Get Thee to a Nunnery...

Sometimes I wish we as Mormons had our own counterpart of the Catholic nun. I mean since I have wound up taking a vow of celibacy and unfortunately a vow of poverty I might as well get some kind of credit for it, right? I mean not every Mormon girl is going to marry, so why not give her a post where she doesn't have to feel guilty or sad about not finding her EC (Eternal Companion). My friend has even come up with a name for us Mormon nuns- Mormonja! I guess a word for 'nun' in Spanish is 'monja', so she just combined mormon and monja. Perfect! See my friend's post: http://mormonja.blogspot.com/2008/05/where-did-term-mormonja-come-from.html.

Ok, so I know that that's never going to happen, but that doesn't mean I can't come up with my own kind of nunnery! Wouldn't it be great to have some sort of spinster community where we could support and befriend one another. Technically my nunnery wouldn't be like a Catholic nunnery, nor would it be like living like as a sister missionary. Spinsters would have regular jobs and could even date and evenually get married if they wanted to leave the flock. The great thing about my nunnery would be the friendship AND the combination of resources.

That is the kicker. Just imagine how much we could have if we combined our resources. The sad truth of the matter is that statistically, women make less money throughout their lives than men. I don't know why that is, is it the glass ceiling effect, do women start their careers later or do they just choose careers that don't pay as much? It's hard to say, but what I do know is that it is hard to buy a nice home on a spinster's budget or have nice things. But just imagine if 4 spinsters living together combined their 35,000/a year salaries-that's 140,000/year, enough to afford a nice house and stop blowing our money on rent! I'm not really talking about everyone sharing their money equally like the law of consecration, but I am talking about buying a house together and other things together that you couldn't afford alone!

Now I know there are skeptics out there, because I've talked to them about my plan, but it could work. If someone did decide to leave they could sell their share of the house to another spinster(including the equity they had accrued) or rent it out to another spinster (or maybe do a rent to own plan). There would definitely be some kind of contract that would outline all of the particulars. I know spinsters like to be independent and are often transient, but after awhile you just want to settle down and have a house like all your married friends have. Why can't we have the same things? We can, we just have to be more creative about it.

The Economics of Love

I thought it would be fun to post some related posts from blogs that I read. This is from my friend Medicus at http://brainbitsfrommedicus.blogspot.com/. She's not really a spinster, she's too young for that, but she is a single gal. Enjoy.

The Economics of Love by Medicus

"Recently I've been reading The Eustace Diamonds by Sir Anthony Trollope (which I highly recommend to anyone curious about the novel). The main conflicts involve characters that get tangled up in legal harrassments and love affairs because of a set of fabulous diamonds. Amid this melange of crime, politics, and romance, Trollope addresses the issue of love in marriage. Does marriage based on money pay off? Can marriage based on love weather the plights of poverty?"
"This conflict of love versus money in marriage is actually a relatively new predicament to mankind. It wasn't until relatively recent times that Western societies could afford to make marriage arrangements based solely on love. Marriage has historically been mostly an economic business transaction. From the words of anthropologists, marriage is traditionally a relationship between two men made manifest by the exchange of a woman. The transfer of goods for a woman symbolizes the transfer of rights. Types of traditional economical changes include bride wealth (money from husband given to bride's family for compensation), bride service (husband gives service to bride's family for compensation), and dowries (bride has money from her family to bribe grooms to provide security)."
"We can't forget that marriage is also a contract to help untangle the issue of sexuality. The marriage transaction and resulting contract establishes a continuing claim to the right of sexual access to a woman, which involves the eligibility to bear children. Therefore, marriage also links property and inheritance."
"To put it simply, marriage is historically an issue of "sexinomics." In today's society, we can afford to marry for love, but do we really throw aside the primeval sexinomical issues when we are searching for a mate?"

That is a good question, Medicus. I'm sure when we are looking for someone to marry we look more favorably on gainfully employed, at least somewhat, ambitious guys. (Just a sidenote, isn't it interesting that ambition is usually a trait admired in men, but not in women.) Well as my Dad likes to advise me, "Don't marry for money, just hang around the rich until you fall in love!"

Writer's Block Be Gone

So I don't know if I've been suffering severe writer's block or what. But after a long delay, here is another post. More to come soon!

I don't know if this is a good thing, but it always makes me happy when I happen upon someone my age that is also living the single life, especially if it is a person I went to high school with. Just this summer I've discovered that four people I went to high school with are unmarried (3 girls and one guy). Before that I discovered two other girls from school that weren't married, so that makes seven of us unattached alumni. It's not a large number, but it is nice to know I'm not the only one who is nuptially challenged, because sometimes it feels like I'm pretty much the only single gal left from high school. I also now have a roommate that is my same age that I knew several years ago in college. It's nice to feel like we're in this together.