Seen the show, The Bachelorette?
Well, I haven’t, but a group of LDS single girls in California had, and loved it so much, they made their own version: The Mormon Bachelorette
I have a love-hate relationship with the project (ask me about that some other time) but one of the things that has struck me – and impressed me – while watching all their dating shenanigans is just how many great and highly eligible 30-year-old LDS men out there are still single and available.
Sure there are a fair share of weirdos and train wrecks waiting to happen, but there are also a lot of really *awesome* guys out there who are not just leftovers.
That makes me question the validity of the complaint “Where are all the good men?”
If you agree that there is more than one person out there that is compatible with you, who you could build a happy marriage and family with, and you’ve been actively trying to find them, do you think you can honestly claim that you haven’t encountered a single one of these options yet?
Think about it: if you are putting yourself in situations where you are actively meeting LDS men (whether it is at a church school, from church activities, blind dates or even *gasp* through internet dating sites etc.), and you do it for about say 7 years, how astronomical do you think the odds are that you haven’t met a single guy that is good enough yet?
No. “I haven’t met him yet” isn’t a valid excuse. What you mean is:
- I haven’t been trying to meet him yet.
- I haven’t met him when I was ready yet.
- I haven’t gotten to know him yet.
- He hasn’t gotten to know me yet.
- I just haven’t recognized him yet.
Fei
I’d dated 6 guys before my husband and most of them were serious relationships (and that’s not counting all the other guys I never developed full-fledged relationships with). Not all of them would have been optimal for the long run, but had I been emotionally mature and ready, I could have had very happy marriages with a few of them.
These men that could hold my interest, they were rare. I met someone like that once a year, eventually once every two years or so. But I never stopped meeting good options.
They would have been different from what I have today, but they would still have been good. Of course I would say that my marriage is better than what I would have had with the others, but that’s because the life with my husband has become what I want. If I had married those other good options, they would have become my ideal.
There’s a certain minimum level of flexibility and adaptability required to develop good relationships.
If you find that you are having an impossible time finding someone who fits you, don’t blame the people you are meeting. You’re probably a difficult person to please.
Jeremy
This is so true. I have met “her” many times. Yes these were mostly girls that really really liked me but for some reason they didn’t follow through and bridge that gap. It reminds me of a conversation with a girl who was in her late 20′s. She was longing to be married. She told me that she had found that guy. They dated and he even proposed. She told me that she knew very strongly that she should marry him but didn’t have the faith to go through with it. She knew that she had a chance then and now had to wait. It wasn’t a condemnation that she didn’t have faith but the consequences were that she had to wait a bit longer to have the blessings of marriage. God loves us and wants us to marry but he can’t give us something like marriage that we haven’t prepared sufficiently for.
When that guys comes along like a subway train you either have to get on or wait till the next one and you won’t know it’s the right train if you don’t know where you are going.
When the time for decision arrives, the time for preparation is past.
Nicole Spendlove
Poetically to the point train analogy. Choice.
Fei
*Love* the train analogy!
“You won’t know it’s the right train if you don’t know where you are going.”
You can’t keep waiting for a subway train to take you to the moon, that’s for sure.
And there are a lot more trains during “rush hour” than there would be later. You may think the trains will keep coming as frequently as they have, but they won’t.
Tamara
I love Jeremy’s comments. I keep hearing people say, “Men are like buses. There’s a new one around every corner.”
That’s great. It really is. I love buses. I love that they pass by me so often, just as I allowed many “good guys” to pass me by while I was single.
Personally, I consider myself lucky to find my husband. I subscribe to Seneca’s philosophy that “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
I would never have met my husband had I not been prepared! And thank you to all my ex-boyfriends for helping me realize how unprepared I really was!
Elizabeth
While those other excuses may be more accurate, it’s a lot easier to just say “i haven’t met him yet” to the nosey people who ask me this question!!
Fei
@Tamara “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” So, so so true.
@Elizabeth, I prefer the answer “It just hasn’t worked out yet”
I know those nosey people. They never get off your back. First, it’s “Why are you still single?!” Next is, “Are you going to ‘pop the question’ yet?” Then, “When’s the big day? Don’t you have a date yet?” On to “When are you going to start having kids?”
