi-generational Mormon families, because those are the families most likely to provide long lives of service in the Church and raise future generations of Mormons. If they were to make it more socially acceptable for women to date and marry outside the faith, or if they provided greater support and acceptance to part-member families, that could lead to weakening social expectations of temple marriage and multi-generational Mormon families (which the leadership has recently said is a focus of the institution). An individual member may increase their chances at marrying and having a family by expanding their search for a mate outside the faith, but to do so they have to go against years of social conditioning and religious teaching about the importance of temple marriage and eternal families.
In Utah, I suspect there is also a demographic mismatch among the non-Mormon and ex-Mormon crowd, where the men likely outnumber the women. I wonder how that plays out in their dating practices.
I like the suggestions in the article. I would like to see the Church be more welcoming and supportive of part-member families. This could be done by respecting rather than subverting the role of the non-member parent, treating the member parent like a first class citizen, adopting more universalist language, encouraging part-member families to make compromises regarding the level of religious devotion and teaching of religious principles to children, and not aggressively seeking to convert the non-member parent.
> in a church so obviously geared toward men
This is where you’re wrong. Whatever the LDS church used to be, today, no, it does not cater to men. It caters to women. In a big way. Men leaving has very little to do with missionary service.
Thank you to everyone for the thoughtful and insightful comments. The comment thread for this post reminds me of a book club event I attended where we all read comedian Aziz Ansari’s book Modern Romance. I recommend this book, which offers much more than punchlines, but a disclaimer that it is thoroughly secular (read R-rated).
In keeping with the above post’s Sisters focus, I’ll offer LDS women my perspective on secular dating sites Match and OKCupid. I would shy away from calling either of them buyer’s markets for anyone. Women on the sites are barraged with messages from men, some of those indecent to say the least. On the flip side, men find themselves largely ignored — even well-intentioned men who thoughtfully review women’s profiles and send personalized messages to demonstrate sincere interest. It tends to be a frustrating environment for everyone. That being said, dating sites can result in success if one is careful and patient. I speak as a longtime inactive Mormon and can’t speak to LDS dating sites.
For what it’s worth: some people experience satisfaction remaining single into their late 20s and even 30s, feeling free to chart their own course, etc. I did. But to be blunt, being single in my early 40s routinely sucks. That may not be everyone’s experience, but it’s been mine. The enjoyment of being unattached early in your career may not remain constant when you begin to feel the effects of aging. I certainly don’t think remaining single is a sin or in and of itself a reason to be ashamed, just understand that it gets harder.
Best wishes to any who are really discouraged. I know the feeling.
I remember the TIME article. I was one of those “leftover” single Mormon women. I can’t emphasize enough how devastating it was for me to go my whole life without without companionship or sex or the possibility of children. And the dating scene was a nightmare.
I would be interested in a research study that looks at correlations between singleness and depression, anxiety, eating disorders, etc. for LDS single women.
Anecdotally, I can say that among my single member friends (all female), one rushed into a disastrous first marriage, then rushed into a disastrous second marriage. Another settled for a divorced Mormon guy with three kids and bad credit, who had ignored the fact that a drug lab was being run out of his basement. I left the Church (and discovered several other single women who did the same). One married a guy several years younger (they are happy). The rest remained single, for better or worse.
All of us had diagnosable depression during those single years.
I don’t know what the answer is but I still feel a physical relief when I think about how I managed to escape that toxic environment.
I know many divorced or widowed single LDS women have faced the problem that men in the church won’t marry them because they are already sealed. That’s a serious problem that needs to be addressed, and perhaps it could be if anyone were actually thinking about how these sexist policies affect women.
The only way to improve the demographic problem is to increase the pool of eligible men. Women can’t win in this scenario. The ones with the most to lose always lose. Therefore, LDS single women need to open their field to non-LDS men. A huge problem with this is that those who share their moral values are unlikely to marry a Mormon, and those who don’t are unlikely to marry them without sleeping with them or living together first.
There is nothing less attractive than a man who is insecure about a successful wife. As Jane Austen said “Men of sense do not want silly wives.” And as a former HR manager I used to know said of her second husband, “You don’t want a wife. You want a maid who f**ks.”
Joel, I think this is an excellent insight:
“I think this is a situation where there is a misalignment between the interests of the Church and the interests of the members.”
