I have 29 single female Mormon Facebook friends that are 27 years old or older. I could add at least five more single friends of that age to this list as well that refuse to sign up for Facebook. That’s a lot of single girlfriends! Most of them have expressed to me a desire to be married and most of them expected to have been married by now. So why have they not tied the knot? Many of them are very pretty and stylish. I would describe all of them with at least two or more of the following characteristics: outgoing, fun, smart, ambitious, and active in the church. They are all really just nice, normal and socially adept people. They just all happen to be single.
So is this marriagelessness due to a shortage of nice, normal, socially adept Mormon guys? Is it that the national trend to marry later has rubbed off on the young adults of the church? Have they just not found the right one yet? Do they intimidate guys because they are “too smart” or “too ambitious”? Are they just not putting themselves out there to meet people? Are they in the wrong places at the wrong times? Are they just looking for a specific kind of person and not willing to settle for less? Or is life just really not fair sometimes?
Not that it is bad to marry later in life or that these girls are fated to be spinsters for the rest of their lives (in fact I scratched one girl off the list yesterday because her Facebook status had changed to engaged!), but I think a lot of my friends find themselves wondering what happened, how did their lives become different from their other Mormon peers, especially when they may not have planned it that way? As a spinster of 27+ you really start feeling like a minority in your family and ward. So this group I have amassed of former roommates, ward members, acquaintances and friends is still a minority of the many Mormon girls I have know over the years.
Ah, but maybe we are asking the wrong questions? I have had the same conversation over and over again through the years with my single gal friends. The topic is How do people find each other, fall in love and get married in the first place? Sometimes it seems like it would be a miracle if after all the dates we’ve been on and failed romances we’ve had to find someone who likes us as much as we like him- at the same time. And on top of that that we could both express our feelings to each other, without scaring the other person away or pressuring them into anything, seems unfathomable. But it happens all the time!
I will admit that I have no talent when it comes to interacting with guys. The same girl who was confident five minutes ago can be reduced to a babbling fool in front of a handsome man (it seems weird to call single guys men, guy seems to fit much better). So maybe that is my thing— awkwardness around that opposite gender, but some girls I know have a true talent for making guys like them.
I had a good friend and roommate in college who truly had a gift for attracting guys (of course not all of them were guys you’d want to attract but some of them were). She wasn’t particularly fetching or anything, but she was outgoing and fun and guys flocked to her. She got home from her mission and flew out to Utah a few days before school started at BYU. We had just become roommates and we looking forward to a lot of fun single college activities. I went with her to the BYU bookstore to help her get her books for school the day she arrived and who does she run into-her future husband!-a guy she had known during her freshman year. 3 months later they were engaged, so much for hanging out with my roommate. But the thing was she had only been off her mission like three weeks and she already had a boyfriend, crazy! I could never put my finger on how she did it, it was just innate or something.
Maybe some of my single friends are like me and just not good around guys. I think it would actually be really cool to hire a relationship coach or whatever you would call it, someone who would look at how you act around guys, how you flirted, how you acted on dates and tell you what you needed to work and how to do better. You know maybe something like a makeover, but only for you love life. I did find a really neat TV show kind of like that about a matchmaker in Buffalo, NY-Confessions of a Matchmaker http://www.aetv.com/confessions-of-a-matchmaker/ It was actually a really cute show and the matchmaker was brutally honest but in a way to get people to change not to put them down.
Ok, so I seem to be rambling, but I’m working this out in my head as I go. Anyway, I think probably one or all of the reasons I have mentioned for staying single apply to each of my friends. Obviously this isn’t a cut and dried issue or I couldn’t write a whole blog about it. It’s a super complicated and issues that I haven’t even dreamt of I’m sure are involved. But here is what we know for sure--Life doesn’t always go as planned and here is what we really hope for--Good things come to those who wait!
P.S. I'm going on vacation so I won't be blogging for a few weeks. Please no one be too devasted. :) Oh course if anyone wants to guest blog let me know and I'll add it in the interim.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
Another One Bites the Dust
So I have this problem, I keep losing my friends! They keep getting "better" friends, friends with benefits, boyfriends. And it's happened again, Yes, one of my dear friends that I hang out with a lot just got herself a serious boyfriend and now I never get to see her! I can only assume it will get worse when she most likely gets engaged and then married. I can't be mad at her though for wanting to spend more time with him than me, because I would do exactly the same thing to her if a great guy came around for me.