The thing I have to keep in mind is that usually, they ask as their way of showing love and concern. And besides, running a public personal blog for years, I figure my life is everyone’s business and I sure appreciate the nosey people.
Bridget
Hmm, I think I’m going to have to take the devil’s advocate on this one. I think it’s okay to say “I just haven’t met HIM yet” because each of us is looking for one HIM, and if you are still single and not dating anyone, you obviously don’t have HIM in your life.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t great guys out there. There is a world full of fantastic men and even though you meet many along the way, they may not want you, or they may still not be what you want. They aren’t HIM material, meaning he will love and commit to you as you do to him.
I have always had a lot of guys in my life and I have dated a bit, but I have never been in love, and I genuinely believe that the man promised to me has not yet entered my life. When my HIM does enter my life, I’m pretty sure the train will stop and the announcer will not let it move until I get on and know exactly where I’m going.
Jeremy
ooohh. Bridget you said so much that makes me wonder if you don’t quite understand how it works.
First off, we do not live in a world of destiny. The conductor will not stop the train just cause you aren’t ready to get on. Neither will he make you get on. He probably won’t even sound a horn and say “Bridget get on this is the guy”. You have your free agency. You don’t have a guarantee of exaltation and destiny. For destiny is the devils plan. That is why he tries so hard to make us think there is destiny. You aren’t promised to anyone nor is anyone promised to you. Though you might have promised yourself to one person in the preexistence(though very unlikely). And even if you promised yourself to someone in the preexistence there is no guarantee that you marry that man and have a celestial marriage with him. Free Agency is too important for God to do it that way.
Jeremy
Bridget I just looked at your other post and found out you are 32. Honestly from what you said I was thinking much younger. I can’t believe that you have never been in love. You really have to question yourself why and maybe some of it is because of your views on how love is supposed to be. This is generally not normal though I can’t judge your situation because I don’t know you.
Bridget
Just to clarify, I didn’t say “the one”, but “him”. My explanation of HIM is that he is a guy I want to be with, and vice versa. I am very aware of my ability to choose, and that is why I have chosen not to be with guys in the past because there were too many things missing for me to have a deep love for them.
My reference to the train is that it will be very clear for me that he is a good fit because I will want to be with him and he will feel the same in return. Looking for compatibility and deep mutual connections has nothing to do with ruling out agency.
My point was not at all about waiting for someone to tell me whom I’m to marry, but that I am single because I haven’t met a guy I want to marry, meaning I haven’t met him yet.
Fei
I agree that much of dating is the process of finding a mutual relationship: finding someone who likes you in the same way that you like them. It works for most people. For some people, what they like is either really rare, or really unrealistic (either he doesn’t exist or men like that are attracted to something different).
That is a realistic way of looking at it, as opposed to the journey to find “The One”. Jeremy said what I was thinking when he talked about the idea of “The One” and how many people get married to “Him” and still end up in unhappy marriages or divorce.
I don’t believe in “meant to be”s. I don’t believe that Heavenly Father had one specific person in mind in his promise to me that I would have an eternal companion. Instead, I feel like what he promised me were opportunities to develop relationships with good options if I did my part (and became someone who could be a good opportunity for the men he promised blessings to).
Even now that I am married and my husband is my “Him” and my “One” in my life, he is in reality still my option and opportunity for a good relationship. If the both of us are to continue having a good relationship, we need to constantly work on being that one for each other. Singles talk about being the right person at the right place and the right time. Married couples need to think about that more too. It never was a matter of just receiving the blessing of finding each other.
What interested me most about your comment, was when you mentioned being “in love”. That’s something I’ve been wanting to address. I’ve come to really dislike the usage of the word love in dating because I feel like the meaning is so often misunderstood. I think part of the older single demographic are still single because there is a misconception about what love is. They think that love is primarily a feeling. They are not looking for a good companion to love and to be loved by, they are looking for an “in love” experience and the emotions they think should be attached to that.
Being “in love” is usually what leads most people to marriage, but what if you aren’t someone who experiences love that way? What if the particular emotion associated with love isn’t something that you know how to feel? Or what if the way love feels to you isn’t something you have learnt how to recognize?