I hadn’t thought about it this way before, but I think you’re spot on. Marrying in the Church is best for the Church. Opening up to marrying outside it may be best for lots of members, even if not for the Church.
I’d go with option number 1: Marry non-LDS men. Anything else is unsustainable. The shortage of men is a perception problem; there are plenty of men unless you limit yourself the small subset of active LDS single men. This is also the healthiest option for the individual since it will be much more likely to marry someone who is compatible.
As to Cragun’s reasoning that the ratio has become more skewed because of mission expectations, I would’t say he’s wrong, but I’d add that RM men are also leaving the church in large numbers. As an exmormon RM myself who left when still single, I can attest that there is the reverse ratio in exmormons, but that’s not really a problem because there are plenty of women out there when you no longer limit yourself to small subsets.
EBK brings up a major problem with “older” LDS singles — mismatched expectations. So many single women have made a good life for themselves, and they are looking for an equal partner. But in my experience, most LDS men in the same boat are looking for a cute little woman to cook, clean and serve. Oh, and support them in THEIR career. I wasn’t at all surprised when I recently heard that “sologamy” is now becoming a trend with women in the U.S.
Well the dispassionate logical side of me says we could make the ration close to 1:1 would be to be reduce the number of active Mormon women. Problem solved. But it looks like that is being tried (see https://wheatandtares.org/2017/05/30/improving-the-status-of-women-in-the-church/ ) and that doesn’t seem to be working! (I am being more sarcastic than sexist).
As a single active LDS woman I can relate to this discussion. I agree that the dearth of eligible LDS men skews dating behaviour in horrible ways. I have been treated pretty shabbily by some guys in the church. It’s supply and demand. For example I dated a guy who would regularly show up two or three hours late, so late that we would not be able to go ahead with our plans, and never have a reason. But if I kept him waiting for ten minutes he would get very upset. How do you set boundaries in dating when you know there are fifty other women who will take your place? And he knows it too.
Many people here have suggested dating and marrying outside the church. This is easier said than done. It assumes that non-LDS men want to date and marry an active LDS woman. This has not been my experience. First of all, men outside the church expect to sleep with you/live with you before marriage. And let’s not forget that there is competition for men outside the church too. If you won’t, then others will. It’s a competitive world.
And even when I have met and dated non-members who respect my beliefs, they just flat out don’t believe me when I tell them that I would marry outside the church. They think I will dump them for an LDS guy or else marry them and then be dissatisfied for the rest of my life because I didn’t get a temple marriage. I think it might be different if I wasn’t active. But my very activity in the church sends a message that I’m in agreement with the culture. (This is not necessarily true.)
FWIW, I think I could be very happy married to someone who was not in the church as long as we were compatible. Having said that, the gospel (as opposed to the church) is a commitment that impacts many areas of life. Anyone who married me would have to deal with that. Maybe they’re just not up for it.
I would also like to see the church ease up on its rhetoric around marriage, especially temple marriage. I agree with the person who said that the church is putting the needs of the institution ahead of the needs of the members. I wish it were not so, but it is what it is.
I have one son (almost 19) who recently left for his mission. One more son will be old enough next year . The TREMENDOUS pressure for them to serve is awful. All of their friends are really good boys, and have been their whole life. I’ve known them and love them a long time. They are apprehensive about a two year commitment and the long list of can’t-dos and it turns them away from having a great experience. Some are not serving because of this anxiety. I’ve seen very capable men come home early and because of the shame, the stigma, the inadequacy that they feel, their whole life they feel second-class. This is unacceptable.
What if we treated members who accept callings in the church the same way? Missionaries are not perfect and neither are members who accept callings but need to be released because of a special circumstance? The parable of the vineyard shows clearly that the Lord is grateful for any labor performed, NOT the absolute length of time. It is the willing heart that matters to the Lord.
We profess to cherish strong family ties, yet we limit (to a cult-extent) phone calls home. Three or four calls is not enough for many missionaries. Let them call home when they feel the need. It drives me crazy to “sacrifice” unnecessarily. Give them more autonomy. Let them serve as long as they can. What does it matter to the Lord if one serves one year, 18 months, or two years? Give them the option to extend– and many may choose to do so. I think a willing heart and a little control over one’s mission would greatly bless the lives of many men. It’s not worth it to have a high bar that only a few can attain and it makes the others feel so unworthy and unloved and not needed–therefore they eventually leave.
