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I propose that much of this matrimonial mess can be explained if we consider that the Church’s first priorities as an institution are survival and growth. The logic is clear and simple: the practice of giving the youth of the Church high expectations for their future spouse is actually a retention effort. If I had a group of youth, and I wanted them to stay active in the Church and to keep the commandments, I would tell them that they will be rewarded with an attractive and desirable spouse if they keep the commandments. The Church also does this with tithing: if I want people to pay tithing, I tell them that they will be blessed materially if they pay tithing (and even let them believe that they will get more back than they paid); this gives people unrealistic financial expectations, which can probably partially account for Utah’s high bankruptcy rate.
At this point I would contend that the body of singles in the Church (age 18 to whatever) consists largely of a group of people who are eagerly anticipating the fulfilling of the promises that the Church has made to them regarding a desirable spouse. The problem here is that the Church has made promises that it doesn’t have the
powerto keep. The Church does not have the power to make one person fall in love with another and thus does not have the power to fulfill the promise of a desirable spouse to everyone who keeps the commandments. I think that the same thing happened in the 1970s when the Church encouraged members to have many children as soon as possible after marriage regardless of their financial situation and promised that God would provide for their financial needs. The Church did not have the power or the resources to keep this promise, and many families struggled with too many kids and not enough money to pay for them, so the Church stopped teaching this.
I read another thread on this site called “Promises Promises” which outlined some failed promises. It seems clear to me that the Church (or perhaps Mormon culture) makes a large number of promises that it simply does not have the power to keep. For some lucky ones in the Church, these promises are fulfilled, and they are the ones who get up in Sacrament meeting and testify that God loves them and has fulfilled His promises to them; there are others for whom the promises are not fulfilled, and they are left to wonder why God doesn’t love them as much, and they feel confused, shortchanged, inferior, lied to, and they sometimes end up leaving. I have my own hypothesis for why the Church (or Mormon culture) makes promises that it knows for a fact it can’t keep, and it has to do with organizational survival, but it’s a little conspiracy-theory-ish, so I won’t post it now.
On the issue of helping people develop realistic expectations, it needs to happen, but it’s really hard issue. As I said, the promised reward of an attractive spouse in exchange for obedience is largely a retention effort, and if you were to say to a group of teenage Priests that they probably weren’t going to marry a supermodel no matter how good of a missionary they would be, they would say “Screw you!” The real problem is that the Church (and other religions) likes to link good moral behavior with some kind of temporal blessing, in this case sexual attractiveness or a desirable spouse as a reward for obedience; but the fact is that sexual attractiveness and good moral behavior are not directly related and function more or less independently (unless someone is truly morally destitute.) The fact that attractiveness is not directly related to good moral behavior is outside the Church’s “obedience-blessing” cause-and-effect paradigm, so the Church can’t really teach the reality of the situation.
I’d be in favor of the Church doing a better job of teaching young men how to be attractive to women. I was told that spirituality was the key to attracting women, including being taught that at BYU, and it’s just wrong. Beyond qualifying for a temple recommend, additional spirituality does not make a guy more attractive to women.
Since giving a “reality speech” about marriage to a group of Priests and Laurels would be kind of a downer, I think it’s a good start for the Church to stop teaching that God will reward an obedient person with an attractive spouse. Since this teaching is mostly a retention effort, I don’t see that change happening soon.
InquiringMind wrote:I propose that much of this matrimonial mess can be explained if we consider that the Church’s first priorities as an institution are survival and growth.
This is probably true–but isn’t the Church made for us, and not we for the Church? I know it may be incredibly naive of me, but is it all really just a numbers game? Is the Church really willing to teach an incorrect concept of God just to make people obedient? Are we that afraid of personal agency? And if the mission of the church is to bring people to Christ and eventually to God, isn’t the ultimate failure of these crazy promises, and the ensuing disaffection, working at cross-purposes with that mission?
