Some Notes on LDS Singlehood, Now That It's Over, With Some Lingering Survivor's Guilt, and a Growing Conviction that Older Singles Are the Rocks of Our Faith

I've been married less than a month now, and while we are undoubtedly still in the Honeymoon stage, well, it's been great.  In fact, I have some survivor's guilt about it--I got married much later than many of my peers, but I know even more wonderful people who still haven't married yet.  Why did I "get out" (for lack of a better term) while so many others still haven't?  The whole process feels capricious and unfair.

Of course, I am here falling into the easy fallacy of assuming that marriage is a finish-line, not a work-in-progress; I know not to take that for granted, because near the end of my 20s, I had begun to go on dates with a distressingly large number of divorced girls younger than I--not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with being divorced, only that I began to get a sense of the sheer, tragic scale of failed marriages out there, of far too many young folks rushing in unawares, "where angels fear to tread," often before they knew who their partners were, or even who they themselves were.

Part of that divorce-rate is the fault of the rash impulsiveness of youth, of leaping before they look (which is argument itself against young marriages but that is a different topic).  But part of that divorce-rate, too, is rooted in an LDS Church culture that fetishizes being-married-ness to a near-fanatical degree, for a host of both doctrinal and sociological reasons; it is an emphasis rooted in this naive assumption that being-married automatically endows you with some sort of greater knowledge or wisdom or grace that will magically change you--that if you can just check off the married-box on your tax-forms then everything will work itself out--when in fact you are still the same person with the same virtues and the same flaws as you were when single, only now with another human being to magnify them.

This marriage culture finds expression in a plethora of condescending manners:

I'm thinking of the YSA Branch President I once had who kept inviting outside speakers instead of local Branch members to speak in Sacrament, apparently out of the unstated belief that a bunch of doctoral candidates and med-students lacked insights of their own to offer, that we were mere children in need of juvenile pep talks;

I'm thinking of all the times Church Presidents have taken "the Priesthood" to task for putting off marriage, as though it were our idea, which felt the equivalent of yelling at cancer patients for not being healthy;

I'm remembering the time I foolishly attended a YSA FHE because I thought we were carving Jack-O-Lanterns, only to then be treated to a 20-minute devotional from some newly-wed on how wonderful being married is, on how great sex is, as though we were unclear on that point, as though that idiot-girl wasn't just rubbing it in;

I'm thinking of the Stake President I once had in Salt Lake who changed the name of our "Singles Stake" to a "Pre-Marriage Stake," as though there were some bizarre confusion as to what exactly we thought we were supposed to be doing;

there is also the sheer fact that Singles Wars and Stakes exist in the first place, based as they are in the (sadly accurate) assumption that the Church's Young Single Adults would never have any opportunities for leadership or responsibility within Family Wards, where a 21-year-old with half an Associates and a part-time job is welcomed with greater respect than a 27-year-old with a Graduate Degree and an established career, simply because the former has a signed marriage license whilst the latter does not.

This patronizing infantilization of older singles in the Church (where they are often--sometimes literally--consigned to the kid's table) is a greater impediment to their personal growth than whatever their relationship status happens to be.  I only attended a Mid-Singles event once--I was 29 and my gf at the time was 30, and we always went Latin Dancing; I wanted to shake things up, so she suggested this mid-singles dance she had heard about.  I assumed I would just encounter a group a slightly-older professionals mingling and flirting, but instead saw a bunch of folks with graying-temples and spreading-wrinkles dressed and acting like teenagers, a live-band playing the Hokey-Pokey, and a "Speed-Dating in the Dark" set up in a blackened hallway.  We stayed only 5 minutes, then headed straight back to a Latin Dance.

There was just this depressingly stunted-adolescence about the room--but then, it is too much to expect older singles to behave any differently when that is exactly how the Church treats them.  Yes, a strong-willed individual can rise above one's culture, but the Church should be facilitating such self-actualization, not serving as one of its obstacles.

But now I am still being far too mean to older LDS singles, as though they haven't been humiliated enough as it is.  No, here's the God's-honest truth I have recently realized: older singles are the rock and strength of the Church.  These are our strongest, most faithful members. 

Think about it: these are the members who receive every subtle signal that they are not wanted (sometimes not-so-subtle, as when a 31-year-old is unceremoniously booted out of the Singles Ward), who are given every reason to just drift away and seek out a scene that does not stigmatize single 30-year-olds, but who instead just shrug it all off and keep attending Church anyways.  What deep wells of faith, what profound religious conversion, is necessary to keep going in the face of all that indifference!  (Remember that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.)  Older Singles are not a problem for the Church; the Church is a problem for Older Singles, which does not value its strongest members like it should.

Now, I have heard it argued that part of this valuation for couples over singles in the Church lies in the fact that there is a certain profound knowledge one can only gain from being a parent--I don't doubt it, and I look forward to such knowledge for myself.  But I can also testify from personal experience that there is likewise a certain profound knowledge that can only be gained from being so long single.  We are lucky to have people with such knowledge, and it is to the Church's condemnation when we don't respect it, of which we must needs repent.

For contrary to assumption, it is no great miracle for a whole family to stay in the Church--young families in particular need a social support network, which the Church provides in spades.  It is as strange for a young family to leave the Church as it is for an older single to stay (though both happen far more often than we care to admit).  No, no, it's the older single members who are the true examples of real faithfulness--they are those who ever wait, like Father Abraham, the proverbial 99-years for the fulfillment of the covenant, to at last have progeny like unto the stars in the heavens.  I declare it boldly: their trial is Abrahamic, and is therefore deserving of the same level of respect, reverence, and awe.