The comments handle this very serious subject in a very superficial manner. No general authority, lesson manual, seminary lesson or Scripture implies that the Lord will honor a marriage that has not been ratified in the temple. To suggest that this is such a minor thing and not a serious problem is ridiculous The answer is not just”marry out of the temple and hope the Lord will honor your non-temple marriage after you are dead.”
To Ziff and Joel: Yes, I think that’s exactly it. It’s sad to say, but it’s pretty clear that the church considers the emotional and mental well-being of members as secondary and the growth of the church regardless of the emotional and psychological costs as primary. It’s a shame that more members can’t see this.
My uncle and aunt were LDS. After she died in a car crash he left the faith. When I was a teenager he half heartedly tried to convert me to LDS and after doing a little research on the doctrine I declined. They had two sons and a daughter. One son is dead (suicide in his early 20s, after a mission) and the others left the faith, the daughter after an abusive LDS marriage and a bad divorce. The other son is still married last I heard but it’s rocky.
I have always felt spectacularly unwelcome due to the LDS hostility toward gay people, especially Proposition 8, and have been told that I am apostate, although I was never a member of the LDS. Secular media paints the LDS as intolerant fanatics. From my limited experience through extended family, I have to agree.
I am amazed that anyone outside LDS would consider marrying someone inside.
Perhaps this is one of those ‘take the speck out of your own eye’ things. But my reaction to this article is, “Good! A faith that doesn’t care for its members should lose membership and ultimately cease to exist.”
Part of the reason for not enough YSA men, and men leaving the church may be because of mission regulations. Doesn’t every ward and stake have several boys who could have served but did not? They are left feeling like they will never measure up to the “obedient” missionaries. They are stigmatized as not completely faithful (even if they had no worthiness issues). What a horrible undue burden for life for these wonderful young men.
Missions are life changing, and serving others to bring souls to Christ is a wonderful blessing. But when we set parameters that seem impossible to some worthy young men, well- they just forego the opportunity. Church membership for them declines because they see themselves as “less.”
It’s sad to see a boy have such a wrestle with this. It’s our own church that makes them feel if they don’t go on a mission then they are less worthy of a man!
Why can’t we make missions more accommodating? What does the Lord care if the mission lengths are reduced (1 year, 18 months, 2 years?) Doesn’t the parable of the vineyard teach that it is not the length of time laboring, but that they do come and labor?
Sister missionaries have surpassed the number of elder missionaries. Is it because the mission duration is shorter?
Let them call home when they want. Let them email whenever they feel like emailing. Some prospective missionaries need this resource, others do not. But why not remove the unnecessary “sacrifices” which feel more like forced cult behavior instead of the blessing of agency and choice?
I’m 50, married to a non member. At BYU I was told more than once in my singles wards by bishopric members (both before and after graduation) men my age were intimidated by women like me, and it was implied to tone down assertiveness, etc. if I were to find a man.
Well, I went on to grad school and met my husband who is tolerant/supportive of our children being raised in the church.
It is hard being married to a non member but I think if we didn’t have kids it would be easier. Alllll the pressure to raise children in faith is on me. And if they leave it’s BC they were raised in a part member family, etc.
Hindsight being what it is, I would’ve done things differently in how I’ve raised my children.
The grass is always greener, I suppose. Singlehood for women has one set of problems. Married to a nonmember can have a very different set.
My sister who is late 30s never married I always tell to date non LDS men.
I’m at an age now that if my husband died, I would try to date/marry again and I would choose someone who made me happy, first. But, I would like to be in the temple at some point holding a man’s hand other than my dad’s, too.
Unrelated nuggets:
It is better to wish you were married than to wish you were not. (Quote from a thrice divorced now single LDS woman physician.)
Single women may go through life without marital companionship but they don’t have to remain childless. They can undergo artificial insemination. Less emotional damage in the long run than being divorced with children. Which is the expected outcome if you marry down.
My wife says she has 3 children; a daughter, a son and a husband. Which one do you think gives her the most trouble?
