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I have a friend who is single (WOW!…I am as well at the moment,..go figure). This friend HATES the discussions and preferences geared at family, getting married, being associated with “family culture” because he has a big jagged hale inside. It is a problem for him. I was told by another member that over 1/3 of the adult membership in the LDS church is single. And,…unless you are married, you sometimes can feel like you are a second class saint.
Any comments on this?
I was single until I was 30 (and I don’t regret that BTW). I do relate to what your friend is saying – it can be alienating to be hearing about families and marriage so frequently, especially when there are so many more topics we could be discussing. I was recently assigned to speak in a singles ward and the topic of the month was the importance of marriage. Don’t get me wrong, I do support marriage and I think families are wonderful – but I would not speak to that group on the topic and I chose my own topic. From another point of view, I don’t think people in general or the leadership are intentionally trying to make singles feel bad. It is pretty easy for an old married guy to recognize the merits and joys of marriage and desire to share that with others.
I believe this is hard both because of our family centered church culture and our family centered church doctrine. I do believe that feeling like a second class citizen is inversely related to the amount of acceptance, value, respect, and belonging one feels within the group. I believe that we all have needs to feel these things and if they are not met in our faith community it would be very tempting to meet those needs elsewhere.
But, at least the singles have hope of some day marrying (in this life or the next should they prove faithful). People with SSM are not even offered that light at the end of the tunnel (unless it is packaged in the context of “you will be fixed and fundamentally altered in the afterlife so that you may enjoy a heterosexual marriage).
This is one of the worst aspects of our modern culture. I wrote the following on my personal blog back in 2010:
Quote:“Single Adults: Some Thorns Are Harder to Soften than Others”
http://thingsofmysoul.blogspot.com/2010/10/single-adults-some-thorns-are-harder-to.html Quote:Single LDS members — where do they fit
Between a seer stone and a hard place.
I have a good friend that’s pushing 60, never married. Hearing his experiences makes me sad. The path of a single adult in the church is a difficult one. People have a need for companionship but attaching marriage to the highest order of salvation, even our eternal purpose, can make loneliness even more debilitating.
Our perspectives are molded by both internal and external factors. Like DJ said, I don’t think leadership is intentionally trying to make singles feel bad but sometimes the messages we chose to focus on lead singles down a particular path. The unsaid, implied message starts to work in our minds. I applaud DJ for acting on the prompting to changing the subject of his talk in the singles ward.
I think a part of the problem is that people in general forget to take the time to consider how their message might be received by others with which they don’t have much in common. It might even be impossible for a person to take certain perspectives of other people into consideration.
In time the married person forgets the anxieties of being single. They may have gotten married at a very young age and never experienced losing hope in finding someone. How might they feel if a leader comes along with a “just do it” attitude, making claims that any two people focused on the gospel are compatible? I’m also not a fan of the accusation that singles remain single because they don’t want to settle down. It’s difficult for a single adult to hear that when in their heart of hearts they desperately want to find someone.
Rob4Hope wrote:And,…unless you are married, you sometimes can feel like you are a second class saint.
Consider the following hypothetical path:
Before my mission I felt like a second class saint because I wasn’t an RM.
When I was an RM I felt like a second class saint because I wasn’t married.
When I was married I felt like a second class saint because I didn’t have children.
When I had a child I felt like a second class saint because I didn’t have at least three children.
When I had three children I felt like a second class saint because I was 40 and hadn’t been made a high priest yet.
When I was a high priest I felt like a second class saint because I had never been called to be a bishop.
The culture facilitates some of this but some of these feelings also come from within. I think many saints have experienced feeling like a second class saint at some point in their lives, all for different reasons. There are lots of cultural expectations placed on members but being single is probably the most difficult. All the cultural expectations seem to be related to being married.
nibbler wrote:How might they feel if a leader comes along with a “just do it” attitude, making claims that any two people focused on the gospel are compatible?