InquiringMind wrote:I’d be in favor of the Church doing a better job of teaching young men how to be attractive to women. I was told that spirituality was the key to attracting women, including being taught that at BYU, and it’s just wrong. Beyond qualifying for a temple recommend, additional spirituality does not make a guy more attractive to women.
What do you have in mind? What do the ladies think about this?
turinturambar wrote:A
veryinteresting article appeared in the Huffington Post about the plight of single adults in the church…It’s difficult for me to be objective on this issue, as I am part of the “problem”. I really wonder at the obstacles to marriage for young and not-so-young single adult Mormons: -decreasing dating opportunities when they get a job that takes them out of “Zion”?
-just plain lack of luck? (ships passing in the night?)
-lack of employment opportunities, too much debt,
not enough money to settle down?(X-ers and Millenials in the post-2008 economic calamity) -increasingly
materialistic men and women?(e.g. “he doesn’t make enough money to give me the lifestyle my father did) -too many “deal breakers” for daters and affianced couples? (e.g. non-RM status,
no TR, porn) One thing is certain–the longer men and women remain unmarried in the Church, the greater the certainty that they will leave the church.The second-class status of single adults makes it almost intolerable at times to worship Christ with the marrieds… What makes being similar to average non-Mormon Americans a crisis to begin with? I know this article mostly focused on a Utah ward of singles aged 31-45 and their angst but I see members getting married in the temple at around 24-28 with no obvious problems compared to getting married at around 21 for men and 19 for women. Personally I’m glad that I waited until after I graduated from college and had a full-time job before getting married. As far as I’m concerned if I had gotten married and started having children at 21 or 22 like the Church recommends while I was just a poor student spending so much time studying then it would have mostly just stressed me out and hurt my grades and delayed my education and career development goals for no good reason.
The problem is not active Church members waiting longer to get married than before as much as the fact that the Church depends so much on marriage and family/peer pressure to support continued activity in the Church because it looks like it doesn’t really appeal to the average individual all that well based on its own merits. Personally I think there is strong pressure for many single members to rush into marriage long before they really should if the primary concern was their own best interests and long-term well-being in this life mostly because of the heavy emphasis on any sexual outlets outside of marriage supposedly being such a serious sin and fear that they will fall away from the one true path permanently if they don’t get married to another active Mormon ASAP. It is an interesting dilemma the Church has created for members to deal with.
Unrealistic expectations! Thank you! It’s so funny… I was talking to someone about this just the other day. There are a number of people out there who have indeed spent quite some time on the meat market trying to find someone and couldn’t. Or maybe they had physical or mental handicaps or illnesses that inhibited their efforts. But there are a growing number of people, my brother being one, for whom it is not so simple. He has been out there looking… that is true. But he always wanted a beautiful super skinny (he likes the underweight looking ones-literally!) 19 year old girl. This worked when he was 19 so he had some girlfriends then. But as he aged, his taste never did. At 25 that is the only thing he would accept. And at 30. And at 35. Now at 40. The problem is that he could never “afford” what he wanted. What he brought to the table was not equal in any way. He developed poor hygiene habits that got even worse as his depression from night finding anyone spiraled downward. He started balding shortly after 20. He has very poor social skills. And he is broke. He spent lots of money on pursuing a PhD. He is brilliant! He built a website that physics instructors around the world reference in their teachings. But just short of finishing his PhD he burned out and moved in with my parents and got a job as a Walmart night stocker. He just gave up. On everything. Yet still will not accept anything less than a Barbie doll. So the question is– did he really look and not find anyone? Will he be given someone in the next life (as they say anyway)? Or was it his real choice not to marry? IDK. I don’t know anything anymore but it’s interesting to think about. I do think there is a huge trend in this church to breed significantly myopic people. Each person born into it is raised that they are so special and chosen. Out of the millions and millions of people who have ever walked this planet, they are of a handful to be saved for this dispensation, for this generation, for this country, and either chosen to be born into or convert to this church. Most at some point have been told they would be great church leaders or play some huge role in “bringing to pass the coming of Zion.” They are saviors of the world. Why shouldn’t God hand pick them the best looking, smartest, most successful spouse?