I have to say that I am a victim of a wife who married down. Makes it really hard to exercise priesthood control over her and her children who are a lot like her.
Too many Mormon guys can’t manage a wife. What they really need is a nanny, with certain liberties.
What would I do if I was a single LDS woman facing these odds? I’m in this situation, and I wish I could tell my younger self to spend more time with and getting to know men outside the LDS faith. It’s not like I had lines outside my door, but there are definitely opportunities I missed because I was set on marrying in the temple and was open about my faith and desires. I know I put that vibe out there, and the non-Mormon men knew it. Now, single and in my late 30s, I mourn the good, quality men I was taught to believe I was too good for.
I stopped going to church a couple years ago as I began to feel more out of place and increasingly infantilized, even pitied, by the people there. I have a wonderful, successful career. I’ve been able to travel the world, which is one of my passions. I have a beautiful, fulfilling life. However, it’s been difficult making a transition from feeling like a failure to knowing I have value outside the confines of LDS expectations, mostly because it’s hard realizing I gave and sacrificed so much of myself and my youth for unrealized promises, and I’m at an age where most good men seem to already be taken, so it’s hard to start over.
This aspect of Mormon culture is toxic for many of us, but we’re expected to smile and serve and have faith that everything will be okay. If only it were that clear-cut and easy.
LH-
I, too, am one of those “leftover women” the article focused on. I remember reading this article when it first came out and sobbing. Seeing the very things I had experienced reflected in other places unleashed an emotional response I wasn’t expecting. It was like that calm feeling after you heave your guts out and you realize that the food poisoning is almost over.
In a lot of ways, this experience was a big part of my early faith transition. As Ziff and Joel mentioned, there was a clear clash between what’s best for the church and what’s best for me. Dating outside the church was scary because it meant that premarital sex was going to be an issue, and it was increasingly difficult to believe that church leadership had inspiration pertaining to me or my situation. I decided to try dating non-Mormon men, but in practice I haven’t actually done so. I have to learn a whole new set of social norms and rituals and I haven’t made much progress yet. But I am much happier with myself and my life now that I’ve freed myself from the psychological torture that is LDS dating.
Why is my comment from yesterday being held in moderation?
Elizabeth-
Thanks for responding. I know exactly what you mean about being afraid to venture out into the world of non-Mormon dating. I am four years out of the Church and I am still working on that (my situation is a little more complicated after an abusive relationship I had at BYU that I am still recovering from). However, most of my post-Mormon female friends found great partners relatively easily and quickly. I think the key to navigating sexual expectations while dating is figuring out what you’re comfortable with and communicating that to potential partners. Self-awareness and the ability to communicate will be your most valuable assets in dating and relationships.
I just recently moved to Seattle (from Provo), where it’s not abnormal to be single in your thirties (or at all, really), and I have to say, living in a fun, progressive city is really helping me heal from the trauma that is the Mormon dating scene as an “older” single. For the first time in years, I am excited to date and meet new people and I expect to be ready soon. So, while not everyone can move, I do think it’s helpful to surround yourself with a sex positive community and people who care about women’s issues, including women’s sexuality. Having access to resources and support can make all the difference in safely exploring your sexuality.
I wish you the best as you continue to transition.
Like Elizabeth says, the dating crisis, for many, ends up being related in some way to a generalized faith crisis for many – maybe my own kids.
They’re choosing to listen to their inner voice, to value themselves and this life over the institution and what it says about eternity. Sounds simple, but it’s been complicated, heartbreaking, and freeing.
A friend they grew up with married young in the temple and then divorced her very unsuitable spouse. (He’s remarried in the temple.) She spent several years with a hopeful dust-yourself-off attitude toward continued LDS dating. She winced, but accepted the temple rules that say she had to remain sealed to this guy. Until one day, she was done with it all. It’s hard to fault her.
Some singles will have church be very very important to them, and the mate they are looking for. Standards, temple, raising kids, all of that influenced by what they value.
Some put that in perspective of liking the church stuff, but more focused on a person they want to be with all the time and share life with.
I agree with Hedgehog:
“My advice to my kids would be marry someone you want to be with for eternity, and who is a good fit for you ”
And for some…that “good fit” is the mormon stuff they value and they can’t just turn off in their brains…it is what they want and are willing to wait for it.
