Your suggestions are spot on! The family ward that we merged with did those things that you mentioned and it made all the difference! I think an article in the Ensign with those suggestions would be valuable and is needed. Some people just need a little guidance.

Ziff, you are correct about the numbers being uneven. In my single days my friends and I recognized and valued all of the active males in our singles ward. While we women dealt with the frustrations of single life, we still knew that these were quality men and treated them as such. The last thing we wanted was to let our frustrations lead us to bitterness and male bashing which would only serve to drive them away. They have a hard time with singleness too.

I believe this is a pretty common thing in churches–American ones, at least. Most have more female than male members. The issue might be more salient for Mormons, though, because we place so much emphasis on marrying someone of the same faith.

Your posts have helped to understand much more about what “Ann” was going through but it also made me wonder why the Church does not do more to help singles find mates (or at least I didn’t see anything about that on your blog).

And then I remembered a conversation I had with a female friend (Mormon, as a matter of fact) at our neighborhood swim club many years ago. I had mentioned a study I’d seen that found that arranged marriages and “love” matches had very, very similar success rates (can’t remember the details but they studied couples from a South Asian background). And we both agreed that the results of the study were not surprising because the “falling in love” part of marriage is, really, the easy part, it is the building a successful marriage that is the hard work and takes a long time. We also discussed how one reason for the success of arranged marriages among South Asians may be the role that the whole community plays in seeing that a couple succeeds. (Of course, that can have its downside where the match is a truly awful one and community norms force the couple to stay together.) Indeed, traditionally, communities have always had a vested interest in success of marriages within the community. And thought that arranged marriage might not be such a horrible thing — especially the more modern version where prospective partners have the right to refuse the match.

Now, I know that in the West, especially in America, we (especially women) have a strong aversion to the idea of arranged marriage. And, for good reason I suppose. As my friend and I discussed though we thought that maybe we could see how one could think about arranged marriage in a more positive light. The reason I thought about it (especially as I read the post on 30-something single woman’s experience in a family ward) is that part of Mormonism is very strong community support system. So, I do wonder if some positive, non-coercive, modern version of arranged marriage could be incorporated into the Church.

And, in closing I am linking to the duet between Tevye and Golde (who of course had an arranged marriage!) from the movie of Fiddler on the Roof (hopefully I did the linking correctly, my son just taught me how this a.m.) –

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_Y3180ZXRE

Call me a hopeless romantic but this is so lovely:

(Golde)
Do I love him?
For twenty-five years I’ve lived with him
Fought him, starved with him
Twenty-five years my bed is his
If that’s not love, what is?

(Tevye)
Then you love me?

(Golde)
I suppose I do

(Tevye)
And I suppose I love you too

(Both)
It doesn’t change a thing
But even so
After twenty-five years
It’s nice to know

I like to think I’m a pretty easy going person, but there was one thing that really offended me. I was discussing the Atonement with my visiting teaching companion and a sister we taught, and made the comment about how the Atonement is difficult to comprehend. My VT comp turned and said, “well, it’s really hard to understand the doctrine of the Atonement until you marry and have children. Those relationships are what teach you about your relationship with Christ and HF.”

Great, so now I’m missing both vital gospel-related issues. Celestial marriage and a relationship with my Savior. Thank you for just discounting my entire experience with God.

I think the worst was when I shared my hurt and outrage with a friend (married) and she agreed… After knowing my experiences and what I’ve gone through, she still feels like it’s not enough…

I feel better at church when I have callings that keep me busy during the block meetings. Then I can focus on serving and contributing to the ward instead of feeling unhappy while listening to lesson after lesson about how to raise a good family. My favorite arrangement was when I played the organ in sacrament meeting and then went to nursery. I like nursery because the lessons are simple. I enjoyed celebrating with my young friends how grateful we were for flowers and ears and singing. I also liked nursery because it was so easy to love the children and be loved by them. The children did not care that I did not have any of my own children or that I spent my week translating poetry in dead languages or taught college students. I loved them, and they loved me, and it was so nourishing to feel loved at church instead of an object of suspicion and pity.

“You’re single? But you’re so pretty!” (Variations: “But you’re so smart/spiritual/nice)

I’m not sure whether it’s supposed to be a comfort. If that’s the intent, it never works that I’ve seen, and it always makes the person being discussed want to crawl away.