InquiringMind wrote:I think that the elephant in the room in this case is that most people are looking for someone who is much more attractive than they are, and I admit that I may fall into this category. But you can’t tell people to lower their expectations for an eternal companion, especially given that some people really do find what they are looking for and given the lofty promises the Church (or perhaps Church culture) makes to people who keep the commandments.
There are extensive studies about mate attraction and successful relationships and it’s all about what you can “afford.” Now that term does not necessarily mean monetarily. We all bring to the table both benefits and baggage, and in successful relationships are generally very closely matched in weight. Let’s take appearances, for example. On a 10 point scale, 10 being smoking hot and 1 having scales and claws, couples tend to be within 2 points of each other. There can be a 10 married to an 8, or a 2 married to a 4. You don’t typically see a 2 married to a 10. UNLESS there is another factor that balances out the scales. A 10 woman might marry a 4 man if he is very rich, or had a great social status, or great sense of humor etc. Unfortunately though, because appearances are disproportionately valuable in our society, the guy probably would need to have all 3 of those factors to be considered really. So if you are a 5 can you afford a 10? Yes, you can. But either you have to have some other really great attraction factors, or she will have at have some other major baggage issues… like she has to have the IQ of a jellyfish, or have some major personality disorder etc. And since some men find that attractive, that sometimes works! Reality is though that no matter what the church view leads us to believe, none of us can find the perfect person for us. None. Because it doesn’t exist and if it did we couldn’t afford it anyway.
I think there is another factor at work here that is not exclusive to the LDS. We are not taught how to pick people we are compatible with. In our U.S. culture and in the media we have two gate keepers. First of course in physical attraction. Then comes tastes, which is NOT compatibility, though most people think it is. For example, the first thing you ask yourself is is you feel physical attraction/chemistry. Yes? Ok do we like the same things? I like traveling, Italian food, dogs and the history channel. You do too? Whoo-hoo.. that’s all it takes, let’s get married! Just like the movies teach us! We can fall in love in 2 dates! BUT if you are LDS, now you add in a 3rd factor… are they active LDS? RMs? Have TRs? Really its a miracle any LDS people get married ever. But then…I have come to know that tastes, or likes and dislikes, don’t even really have to be the same for people to be compatible. The first two gate keepers are facades. Compatibility is much deeper than that, hard to quantify and rarely looked at… usually until two people are already married. Compatibility has much more to do with shared goals, personality types, mental & emotional health (which in most cases people hide from you until after its too late), maturity, views on sex roles and relationship values etc. Really in a perfect world we should skip past the first 2 gate keepers at least and check out the person right here at this level. But that is not ever going to happen. It’s pretty impossible. So LDS people pass the first 3 facades and jump to the LDS answer. Just receive a revelation! 1-We are attracted to each other. 2-We have things in common. 3-The other person claims to be worthy. (And in many cases it’s a lie anyway but that is a tangent…) 4-If we are compatible or not and this is meant to be, surely God will tell us?
InquiringMind wrote:… and women’s preference for a bad boy on a motorcycle over a NASA nerd is a matter of both genetic hard-wiring and culture.
It does go both ways. I hear women always say they want a nice guy. But then nice guys never win seems to be an accurate statement for the most part. It does seem that many women seem to fall for the bad guys even though they swear off the bad guys all the time. But I see the same with men. Guys also tend to want the paradox. They want a beautiful woman but one who is not superficial, doesn’t spend a lot of time or money on it, and doesn’t know how pretty she is. They want a thin woman but not one who diets. They want a women who doesn’t play games but then again they don’t like the warts of the truth. They want a woman who could control herself perfectly for 20 or 30 or so years being a true virgin, but who doesn’t have sex hangups after marriage and who has a high enough sex drive to fill his needs afterwards. And If you are talking about the “older” single crowd or second timers… they want a woman who will be valiant in her calling as wife and mother, but shy away from women who have spent the last few years doing exactly that. The guy may have kids, but they don’t want the woman to have any while the reality is that if she hasn’t had any she probably doesn’t want HIS. The list can go on and on. But it’s expectations. We come to the table with all our benefits and all our baggage. We see the other person’s. But we only want our benefits to be weighed and we want our baggage to be excused. It’s just the way most people are and it’s impossible to tell most of them to just get wake up and get real. Most people just aren’t realistic.
