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I’m starting to realize that my options are quite limited outside of Utah. I’m glad I’m outside of Utah for other reasons, but there are plenty of good women elsewhere. I’m strongly considering being open to dating nonmembers. I might have a better shot at meeting a gamer girl this way. Any tips?
The only thing I gather is that not having sex can be a serious roadblock when dating outside the church. I’m not going to change that unless I were to leave the church entirely, so I will stand firm and make it known early on.
It is not unheard of outside of Mormonism to hold that standard of no premarital sex. Try out that dating scene and see who you meet and have some fun. You might find it suits you well.
I’d work on expanding your social circle outside of the Church. Try meetup.com. Heber13 wrote:
It is not unheard of outside of Mormonism to hold that standard of no premarital sex.Try out that dating scene and see who you meet and have some fun. You might find it suits you well.
From what I can tell, there are plenty of women that would prefer to have less pressure to have sex. Have you heard of Twilight?
Beefster wrote:
The only thing I gather is that not having sex can be a serious roadblock when dating outside the church. I’m not going to change that unless I were to leave the church entirely, so I will stand firm and make it known early on.
As you do subscribe to many LDS values, you want someone who is similarily “goodhearted”, although non-member. I dated lots of girls in high school, and before I joined the church in my 20’s, and they all were committed to chastity before marriage. So, it’s a matter of finding those women who have a kind of “Mormon?” mindset (without necessarily subscribing to all Mormon values). In the community, I work with a lot of older people now who are like that. And there were lots of people like that when I was a teenager and young adult. It’s as if the women could sense I was good at heart and that was part of the reason they were attracted to me, along with my sizzling. smouldering good looks at the time
😆 I was thinking about it a bit more this morning. Dating a nonmember and eventually marrying her has a few outcomes that I would be okay with:
She gets baptized while we’re dating and we get married in the temple or sealed a year after her baptism. All kids will be born in the covenant. If I get lucky, her parents will join with her and be at the sealing.
- She gets baptized sometime after we get married and then we get sealed a year later. Some or all kids will be born in the covenant. This would initially worry my mom. My dad would probably be okay with it.
- She never joins the church, but remains amiable to it. I nevertheless live a happy life, active in the church without my wife. No kids born in the covenant, but some may be active with me. Maybe I don’t get exalted. However that works. This would probably make my parents sad. At least I’d get to see her in sun dresses. Those things are adorable.
- She never joins, becomes antagonistic toward the church, and we divorce or I leave the church. From my perspective now, I would prefer the divorce, especially if this is before kids. I later marry another woman in the temple; at that point I would not repeat the same action.
I guess I’m also realizing that divorce is always going to be a real possibility. I hope it’s not something I have to deal with due to the legal complexities, social pressure, and anti-divorce attitudes in the way we look at sealings. But I may find that 5 years into a marriage it is time to part ways- and I hope if that happens, I can be at peace with it and be able to move on.
Taking the agenda of “eternal companion” out of the equation really takes a lot of pressure off me to “get it right the first time”. I don’t doubt that it’s possible; I just think it gets in my way in building a meaningful relationship and it puts me in a situation where I overanalyze everything that might possibly bother me.
I had a companion who once said he would prefer to marry a girl first and then get sealed a few years later. At the time, I told him it was a bad idea because the statistics suggest most people never actually get sealed when they marry with that attitude. Now, I think of it as a legitimate option, though one you have to be very careful in doing.
EDIT: thanks dande for the link to meetup.com. I joined. I need to find myself a D&D group. Those can be hard to find through the church. I also would like to make friends in ways other than work and church.
Second marriages fail at a higher rate than first marriages. Eternal pressure aside, it is FAR better to try to “get it right” the first time than assume another chance to do that will happen automatically. I would definitely prefer that if at all possible. I just can’t let that get in the way of being able to properly build a relationship. I have to take things in manageable chunks- thus the 5 years thing. I also don’t want to fool myself into thinking that everything is going to magically be okay just from marriage alone. Things happen. Beefster wrote:
I also don’t want to fool myself into thinking that everything is going to magically be okay just from marriage alone.
This could be said about temple marriages as well. Becoming legally married, and even religiously sealed, doesn’t guarantee anything. Relationship skills are valuable no matter your religion, and they always help marriages. Also, I have non-religious, married friends and they certainly don’t consider divorce a “Get Out of Jail Free” card that they can use anytime they feel uncomfortable or unsatisfied in the marriage. They all, for different reasons, believe in the concept of marriage/long-term pairing like most Mormons, and have found someone that they want to commit to. In some ways, it’s more admirable to me that non-religious people marry at all, considering that they don’t believe they have a deity to answer to in this life or the next one. Yet they still think marriage is worthwhile. Its value doesn’t derive from religious meaning, even though it may seem that way sometimes.
It’s been my experience dating non-members in Utah, that no-sex-until-marriage is not a common mindset. I’m not sure if it’s the “counter-culture”; I doubt it. I think it’s quite common to engage in some level of sexual activity outside of marriage for a lot of singles, especially non-religious singles, regardless of where you live. I was dating men, though – not sure how it would be to have that approach dating women.
Beefster wrote:
Taking the agenda of “eternal companion” out of the equation really takes a lot of pressure off me to “get it right the first time”. I don’t doubt that it’s possible; I just think it gets in my way in building a meaningful relationship and it puts me in a situation where I overanalyze everything that might possibly bother me.
Again, I would point to cultivating healthy, lasting relationship skills in yourself so that you’re capable of building healthy, long-term relationships with others. Despite some of my disdain for all the talk about Millennials, we really have been inundated with the concept that we can have everything exactly the way we want it. Knowing that that’s unrealistic and that most things, including a spouse, are not going to fulfill us 100% is an important thing to keep in mind. I’ve found that as I’ve pondered on what things would be deal breakers to me in a marriage they’re mostly character or lifestyle incompatibilities, and they are essentially the same regardless of being in a religious marriage or not. All while realizing that inter-faith marriages do tend to be more difficult, depending on the veracity of each person’s enthusiasm/belief for said religion.Being single and having a faith transition is hard. Being married and having a faith transition is hard. Life is hard. And an adventure – which briars on which path do you want to deal with?
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