After the meeting, a woman came up to me and said something along the lines of how she thought the words were beautiful, but she could tell that I didn’t actually mean them, that she’d been listening and thinking to herself, “she doesn’t really feel what she’s saying.” I was somewhat taken aback, as this (at least in my experience) violates a Mormon cultural norm, in which you say nice things to people about their talks, or you say nothing at all. I’ve heard plenty of talks that I found somewhat boring or even loopy, but I’ve never felt the need to share that sentiment with the speaker–and I figured that those who found my talk boring or loopy had only lost ten minutes of their lives and could go unharmed on their way. Not to mention that I wasn’t saying particularly controversial things (I don’t think!) So this was a bit out of the blue.

I didn’t say anything back–I’m not good at formulating responses on the spot; instead I think I just stared at her blankly. But I have to admit that I was upset, and I doubtless spent too much time over-thinking a few chance remarks from one random person. The comment hit a nerve for me; the recurrent fear that the way I come across in church is alienating, that I’m pretentious; in short, that I’m of the annoying variety of intellectual.

But when I calmed down, something occurred to me. Her basic complaint seemed to be that what I said sounded inauthentic. But if I had given a more traditional talk, or perhaps shared some sentimental stories, that would have been inauthentic. Those who know me would probably have not been able to listen with a straight face. Because that’s not actually how I articulate my faith. Whether or not this talk was any good, it wasn’t insincere. For me, it was actually pretty personal.

One of the somewhat trendy ideas that I’ve heard about from a number of people is the notion of the languages of love. I have to admit that I’m somewhat skeptical about the way it’s usually described–it seems unlikely to me that the complexities of human communication can be boiled down to five neat categories in which people can be slotted–but I do appreciate the basic insight that people don’t communicate or hear different kinds of expressions of love in the same way, and it’s important to be aware of that in negotiating relationships.

Something similar, I suspect, is true of faith. It’s all too easy to dismiss expressions of faith that aren’t in the mode that sounds most natural to you–whether assuming people who talk in more traditional Mormon ways are simply brainwashed automatons, or critiquing people for being too intellectual, or insufficiently faith-promoting, in the way they talk about their beliefs. I do think it takes faith to be willing to set aside personal preferences or concerns and focus on following the prophet. But it can also take some serious faith to hold on to some level of belief, or even just hope, and continue to be involved in a religious tradition when there are aspects of it which you find deeply difficult.

Rather than whipping out a litmus test of “faithfulness,” then, I think it can be worth stopping for at least a minute to listen for the kind of faith that might be underlying people’s comments, even ones expressed in a language that sounds foreign. Because when we say that God communicates to everyone in her own tongue, I doubt that refers only to the fact that he speaks both English and Spanish.

I mentioned on Facebook that I’d gone to this event, and Kevin Barney asked, are you suffering from ordination envy? My reply was that it was a complicated question, and attempting to explain it would be more along the lines of a blog post than a Facebook comment. So here goes.

As a grad student in theology, I know a lot of people, both women and men, who are ordained or who are preparing to be ordained. In watching that, I have of course found myself wondering—what if I weren’t LDS? Would this be something I would  seriously consider? In a way, being LDS has been convenient, in that I haven’t ever had to really grapple with the issue. From what I’ve  seen it can be a difficult decision, one that’s made after a lot of thought and prayer. I can definitely relate to the challenge of trying to figure out what God is saying to you. But I’ve never had to ask that particular question, because that path has never been an option for me.

That said, I don’t actually feel like it’s my particular vocation; though of course I can’t say for sure, I don’t imagine myself pursuing such a thing even if I were in a denomination where it would be a possibility. I’m working toward being an academic theologian, and I have a basic sense of rightness about that—something that has kept me going through the crazier aspects of grad school. So in that sense, no, I don’t have ordination envy. I don’t know what my life will look like, and that’s a real source of stress right now as I finish this program and deal with a nearly non-existent job market—but I don’t have regrets. I’m doing what I want to do.

But “ordination envy” might have more than one meaning. One version might be something along the lines of, not envy in the sense that I wish that were an option for me, but envy of other traditions in which women are ordained. As I was mentioning in a comment on a recent thread, I am so thoroughly Mormon that I go to church and usually don’t even notice that men are the authorities, the ones performing the ordinances. It’s so familiar. And I have to say, being in a divinity school environment and seeing women in other denominations play those kinds of roles was a bit jarring at first. I sometimes wonder to what extent LDS resistance to female ordination stems from the fact that seeing women perform priesthood kinds of functions is so unfamiliar, so unsettling. Despite years of feminism, it was a strange thing for me to get used to.

But I’ve come to really appreciate it. I think it makes a difference on a very visceral and powerful level. No matter what we might say about gender equality, our church services convey a clear unspoken message about which sex is the important one.  And I love seeing other denominations in which women who have those kinds of gifts, who have a lot to contribute to their community in that role, are encouraged to develop that. They’re not accused of being power hungry. They’re expected to listen to where God might be calling them. That perhaps, is where I find the disjunct most difficult. Again, I don’t personally feel a call to that kind of ministry. But as a single woman, I am in an ecclesiastical sense, not only just superfluous, but actually in some sense a problem for an organization that doesn’t know what to do with people like me. (Just to clarify, I’m not talking about the actions of individuals on a local level, but rather the dilemma of where, and even if, singles fit into the church.)