Nibbler, glad you pointed this one out, because this type of counsel can be just devastating. Marriage has many facets, and I have found it frustrating that focusing on the “gospel” is considered the panacea of all problems. I like to think of the analogy of a gay man and a lesbian woman getting married and “just focusing on the gospel”. Chances are (and I am certainly open for rebuttal on this point) that this marriage may not work. If it does, there is a good chance they might not be as happy as they could be. But,…they ARE focusing on the gospel right?
I believe there is more to it than a myopic view of the gospel.
Rob4Hope wrote:I have a friend who is single (WOW!…I am as well at the moment,..go figure).
This friend HATES the discussions and preferences geared at family, getting married, being associated with “family culture” because he has a big jagged hale inside.It is a problem for him…I was told by another member that over 1/3 of the adult membership in the LDS church is single. And,…unless you are married, you sometimes can feel like you are a second class saint…Any comments on this? There’s no question that single adults don’t fit in very well over the long-term at all at this point as far as being accepted the same way married members typically are. Pesonally I don’t think it is something where Church leaders consciously go out of their way to make single adults feel unwelcome or like second-class citizens as much as a largely unintended by-product of the Church being so strongly geared around the idea of marriage and families.
In addition to the doctrine of eternal marriage being one of the Church’s favorite selling points and the strict hard-line position regarding the Law of Chastity both being particularly unfriendly to single adults I think the Church has come to rely heavily on members being married to another active member as a way to encourage continued loyalty to the Church because then members can’t disagree with or disobey what the Church teaches quite as easily without having to worry about what their spouse will think about it.
So for some of the same basic reasons people that are married to a non-member or less faithful Church member are also second-class citizens at this point because it’s just not the expected norm in the LDS culture. Personally I think depending so much on the marriage of two active members in order to retain followers does not bode well for the Church’s future along with the impact of the internet on business as usual and the trend of families having fewer children on average than in the past because there is also a trend in the US of people waiting longer to get married than in the past, and of course divorce is fairly commonplace, and now we are also seeing more mixed-faith marriages than in the past due to people losing faith in the Church after they are already married.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:So for some of the same basic reasons people that are married to a non-member or less faithful Church member are also second-class citizens at this point because it’s just not the expected norm in the LDS culture.
I am a single man now, and am considering marriage to a non-member. I don’t want to wipe this off the list, because my belief system has changed dramatically over the last several years.
Two points DA that come from this, and might be interesting for another thread:
- 1. If you are married outside the temple, and your spouse doesn’t “convert” while alive, if her or his work is done in the temple later, does that disqualify you from Celestial glory? If she or he doesn’t accept the gospel, are you still damned to a non-exhaulted state? We are taught that men (and women) are punished for their own sins, so is it considered a sin to marry outside of the temple? I say that in the
unofficialculture of the church (though I am not aware of it being doctrinal), the answer is yes. 2. From what I understand, it is still a practice in the US that if you marry outside of the temple, you have to wait a year (REGARDLESS OF WORTHINESS) to seal the marriage in the temple–even if you had a recommend at the time. If this is true, then I believe it is clearly punitive. The intent it to discourage civil marriages of two temple worthy people by denying them access to the temple sealing ordinances.
Comments?
DevilsAdvocate wrote:Pesonally I don’t think it is something where Church leaders consciously go out of their way to make single adults feel unwelcome or like second-class citizens as much as a largely unintended by-product of the Church being so strongly geared around the idea of marriage and families.
Maybe not consciously, but I’d say it’s often at least careless. Something akin to telling a bunch of one-armed people how wonderful juggling would be for them if they’d only make it happen.
It is incredibly difficult for someone who has experienced something (either with relative ease or after some difficulty) to understand that what they experienced is not possible for others – and we only need look at ourselves to understand that. Some people here who were fully active, non-questioning, orthodox, etc. at one time and couldn’t understand faith crises/transitions of any kind; some people here now are less active, questioning, heterodox, etc. and can’t understand how anyone could be fully active, non-questioning, orthodox, etc. while knowing many of the things that can cause faith crises/transitions.
Many married people, especially those who married fairly early or fairly easily, simply can’t understand that it isn’t that easy for others without worthiness or faith being an issue – as long as there is nothing visual that can be seen as a reason. Likewise, those same people who didn’t have to remain celibate for a relatively long time often struggle to understand just how difficult celibacy can be as a lifetime potential – physically and emotionally.