I also think that this issue is one that is much easier said by our church leaders with their life experiences and prejudices. They are old guys who are in Mormon Utah. When they were dating, TR holding RMs who claimed to be virgins were, well everybody. From that standpoint, the dating pool is HUGE. It shouldn’t be hard at all to marry in the temple someone who seems to be all that. Now go outside of Utah. Or look only at people who are honest about where they are spiritually and their mistakes. Look at the secondary market. The pool just keeps getting smaller and smaller…
turinturambar wrote:InquiringMind wrote:I propose that much of this matrimonial mess can be explained if we consider that the Church’s first priorities as an institution are survival and growth.
This is probably true–but isn’t the Church made for us, and not we for the Church? I
know it may be incredibly naive of me, but is it all really just a numbers game? Is the Church really willing to teach an incorrect concept of God just to make people obedient? Are we that afraid of personal agency? And if the mission of the church is to bring people to Christ and eventually to God, isn’t the ultimate failure of these crazy promises, and the ensuing disaffection, working at cross-purposes with that mission?Not consciously. At the core, they believe the things they teach. For example, I was told as a missionary to promise blessings to people if they would join the Church etcetera. I believed they would get them — as I had felt the Spirit, but it was part of the training in how to Prepare/Invite and Follow-Up to help people join the church. I was willing to use any scripture that seemed to allude to strong reasons for joining the church if it meant I could convince someone to “do the right thing”. And I felt my heart was pure as it was from the scriptures.
Is it a numbers game? To some extent yes — but not nakedly so. I think the people preaching really believe the things they promise, and these things are interwoven with the numbers. For example, I realize now that our zone and district meetings were there to motivate us. We would stand up and share our number goals for baptisms every month, and report on them. It was like a sales meeting, but wrapped in spirituality, spiritual stories, promises of blessings and parallels between our own missions and those of the great missionaries in the Book of Mormon.
And I think there isn’t a lot of thought given to the unintended consequences of these promises. When preparing a talk, people think “what can I promise to get people to do [insert Mormon thing ‘x’ here]”.
I have to confess, when I married in the temple and found on our wedding night my wife was incapable of intercourse (something that lasted 10 years) and that LDS Social Services would not approve us to adopt a child because of it — in spite of strong spiritual promptings on my part to do so — I was deflated. It was the second time I realized that there are two gospels — the one on Sunday which is laden with a mix of true and invented doctrine, and the one that is tempered by organizational concerns and pursuits. The Church DID have the power in this instance, and in other instances to “make good” on the promises of Sunday, but chose not to. The “temporal gospel” prevailed, as it normally does when the pure gospel and organizational concerns are in conflict — I have seen it many times now.
So this goes deeper than simply making promises it can’t keep. The Church makes promises and sometimes, doesnt’ keep them due to the fact they are bound by temporal realities as much as any other organization. I don’t consider it intentional — it’s a fact I’ve learned to face up to after similar, heart-wrenching things have happened to me just like this — three times in my lifetime.
SilentDawning wrote:At the core, they believe the things they teach….I think the people preaching really believe the things they promise, and these things are interwoven with the numbers….And I think there isn’t a lot of thought given to the unintended consequences of these promises. When preparing a talk, people think “what can I promise to get people to do [insert Mormon thing ‘x’ here]”.
So this goes deeper than simply making promises it can’t keep. The Church makes promises and sometimes, doesnt’ keep them due to the fact they are bound by temporal realities as much as any other organization. I don’t consider it intentional — it’s a fact I’ve learned to face up to after similar, heart-wrenching things have happened to me just like this — three times in my lifetime.