It seems that girl friends drop off the planet for about a year after they engaged and married, then after that they realize that they actually do need girl friends and that they miss you and want to see you more. It's a bit devasting to one social circle because all the plans you made kind of fall through and you have to find someone to fill your friends place. See my previous post about the friend cycle, http://ldsspinster.blogspot.com/2008/01/hanging-out-but-not-hooking-up.html. (Oh and Future Spinster Librarian whose blog I read occasionally has gone and got herself engaged so I guess I have to take her off of my Spinster blog list soon, oh well).
Anyway such is the life of a spinster. Anyone out there want to be my friend?
It seems that girl friends drop off the planet for about a year after they engaged and married, then after that they realize that they actually do need girl friends and that they miss you and want to see you more. It's a bit devasting to one social circle because all the plans you made kind of fall through and you have to find someone to fill your friends place. See my previous post about the friend cycle, http://ldsspinster.blogspot.com/2008/01/hanging-out-but-not-hooking-up.html. (Oh and Future Spinster Librarian whose blog I read occasionally has gone and got herself engaged so I guess I have to take her off of my Spinster blog list soon, oh well).
Anyway such is the life of a spinster. Anyone out there want to be my friend?
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Roads That Lead to Me
A little while ago I put sitemeter on my blog just to see how many people were coming to my blog and how they were finding out about it and the results have been quite interesting. My favorite thing to do is to see what google and blog searches have led people to me. Some are funny, like naughty spinsters, apparently if you search for that in google I am the first hit!!! But I promise I have never used the word naughty and spinster right next to each other (well until now of course)!
As for the other searches, some were a little melancholy like, I may never marry and think I'll ever get married. Other were precisely the kind of search topic that I wanted to lead people to me, like lds spinster, mormon spinster, and what is a spinster. I was suprised and a little pleased to see searches from what I presume and hope were from other older virgins, like the search, virgins in their 30's ( I actually got two of those). And for my all time favorite, whether it really applies to my site or not, single LDS women panic.
Anyway, I hope my blog can serve as a support to other LDS spinsters out there who may feel alone and that they just don't fit in anywhere. To them I say, you have many friends right here who know exactly how you feel because we are going through the same things you are. Please don't feel depressed or cast out just because you happen not to be married. Marriage is not the thing that brings worth to person (even though in our culture it can sometimes feel like that). You have so many really worthy and wonderful things you can do with your life no matter your marital status. I think I would like to abolish the term 'single'. Because really we aren't single, we have great friends and family who need and love us just like we need and love them. We are not alone.
Ok I will get off my soapbox now, I hope my little peptalk wasn't too cheesy, but it had to be said. And as always I appreciate and enjoy your positive and constructive comments. Alright then, until my next post.
As for the other searches, some were a little melancholy like, I may never marry and think I'll ever get married. Other were precisely the kind of search topic that I wanted to lead people to me, like lds spinster, mormon spinster, and what is a spinster. I was suprised and a little pleased to see searches from what I presume and hope were from other older virgins, like the search, virgins in their 30's ( I actually got two of those). And for my all time favorite, whether it really applies to my site or not, single LDS women panic.
Anyway, I hope my blog can serve as a support to other LDS spinsters out there who may feel alone and that they just don't fit in anywhere. To them I say, you have many friends right here who know exactly how you feel because we are going through the same things you are. Please don't feel depressed or cast out just because you happen not to be married. Marriage is not the thing that brings worth to person (even though in our culture it can sometimes feel like that). You have so many really worthy and wonderful things you can do with your life no matter your marital status. I think I would like to abolish the term 'single'. Because really we aren't single, we have great friends and family who need and love us just like we need and love them. We are not alone.
Ok I will get off my soapbox now, I hope my little peptalk wasn't too cheesy, but it had to be said. And as always I appreciate and enjoy your positive and constructive comments. Alright then, until my next post.
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