That isn’t a Mormon thing; it is a human thing. Just look at how often women and men who have well-paying jobs talk about other women and men who stay home to take care of the kids – and, particularly with women, vice-versa – or at how people who have not struggled to maintain a solid budget so easily dismiss or ridicule those who struggle to do so – or how thin OR fat people so quickly tend to judge each other.
We have to start with a basic, unnatural paradigm shift toward respecting and accepting obvious differences – and it is not an easy thing.
My best friend in high school (Tom) married a female friend (Lara). I now consider them to both be my best friends. It would not be strange for me to hang out with Lara at their home when Tom is working late. I had a college class with Lara and we would eat lunch together. Lara and Tom are not LDS. One time her husband was working late again and I invited her to come hang out with the group from singles ward. Lara was made to feel very uncomfortable by some of the comments that were made. As I remember, one of the guys was kept making jokes about how he could not flirt with her because she was married. It made her feel like an outsider at best and a disloyal spouse for even hanging out with singles at worst.
Several years later, my now wife and I were engaged long distance as she completed her degree at BYU and I at a school in another state. Her roommates all went to a salsa dance and did not invite her. When asked about it she was told that she was “practically married.”
These experiences make we wonder about the divisions that we place between the married and the unmarried. It seemed particularly pronounced on women – as if they were to go out with groups of single friends before in hopes of finding a marriage partner but once married/engaged should just be content to sit at home. I do not seem to see these divisions quite so starkly in the non-LDS world.
Rob4Hope wrote:1. If you are married outside the temple, and your spouse doesn’t “convert” while alive, if her or his work is done in the temple later, does that disqualify you from Celestial glory? If she or he doesn’t accept the gospel, are you still damned to a non-exhaulted state? We are taught that men (and women) are punished for their own sins, so is it considered a sin to marry outside of the temple? I say that in the unofficial culture of the church (though I am not aware of it being doctrinal), the answer is yes.2. From what I understand, it is still a practice in the US that if you marry outside of the temple, you have to wait a year (REGARDLESS OF WORTHINESS) to seal the marriage in the temple–even if you had a recommend at the time. If this is true, then I believe it is clearly punitive. The intent it to discourage civil marriages of two temple worthy people by denying them access to the temple sealing ordinances.
My eldest sister married a Methodist. I was taught in institute that marriage outside of the temple is akin to selling our birthright for a bowl of porridge. Also as a baptized member we covenant to endure to the end which includes to take upon us additional covenants when the time comes. I understood that because she intentionally did not enter into the temple covenant that she had violated her baptismal covenant. At the time I believed every word. It is hard for me to know how much of this came from the actual OT institute manual and how much was interpretation from the CES institute instructor. This interpretation does tend to fit with the 1 year waiting period penalty.
I remember the following song…Lyrics available on LDS.org
Quote:Marriage for Eternity
Seminary Music: Old Testament
1. Like Rebekah, I shall forsake the rest
To marry in the covenant and meet the Lord’s request.
I’ll nurture valiant children and teach them of the plan.
That my children’s children’s children may be blessed,
May be blessed as only the righteous can.
Marriage for eternity
Blesses my posterity
As each branch of our tree turned upward unto thee,
Growing upward, forever in Thee
2. Like Isaac, I’ll follow and prepare
To marry in the covenant, eternal blessings share.
I’ll teach to all my children the power of the plan,
That their children’s children’s children may be blessed,
Will be blessed as only the righteous can.
Marriage for eternity Blesses my posterity
As each branch of out tree turned upward unto thee
Growing upward, forever, in Thee
Marriage for eternity
Blesses my posterity
As each branch of our tree turned upward unto thee,
Growing upward, forever in Thee.
Growing upward, forever in Thee.
I personally love the concept of eternal families…OTOH I hate the worrying and “what ifs” that happen when we try to apply it literally to individual cases. I believe that we will know our loved ones in the next estate and enjoy relationship with them. Period.
Roy wrote:…My eldest sister married a Methodist.