I think you’re probably right. I have run into a lot of Mormons with good motives who have taught these things. I know it’s not sinister. It’s just so hard for me to feel that it’s ethical–even though they are ignorant of what they are doing….
Sales!!! Ugggh!!! You can’t sell salvation, and definitely not so cavalierly! “Salvation is not a cheap experience.” It’s one of the main reasons why I reacted so viscerally to so many of the methods on the mish. Oh, well! Let’s silently subvert the system and teach others an accurate concept of God!
Quote:Oh, well! Let’s silently subvert the system and teach others an accurate concept of God!
I know you are joking when you say “subvert the systemn”. Wording it how I see it — I think an alternate phrase is to influence the thinking of others in certain areas. I heard someone once say that the mark of a free man is the ever-present uncertainty about whether he is right…I feel that way about most things now in the church. Am I sure it’s not literally they way they tell us at church? Not totally sure, but I think it might be a lot different than they say at this point in my life. But for years, the TBM perspective served me very well…as it may well be serving others very well.
Coming in from a spell of inactivity on this board, I found this thread and it is something I’ve thought about a lot. So for better or worse here are some of my thoughts. One of the things that saved me was hearing dear old Steve Robinson at BYU say something like: “after you get married you’re still going to meet people who turn you on. You have to remember your covenant is to cleave to your spouse.” I don’t know where I got the idea that I had to find the most ideally attractive woman to marry because after getting married I would be in danger of hellfire if I noticed other beautiful women. I’ve seen the idealized portrayals of faithful husbands who never even looked at another woman, I’ve had that advice given to me: never even look at another woman.
Not possible.
Did I choose my wife based on appearance? Damn right I did, but I didn’t line up some kind of police line and choose her due to the best measurements or hair color etc. I find her the most beautiful woman because: I genuinely am attracted to her, I choose to see her as the most beautiful, and I cultivate a faithful cleaving to her as my one and only. But it would be a lie to say that other women don’t turn my head.
They turn my head, draw my eye, but I have learned to recognize the limits of that: there are sights that I may be glad to see, but they do not equal love, or even infatuation. They do not come close to the all-five-senses experience of lovemaking with a chosen spouse. The enjoyment of a pleasant scene has its limits, and with that understood, you can stay within those limits and avoid a disturbance of your peace.
It took me a while to learn that; for a while in school I still thought I was falling in love with every round pelvis that passed my peepers. Ridiculous, it was. Partly raging hormones, I own.
Soon after I got engaged, a member of my ward’s bishopric said to me that he wished he could just tell some of the folks in the ward to just choose someone and get married, without waiting for the ideal combination of everything. When I was a teenager I had a list of qualifications for my future wife. One of them was that she be a Rush fan (the band, not the radio pundit). I revised it after my mission but thank God I had thrown it out by the time I met my wife, who for one thing can’t stand Geddy Lee’s falsetto. I love her anyway. I didn’t conjure her up as my Soul Mate, Practical Magic or Savage Garden style – none of that bullsh*t. I had felt a spiritual tap on the shoulder that said I was ready to get married, it had scared the hell out of me, I met this interesting woman, we spent time together, knew we liked each other, I decided to love her, and then knew that we could make a good marriage. So we have spent 10 years doing just that.
About a month before we got married I was on a hike with some other folks (my wife doesn’t really do hikes. I love her anyway), and a woman a bit older than me was talking about a young man with whom she got along just fine, but didn’t want to marry because there wasn’t that romantic spark. WTF.
For some time I have lamented the stigma in the western world against arranged marriages. It’s almost as vilified as polygamy: dragging young girls from their homes to live with ugly old drunkards or whatever else, the Matchmaker song from
Fiddler on the Roofand all that. Maybe it would take too much work to establish a matchmaking function among single adults in the Church that would really work. For one thing, first there would have to be a mass abandonment of a lot of silly romantic ideals. Mary Wollstonecraft pointed out how silly they are 200+ years ago and they’re still weighing us down. Physical attraction could still be accommodated to a large degree, if people let go of the chimera of finding the one paragon of their ideal, and if young men were free to develop different preferences of appearance . . . even if Rubens and Titian paintings were once again held up as standards of beauty instead of scarecrows, that would go a long way.