If you have met and dated a lot of men and have never experienced love the way you dream of, do you think meeting and dating more people would change that? If so, then dating truly becomes a simple process of eliminating guy after guy until you can find one that evokes those emotions within you, and you have to hope that he will have the power to keep that up when you are married.
Amber
I like this way of thinking about it.
Being 30ish and unmarried, it doesn’t help much to hear people talking about how there are many people you can be compatible with, not just one, because then I begin to think there must be something wrong with me in a very general sense if I haven’t managed to find someone among all the wonderful men I’ve been lucky to associate with in the last 12ish years that I have been “eligible” for marriage.
There have been at least three men I have turned down who would have been wonderful husbands to me. Perhaps I COULD have made a marriage work with one of them under different circumstances. But in each case the timing was not right or I was not prepared for that person. I still think often about one of them. I think we could have worked well together, and it makes me sad that I was unable to accept it, but every time I think back to that time in my life I can’t imagine how I could have done things differently. I was the person I was then, and I was going through difficult things that I could not get past no matter how much I tried. Maybe he was one of the right ones, and maybe he could have become THE right one. But I was just not in a place to recognize it at the time.
Perhaps it was the same for some of the men I cared about in the past who themselves could not make things work with me.
This could discourage me (how in the world is it possible for BOTH people to be in the right place at the right time?). Or it could give me hope – there’s not just one and only one opportunity. If I work to be in the place I need to be to love and accept one of the right people, and trust that someone else is doing the same, then eventually there WILL be two of us who are in the right place at the right time.
Jeremy
Amber, Don’t get discouraged. The point is not to think that somehow things work out just perfectly especially without trying. Keep working towards the goal. Faith is action so continue to act. Try not to dwell in the past.
Many people have dated or even married the right person and it ended in break up or divorce. The idea of “the one” makes us think that we have no power or choice but actually we have all the power and choice. Now that you are ready but older you might have to wait a little longer but keep showing your faith through your attitude and actions. Despite what others say and do you are not any less of a person cause you are not married yet. Until that time comes you have a lot to offer.
Penelope
I really like the subway/train metaphor. I was thinking that maybe I would add something to it from my perspective. I was thinking that like your original metaphor, we can choose to get on certain trains or not. We aren’t necessarily told, Hey get on this train nor are we forced to do so. And I think there are times when its a train we’d like to get on but there are restrictions as to who can get on the train. So I might like a certain person but because of something about me, I get filtered out and not allowed to choose that train. Does that makes sense to anyone else except me?
I’m just hoping to extend the metaphor a little more to fit more than just the act of choosing to marry someone. Any thoughts?
I too believe that there is not a “THE ONE” but there are many people we are compatible with. Interestingly I think that changes as we get older.
I too believe that its about being the best that you can be and do what you can with your life AND being open to many different types of relationships. We never know who is going to work with us at different times of our life.
uypoi
im an older single female. i had relationships in my life where i knew that i’m not in love with him, but if we were to marry i knew i would be happy enough. its true that there are multiple different suitable and good options in life. but the honest truth is that if HE/SHE/THE ONE comes into your life, you just know it beyond any doubt, and even vast amounts of intellectual analysis/denial, trying to control your thoughts and feelings, doing actions which are the opposite of what you feel cannot shake your awareness of KNOWING the truth. And in this matter, really there is no control or choice on our part in the way we feel. sorry. …i can say from my own experience, that in my life there was ONE relationship/person/experience who ‘clicked’ for me in that way. when you meet THAT person, all the lists go flying out of the window, even if THEY dont tick any of the boxes you thought you needed to be ticked. you stay focused (whether you are physically with them or not), even though it can sometimes be hard, difficult, frustrating even painful at times, and its all good because you are still being nourished in an essential sense. even if you go your own separate ways down the track, it is unthinkable to term it a failure in any sense because any hurt/pain can never outweigh the happiness the experience brought you, even if for short while. and neither do you need the relationship/experience/person to be replaced or surpassed (sure it would be nice if it happened but if it didnt, the satisfaction of having experienced such happiness in this lifetime is immense…. ) and even if you never ever find anybody else and die alone (worse case scenario) you still have no regrets because it still remains the best thing that you have ever done in your life
…it may seem unrealistic, but it really is the simple truth that just needs acceptance and surrender, not fighting 