I was taught in institute that marriage outside of the temple is akin to selling our birthright for a bowl of porridge.Also as a baptized member we covenant to endure to the end which includes to take upon us additional covenants when the time comes. I understood that because she intentionally did not enter into the temple covenant that she had violated her baptismal covenant. At the time I believed every word. It is hard for me to know how much of this came from the actual OT institute manual and how much was interpretation from the CES institute instructor. This interpretation does tend to fit with the 1 year waiting period penalty… I personally love the concept of eternal families…OTOH I hate the worrying and “what ifs” that happen when we try to apply it literally to individual cases.I believe that we will know our loved ones in the next estate and enjoy relationship with them. Period. I guess the idea that families are forever generally sounds good in theory as long as everyone involved believes that they and everyone they care about will actually make it to the Celestial Kingdom (no empty chairs). The problem is that the Church (or God if you prefer) has made it so hard for very many people to actually live up to all the strict standards and expectations involved not to mention that even that isn’t enough if you really want to get technical and pay attention to what the LDS scriptures actually say (D&C 58:26-29) that the chances of that actually happening are not that high for many Church members nowadays.
So instead of being a comforting assurance in many cases nowadays we have people feeling like they have failed as parents because some of their children fell away from the Church, people worried that they will be separated from their spouse in the next life simply because their spouse lost faith in the Church, etc. I especially feel bad for some of the single Church members I know because I definitely don’t think the Church has done them any favors with some of these doctrines. The idea of “holding out for Mr./Mrs. Right” takes on a whole new level of meaning when people think they basically have one chance to get it right not just for this life but for all of eternity and furthermore they can only consider dating other “worthy” Church members.
The result is that some of these people have basically ended up trading being alone and having no officially sanctioned sexual outlet year-after-year for what amounts to future promises that could easily turn out to be nothing more than some pie-in-the-sky fantasy that will never materialize for all we really know. However I’m not sure what the solution to some of this would be other than more members not taking some of this literally because I don’t see the Church abandoning what could be their single favorite selling-point or some of the strict hard-line rules and expectations anytime soon.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:I guess the idea that families are forever generally sounds good in theory as long as everyone involved believes that they and everyone they care about will actually make it to the Celestial Kingdom (no empty chairs). The problem is that the Church (or God if you prefer) has made it so hard for very many people to actually live up to all the strict standards and expectations involved not to mention that even that isn’t enough if you really want to get technical and pay attention to what the LDS scriptures actually say (D&C 58:26-29) that the chances of that actually happening are not that high for many Church members nowadays.
According to SWK,
HOW DARE YOU THINKYOU PAY THE SAME PRICECHEAPENSI’m tired of being compared to others. I’m glad those pious people were so faithful and clean,…heck man, they walked on water even, or so it seems. Me?…I’m just a lowly messed up “single” man now who is trying to repent and come back. But, my chance is blown. I didn’t make the sacrifice, and sure as H3LL am NOT going to wait for the perfect utterly right
spiritualcompanion to come along to marry. Sometimes it seems like the gospel just doesn’t work for people like me, if I have to measure up by that standard.
:sick: I have always hoped (and perhaps it is a false hope) that Jesus could ,…. just maybe ,…. possibly ,….. if he really wanted to ,….. help.
I choose to hold onto that idea. I don’t need a big mansion in the CK. Just a little shanty works for me….out in the highway in the hot sun and dirt.
LOL…Ha!…you aught to see where I live now! What a joke. I guess I’m preparing for my shanty.
😆 😆 😆 Rob, I for one think you are a good egg (a saying one of my missionary comps used all the time). LookingHard wrote:Rob, I for one think you are a good egg (a saying one of my missionary comps used all the time).
Well thank you.
🙂 - 1. If you are married outside the temple, and your spouse doesn’t “convert” while alive, if her or his work is done in the temple later, does that disqualify you from Celestial glory? If she or he doesn’t accept the gospel, are you still damned to a non-exhaulted state? We are taught that men (and women) are punished for their own sins, so is it considered a sin to marry outside of the temple? I say that in the
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