There was an Ensign article about a couple in India who decided to marry each other even though they hardly knew each other, It was enough that they were both members of the Church. It worked for them because of the Indian norm of arranged marriage. It was a wonderful story and it’s sad that in the world’s richest nation uncounted young people are kept away from achieving something similar by distorted fairy tales.
That’s all I have time to type for now.
I notice beautiful women all the time, and I’ve learned to make it stop there. Yeah, impossible standards and unrealistic expectations stink.
RiceandBeans, Making me think of Brazilian food… yumm! I agree that LOVE in a VERB. Not a noun. It is an action. As an action it can be chosen. Americans tend to miss this concept. They think of love as a noun… as a thing. Generally, a magic thing that is something that just happens and you can’t control it or change it. In my experience, this is just chemistry talking, and maybe the hope of perceived commonalities… and one more very dangerous factor. This “love” is generally our subconscious telling us we NEED that person for something. And the subconscious is rarely able to make good decisions! This is how people end up in very bad relationships and they always say “but I love him/her!” Scary stuff. I never want my subconscious to make a decision for me again! This love is the one that fades. Chemistry fades. And if your subconscious ever decides it can’t get what it needs from that person anymore, it’s all over. I think most relationships that are successful started as the noun, and then at some point evolves, by choice, into the verb. I have been married twice and with both husbands sometimes had to make definite choices to stay in love. That is not to say it was less real. If anything, it is more real.
About the looks factor, I don’t complain because I am not attractive. This is not a sour grapes issue. I am not bragging by any means. Just making a point. I am pretty enough that I never had trouble getting dates. But it would piss me off to no end when I would be dating a guy who I could tell that if I had a baby with him and gained some weight I would lose value. (I am not stating that every guy was that way. But a sad number of the ones who were attracted to me were that way.) I wanted my looks to be the icing on the cake… not the whole freaking meal. I am fully aware that at now at 38 my looks will soon be fading. I will limp what I have along as much as I can but if the main factor for attraction to me was looks, it will soon be gone and I don’t want to feel like I lost my value. If a guy chose me based on mostly looks, there is nothing to hold him to me as the beauty fades. There will always be prettier and prettier women every year. Neither of my husbands were particularly good looking and yet I was very attracted to each because I chose to love them. I chose them. I chose to ignore the wrinkles as they appeared, the weight as it came on, and the disappearing hairlines. I chose to focus on those factors that I found very attractive. I want to know that while my husband feels passion when he looks at me now, and while he can say and believe “Wow you look so beautiful today” that if I got in an accident and my looks were taken he would still be there for me the next day. I would feel that for him… I just wish it could be more reciprocated.
turinturambar wrote:InquiringMind wrote:I’d be in favor of the Church doing a better job of teaching young men how to be attractive to women. I was told that spirituality was the key to attracting women, including being taught that at BYU, and it’s just wrong. Beyond qualifying for a temple recommend, additional spirituality does not make a guy more attractive to women.
What do you have in mind? What do the ladies think about this?
I imagine that with the goal of “temple marriage for all,” the church leadership has no insentive of teaching how to be attractive.So, as a lady, I’ll enlighten you.
😆 Just kidding!Actually, attraction probably depends on each person – what they feel they miss, or how they connect.
I will tell you that I dated a couple of professional models who looked good, but lacked in character & thus were a turn off.
I was very very attracted to a guy who was in a wheel chair – strong upper body, but mostly he was confident, a good sense of self-awareness, self-disciplined, intelligent & had a sense of humor.
Featherina, Maybe a better questions is: What are the turnoffs that men can work on?
Crusty underwear is a good place to start. 😈 But if a wife’s job is to wash my underwear, how will I ever find one? It’s a catch-22. (J/K Ladies! I’ve taken care of myself for many years!)
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