Others are willing to marry outside the faith to find the best personal fit, and make religion something they figure out together, like other things they may differ on in life, like how to manage money, hobbies, or friends.
That’s all a part of dating. Finding out about yourself as you find out about others.
My advice to my daughter or anyone that age…be your best self and be happy. Find out how to be happy on your own, and good things come to you. You are not defined by your partner, you look for a partner to compliment you.
The whole “crisis” for mormons, Jews, or Utah or anything is NOT their problem to fix. They live their life and make the most of it and find peace and happiness and fulfillment as the person they are.
All the other statistics and social trends are just descriptive and statistics…which just cloud the issue for an individual. The individual should be comfortable in their own skin…as they are. And make the most of it and live in the present.
I think happy people attract good things to come to them. That’s what I would have them focus on.
Response to the idea that the church is interested in building multi-generational families more than meeting the needs of a larger membership audience. That maybe their agenda, but does it make sense?
First, the zeal of new members has been one of the strengths of the LDS faith for much of its history. It would seem most unwise to abandon that strategy during a time of crisis. Our missionary department has never had more resources and done so poorly with them. They need to stop making excuses and repent and reform their ways. Teach a true gospel, not something that almost any informed person will not accept.
After a few generations the faith gets diluted down and many descendants leave and are related close enough to damage belief in others in the family. Those who stay grow clannish and judgmental. Every member is a missionary and when ¾ of the members leave, that still holds true; we are left with a huge number of negative missionaries out in the community and cold shoulders within it. The alleged emphasis on multi-generational families is a plan to fail and so wrong-headed when considering the gospel taught by Jesus Christ. If this strategy is being followed, then we are being led astray (again).
What makes sense to me is to:
1. Do whatever it takes to get as many young men on missions as there are women who want to marry them. No more excuses. We need to change the mission experience in ways to make it far more attractive for young people. (More service, more independence, less control).
2. When that doesn’t work, we need to create a climate where women are also encouraged to find decent non-LDS guys to marry and establish good homes (and by implication decent LDS guys who didn’t serve missions- currently an oxymoron). My guestimate is that would be at least as large as the first group. This needs to start at age 12 not 30.
3. An unintended side effect of #2 might be that fewer guys go on missions if the advantage of 2 girls for every boy evaporates. But it won’t matter if we are sincere about doing #2, except we will see a reduction of an already ineffective missionary force.
4. Then we are going to have to establish wards where non-LDS spouses feel welcome, comfortable, accepted as full-fledge parents. They don’t even have to believe or join (although that helps), just allow their children to attend and be given a chance to embrace the faith.
5. Then we need appealing youth programs that retain the children and youth of the active parents, and youth of less active parents to whatever degree, and youth especially of the part-member families, and even draw youth in without parental support. We pay lip service to this plan but how is it working, eh? Not well.
The fact that we are even having this discussion demonstrates that we are not doing these steps above, at least well enough across broad segments of the church. A thought experiment: imagine yourself as a decent but disbelieving parent with a believing spouse and children in your ward. How are you treated? How do the messages and activities support your children growing up in a way pleasing to you and how do they undermine you? Is there any middle ground? Too much of what we teach is discomforting to children of less- active or interdenominational parents and obnoxious to non-members.
Come unto me all (All means All) ye who are heavy laden and I will give you rest… and a chance for a decent marriage, if desired.
Great thoughts Mike!
The advice you should tell these girls…..is to get married! There are PLENTY of great lds guys who are denied the blessings of marriage because women use the “aren’t enough men to go around” crutch to reject anyone who isn’t an RM/born in church/underwear model, because the en will just get blamed in the end…..and articles like this just give them more fuel.
It’s no wonder so many of my brothers leave. I’m 32, active in the church, attend the temple weekly, have 100s of family history names done, served in all my past callings (wml, ym president, executive secretary), logged hundreds of hours with the missionaries, waiting for marriage (again, well into my 30s), work full time, parented about half the kids in my old ward, and it means absolutely ZERO in the church. haven’t had a chance to date an lds girl in years, despite the “odds being in my favour”.