Which isn’t to say that I don’t think that wards can make a difference, certainly, and I like a lot of the suggestions here. We had an RS lesson a few months ago on this question of making singles feel more welcome. One of the first questions they asked was, why might singles find it difficult to come to church? In retrospect, I think a more interesting question–given that the majority of singles don’t actually come, and I think possible reasons for that aren’t too difficult to discern–would be, for those few who do, what brings you here? Such reasons vary, of course, but I do think Seraphine hits on a number of things that can make it easier.

The point about being treated as an adult is one that definitely hits home. I was in a ward several years ago in which we had to fill out forms for something or other–and on the form, those who were married were automatically classified as adults, while those who were single were categorized as “young adults”. My single roommate and I were kind of blown away–you think you’re maybe being paranoid about this tendency, and then there it is in black and white. Someone in RS in this same ward told us that she remembered her undergrad days of partying, and that must be so fun for us to be doing that. We were somewhat taken aback, given that we were both stressed-out grad students.

I suspect that one the reason for that kind of thing is that married people have all at one point been single, have some experience with it, and of course they draw on that in thinking about what it’s like to be single. But especially if they got married fairly early, I’ve noticed that some people automatically–and likely unconsciously– associate being single with being young, with an early-adult phase of life. So I think it’s worth remembering that knowing what it was like to be single at 20 doesn’t mean you know what it’s like at 30. (Perhaps a loose analogy would be me thinking that I know what it’s like to be a parent because I’ve had the experience of being an aunt. It gives me a window into that world, but in the end I’m looking at an experience that is foreign to me.)

Something that I find particularly challenging has to do with wondering whether anything I say is going to be heard as credible, or taken seriously. Because anyone can trump me by saying, well, once you have a spouse/kids you understand x. After all, I’ve heard all my life that the Really Important Lessons of life are learned through marriage and raising a family. Since I’m clearly not learning those Really Important Lessons, it makes me doubt that I have anything to say to those who are in that more spiritually advanced category. (One of my younger sisters is currently cursed with an insane bishopric member who bears his testimony–to her singles ward–about how married people are more spiritual than singles.) Teaching RS in a family ward, which is what I currently do, is far more intimidating than it was in a singles ward.

But for that reason, I think it’s a really good thing when family wards have singles doing things like teaching (despite the fact that I find it difficult), because it sends a message that perspectives from singles are valued.

There’s another more practical issue that I was recently discussing with my brother. He and his wife frequently invite people from the ward whom they want to get to know better over for dinner. For a variety of logistical reasons, related to both to the fact that families tend to have larger living spaces, and the question of what to do with the kids, it’s often a lot harder for a single to invite married people over than the reverse. But it’s awkward to not be able to reciprocate that kind of thing. I’m wondering what ways there might be to negotiate that difficulty.

A sister I introduced myself to asked me who my husband was. When I told her I was single she looked surprised and said, “But you don’t seem bitter at all!”

Oh, my. I’ve gotten stuff like that, too. My best one was one time when a brother in my ward asked me if I had a husband. When I said no, he said, “Then what are you doing here?” I was too stunned to respond, and his wife promptly called him out on how rude his question was. (My ward is actually really great to me. This was a fluke.)

I just ran across a new blog about LDS Mid-Singles. The first blog post is up, with a discussion on mid-singles magnet wards. The concept is to have the 30-something singles in a stake all attend one family ward together, along with the families that geographically reside in the ward.

I, too, have had a great, supportive family ward. So many of your points resonated with me – people seeking out friendship for friendships sake, not to “fellowship” me, both men and women and families, meaningful callings and assignments to serve others in special cases where appropriate.

In a different ward I had a great bishop that asked to meet with me. I was relatively new to the ward (several months) and assumed I’d be changing callings or something. After talking to me for about 30 minutes I asked what he wanted to meet with me about. He said he just wanted to get to know me so that he could better help me fit into the ward, and also better know how I could help the ward, too. It was a great experience, and one that meant a lot to me.

A couple of funny anecdotes:

A sister I introduced myself to asked me who my husband was. When I told her I was single she looked surprised and said, “But you don’t seem bitter at all!”

An older gentleman that was my home teacher told me that I shouldn’t feel bad about being single (I wasn’t aware that I did…) because there had to be righteous sisters in the Celestial Kingdom to fulfill the law of plural marriage in the eternities.

Sometimes I find that the two things that help me best as a single woman is 1) a healthy sense of humor and 2) working at getting to know people as hard as I want others to work at getting to know me.