I’m not special either, there are many guys other there equal or better…..the difference is most of them have left cause non-member girls snap them up when they get the chance (THAT is why there’s a shortage of men. The “if you didn’t wear a nametag you aren’t worth anything” mentality). good moral family men with careers aren’t common out there…the times I was open to dating out of the church I was dating WAY out of my league…but it’s hard to give up a temple marriage when you want it so bad. Seeing articles like this tho, I wonder if I may have been set up to fail all along
Isaiah 4:1
Just sayin’
Already in this day about two women wish to take hold of one man… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSS5xujeRaY
Imagine a thought experiment that oversimplifies but models our current singles crisis. Assume that it is possible to sort all of the young adult men and women along a one dimensional continuum according to a summation of overall attractiveness or desirability for marriage. And for convenience they are sorted into 8 numbered bins or classes of equal size, class 8 being the most desirable, down to class 1 being the least desirable. Assume that men make choices most advantageous to themselves and they have the initiative. Assume no plural marriage. And further assume that there are two girls for every boy. What does this oversimplified model look like?
1. Class 8 women marry class 8 and class 7 men. Some of the women marry down a class, which is probably acceptable for most.
2. Class 7 women marry class 6 and class 5 men. Every woman in this second highest class marries down and some by 2 classes which is quite a bit. Clearly above average women are marrying barely above average men.
3. Class 6 women marry class 4 and class 3 men. Every woman in this class marries down by an even greater difference. Above average women are marrying below average men.
4. Class 5 women marry class 2 and class 1 men, the losers and bozos who probably don’t merit marriage at all. Women who are somewhat above average are marrying the very bottom of the barrel and are leap frogging down across half the population.
5. Class 4, 3, 2, and 1 women do not marry at all.
Problems:
1. As discussed above, obviously half don’t marry. But that isn’t all.
2. Of those who do marry, too many marry too far down. If you are not right at the top of the social ladder then you need to be willing to make serious compromises. And doing things to better yourself career-wise while coming to grips with your fate might interfere with top notch status.
3. This is paradoxical but I think true (personal experience). These guys (like I was ) in class 2 and 1 won’t admit to themselves that they are down there. They see class 4 men marry class 6 women, etc. and wish to do the same. If insecure enough they want to stretch it even further and go for class 7 or even class 8 women. (Class 8 women receive half the offers for a first date in a singles ward demonstrating this aspect of the problem). So these bozos have elevated false expectations and if not lucky don’t marry at all. And this cultivation of false expectations is not limited to the bottom of the barrel, it might filter further up through the ranks to a degree. Many of the class 5 women, above average, find themselves effectively in the lower half and can’t find anyone to marry because so many men don’t marry even in this severely tilted playing field.
This meat-market model is flawed, a gross over simplification. But doesn’t it accurately demonstrate what we see and experience in the single’s crisis?
Reading these responses got me to thinking about a basic assumption that might be wrong. I believed and it is asserted by many that an LDS mission is a great preparation for temple marriage.
The missionary has to repent of any wickedness and live close to the spirit. The missionary leaves home and grows in maturity and experience. The missionary lives in a close relationship with on average about a dozen companions, none or whom they select, and they have to learn to get along. So it must be easy, relatively, to select a nice girl and marry her and live happily ever after. But is it true, missions are good marriage preparation?
Cracks:
The numbers game is a serious problem. We tell all boys to serve a mission and perhaps 1/3 do. We tell all girls to marry a return missionary and about 2/3 believe it. The gender ration in the singles ward might be almost as bad as 2 girls for every boy. Raising the bar made this worse.
The most obvious feature of mission life is the hierarchy. The Zone Lords and District Lords; special agents of the semi-divine Mission President in your face , always. They rule your life. You must comply and do as you are told or face lectures, shaming, transfers, less desirable places and companions and at worst, sent home for a lifetime of disgrace. In mission fields in foreign lands the language fluency automatically gives the senior companion a huge advantage and the status of the junior companion is not even close to that of the senior companion. What kind of marital relationship does this extremely authoritarian situation model, especially for those who like it or thrive in it?
Perhaps women of previous generations were content to be junior companion for life but that is changing. If a young guy has spent a year being a senior companion or higher, he might not get it when it comes to finding a wife who has not spent a year in such a system and desires true equality. Her efforts to negotiate an equal partnership will come across wrong and he won’t like that. He won’t even waste time dating such women. (“Don’t do it if it doesn’t lead to baptism,” or temple marriage).
Missionaries are promised blessings if they serve. Some imagine specific the blessings, such as the claim that the more doors you knock and the more converts you dunk, the hotter will be your future wife. Missionaries are prone to comparisons and only one thing really counts; baptisms or perceived spirituality if the former is low. It is only a small step to see all girls as easily compared on a single scale such as weight, or beauty, or spirituality. And then to hold out for only the very best on this single scale. (One young woman complained that status in the singles ward could be determined with a bathroom scale). The RMs hold themselves to no such standard.
The missionary is not dating for 2 years. To the degree dating requires a specific skill set, he is not polishing them. To the degree the conversion process is dissimilar to the courtship process, the missionary is getting rusty at it or even developing counter-productive tendencies and habits.
Pre-mission social cloistering to avoid unchastity further hampers the development of dating skills. Joint activities only once a month and double chaperones to facilitate making it to mission age virtuous might not encourage the development of these skills. (For amusement, I rarely read these LDS advice sites and I wonder, are young people these days that fragile and clueless?)
How many missionaries serve in places where they have exaggerated social status just because they are Americans? I know decades ago in Japan many young girls would marry any American guy. Out of about 200 fellow missionaries I recall about 5-6 who married Japanese girls. I dated 3 beautiful Japanese girls after coming home. This required virtually no social skills because these girls would put up with almost anything. Many of these marriages probably worked out and some quite well. (I do know of one woman who served a mission in South America and married a guy from there and raised her family there). This practice does siphon off a few more eligible guys of variable desirability.
An interesting thought experiment: What if humans had no sexual drive. What if they thought that people often lived together in family social structures and the biological processes of reproduction were entirely clinical, and children generally did better with two parents of opposite genders. Would people get married if they were not partially driven to it by lust directed in acceptable avenues? If we severely and effectively inhibit sexual drive for the first decade after its appearance to insure worthy missionaries, is it any wonder that we have a courtship crisis? (Now that Elder Packer has gone to his glory, perhaps it is time to re-institute youth activities like kissing games and swimming parties and get those little factories started going again.)
Darker thoughts: Missionaries don’t actually repent, they just learn to lie about their wickedness. They gain little life experience in the mission field because it is such a Mormon bubble, like a 2 year long EFY. The companion relationships are shallow, immature, phony, at best like sibling relationships and not that useful in marriage at all.
Bottom line you might actually do better marrying someone else besides a returned Mormon missionary.
Mike, I appreciate your thoughts on how a mission might not necessarily be preparing men to be the best marriage partners. Anecdotally, I married an RM who had been DL and ZL. He was charming to everyone he met in public and abusive in private, but the abuse didn’t start until after we were married. It didn’t help that I married at 19, having followed in the footsteps of my mother, and buying into the heavy and repeated teaching in YW that a girl of marrying age should never turn down a decent marriage offer (because she could easily miss her chance and thus be a ministering angel forever). I naively thought marrying such a successful missionary, who was so well-loved in his current ward, were clues that marriage would be easy.
Then, after my divorce I spent many years in a singles ward. I was astonished at how successful and beautiful some of my girlfriends were who were still struggling on the dating scene. The guys seemed smug and over-confident, even the ones who would not have found many dates in a more balanced dating pool. The guys I knew seemed to be enjoying having their choice of the ladies, and became very picky. One lackluster guy I was friends with in my singles ward ruled out a gorgeous, intelligent, successful woman he was dating and claimed to have strong feelings for, for something as simple as having a messy car (and we’re not talking trashed here, we’re talking a couple of fast food wrappers.) After several years of that, I ended up marrying a convert who is the best husband ever. But only after I agonizingly turned down a marriage offer from a man that I was very much in love with, simply because he wasn’t LDS.
While I am happy with where I wound up, I think back to the needless agony of those years where I was married to an abusive husband and then to the ickyness of dating in a singles ward and I just want to tell my daughters to not make my mistakes. First, I tell them not to even think of marrying before age 25, since so much changes as one matures; to date a prospective spouse for at least a year (preferably much longer) before an engagement; and to be on the watch for early warning signs of a controlling person. And second, if they find love, and a good person who is willing to treat them as a true equal, outside the LDS Church, then for goodness sake, go ahead and marry them. It is a tragedy that there are people married to wholly unsuitable and even abusive partners, simply because they buy into the teaching of the LDS Church about the necessity of marrying LDS, preferably RM. A lifetime (let alone eternity) is a long time to spend with someone you don’t like that much, it’s even longer to spend with someone who is physically or emotionally harming you.
If you are superficial male (much of the male population) and you are limited to just one wife you will likely strive to “win” the most “desirable” (trophy) wife your income (equally superficial) can buy. In this way (due to the superficially of the participants) monogamy disenfranchises or discounts many authentic women of substance.
Howard….All monogamy or monogamy under circumstances discussed in the post?
Jules,
I was addressing LDS monogamy but it’s exacerbated by the superficially of the participants and the oversupply of females.
Speaking as an RM, yes, two years of living with a roomate/colleague gave me practice at some aspects of marriage. But I hadn’t been very good at dating in high school, so after my mission I wasn’t very good at dating in college. Shocker. Only in the context of initiating a faith crisis can I see my mission being the defining ingredient of why I never married. Believe me, I wish I could blame it all on the LDS Church. But I am confident of a shortlist of factors that would have hedged up my attempts at coupling no matter what religious context I placed myself in during college.
What I will lay at the feet of the LDS Church is a firm belief that members are saddled with greviously unrealistic expectations and unreasonable standards. Case in point, I wasted a LOT of time in my teens feeling guilty about masturbation. A two year mission, where I wasn’t even allowed to hug women exasperated this. The male sex drive is relentless during those years and waiting for wet dreams is a ridiculous strategy perpetrated by married priesthood holders who have waning sex drives and sanctioned sexual partners. The most idiotic advice a mission president ever gave me: put a rubber band on your wrist and snap it whenever you have an “impure” thought.
Consequences: I came home from my mission unbearably aroused, driven by duty and hormones to find a wife as soon as possible. As another RM confided in me at the Ogden LDS Institute, “I can’t stand dating because I fall in love with every girl I go on a first date with.” I think what he meant was, he/we had lost the ability to date casually. Every outing with a sister in the singles ward was a feverish end game. Is she the one?! (not necessarily a soulmate, just the one I’ll marry). This is who young women were being asked to consider for a spouse, someone who was frantically auditioning potential mates.
The secular world isn’t much safer, though practicality bears more sway (evidenced in some of the comments above.) It also traffics a lot less in shame with regard to the utter normalcy and healthiness of sexual urges.
Fat food wrappers, a deal breaker? Wow. Maybe used cocaine baggies or used condom packages would be appropriate deal breakers in a serious girlfriend’s car, unless blame could be deflected to someone else.. I really feel your pain going through all of that.
So when I first met my future wife (and it helped that I didn’t take her serious at first, no feverish end game), she and 3 roommates were bad housekeepers. I lectured to them that if they wanted to marry a decent guy they needed to keep their apartments neat and tidy.. I made them a wheel chart, patterned after such devices in the mission field. Each girl’s name appeared in a quadrant and each of four chores in a quadrant on the wheel. Each week the wheel was turned 90 degrees so everyone did each chore for a week.
About a week later I was visiting them again and the apartment was worse than usual, dishes piled to the ceiling, dirty cloths thrown everywhere, etc. I asked them if they had followed my advice and used the wheel chart .They said yes. I queried then whose turn is it to do the dishes and to do…. etc. They all said in unison, “look at the wheel chart.” I looked and they had crossed out all of their names and wrote Mike in all four quadrants.
Hint to single guys; If you help your girlfriend with chores, it is better than preaching about it
Hint to husbands: If you help your wife with chores, it is better than preaching about it . Except most of you already know it..
There are many wonderful people who are not LDS and some LDS members not so wonderful and vice- versa. My daughter-in-laws cover the spectrum between non-member to fully active. Each one of them is a fantastic person whom I feel privileged to know and love. Having grown up in the UT bubble I worried the weddings outside the temple would be bittersweet. Not so. In fact those outside the temple were more personal and touching than those inside. So I wouldn’t sweat it. Look for the Christ-like qualities you would want in a spouse– someone kind, caring, humble, respectful, charitable, honest etc..