And on that note, one of the other things that was utterly foreign to me is that the marital status of this friend didn’t even seem to be relevant to this process, or her place in the community. As far as I can tell, the fact that she’s married it isn’t seen as an accomplishment on the path to eternal progression; it’s simply where she happens to be. I cannot even imagine.

But getting back to ordination envy. The other meaning that question might have is, do you wish you could be ordained in your own tradition? Do you wish LDS women had the priesthood? Which is of course a different kind of question, since ordination in our tradition isn’t a vocation. We have a priesthood of all believers—except, of course, that it’s actually a priesthood of half the believers.

Well yes, I can probably say that I wish they did. I wish it because I think it would be really cool to be in a church in which women had that. What would it be like, really like, if we thought that women too could be authorized to use the power by which we say the universe was created? I realize that the day-to-day aspects are generally far more mundane. But it’s nonetheless a powerful narrative in which to situate oneself; you can hear it in the way church leaders talk to young men about just what it means that they are ordained to this.  At this council, I was attempting to explain LDS priesthood to a friend, and the way it was gendered. He was flabbergasted. He said, you mean that 12-year-old boys get this but you don’t? I didn’t know what to say. I roll my eyes when people say that it’s not really a big deal because women can do just as much with prayer and faith. I think Mormon priesthood is actually a pretty neat thing. I don’t want to sell that short.

And on the administrative side that is also a component of LDS priesthood, oh yeah. For me, that’s a no-brainer. Honestly, I find it nonsensical to have an ecclesiastical governing system which largely excludes women and in which  final decisions are always made by men. I’ve seen so many women who have reservations about anything, from practical details to broader issues, wrestle with the grim realization that while we may have influence, sometimes a lot of influence, we have no actual power. Our only hope is for the men to listen. In practice, many do; Mormonism, on the whole, is a strikingly benevolent patriarchy. But a patriarchy nonetheless, which means that if the men choose not to listen, there is no recourse. Any autonomy we have—and again, I’m not denying the existence of that—is granted by men. We only have a women’s organization because the  men let us; they oversee it, and they could decide to disband it. The possibility of women’s voices making any difference is entirely contingent on the willingness of men to take them seriously. I can hear people objecting already—men get stuck in that situation, too. They have no guarantee of being heard. It’s undoubtedly true. But I don’t think it’s quite the same. Because it’s not simply that individual women might not get heard; it’s that in the ecclesial realm, a female perspective is inherently marginal. Women are not the core members of the church; we are an auxiliary.

And now I’m getting all worked up. I look at all that and think, all right, bring on female ordination! But this is where on a personal level it gets hard. I’ve gone back and forth on this question, but I have to admit that I’m not sure I myself want the priesthood. I don’t know what to make of that. You might interpret it in terms of a reluctance to step outside the comfort zone of my appointed gender role. Or even to some kind of belief in the way things are currently set up. To be fair, I can’t rule that out. I can actually understand the sentiment expressed by some women that it’s a relief that they don’t have it. The truth is that I probably feel that to some degree myself.

But then I have to ask myself, is it actually a good thing that I feel that way? Because I sometimes wonder whether the fact that I don’t seriously have to think about the question, seeing as how women in the LDS church aren’t going to be ordained anytime soon, allows for a certain complacency. I often hear that men need the priesthood so they’ll get their act together; otherwise they would presumably sit on the couch and watch movies all day. (The fact that this is incredibly condescending to men often seems to be overlooked.) But if that’s actually a sign of a need for ordination, I am in desperate need; I’m not one of those angel-like women who serves others so naturally that she has no need of any other motivation. I’m a religious mess. I’m slipping into inactivity (again) as I write this. If I don’t want the priesthood, in other words, I think that my lack of desire might be for the wrong reasons.

And after writing this whole post, I’m still not sure about the answer to the original question. I don’t know if I would say that I have ordination envy. There is much that I admire and am drawn to in other traditions, but in the end, they aren’t mine. I really do believe in the power of the LDS priesthood—I’ve experienced it—and that complicates the question. On the one hand, it makes me more tied to the church, no matter what I might see elsewhere. On the other, it means that I don’t think women are simply being excluded from some mumbo jumbo superstition which maybe isn’t that big of a deal; what they don’t have is something I very much believe is real.

Perhaps the best way to describe my feelings about the subject is not so much envy, but rather a kind of wistfulness.

I have been obedient to the law of chastity for my entire dating life. I’ve skirted the boundaries once or twice, but I’ve never done anything that necessitated a serious talk with my bishop. While this has not necessarily been easy, I can unreservedly say it’s been the right path for me to follow. Let me start by mentioning my personal reasons.

To make a long story short, I have a tendency to get strongly attached to people and to have strong emotional reactions to friendships and relationships. This can be beneficial for maintaining friendships even when things get rocky, but it can make dating and romantic relationships (which are good at causing intense emotions by their very nature) more emotionally volatile. Looking back at the emotional turmoil I’ve experienced stemming from the few relationships and almost-relationships I’ve had, I am immensely grateful that the emotional complications of sex were not added to already difficult and painful situations.

Also, while there are questions I do have about the law of chastity, I generally think that sexuality is treated too lightly and casually by the culture at large. I’m not in the “sex is only for procreation” camp by any means, but in addition to recognizing the very real consequences that come from being sexually active, I firmly believe that sex should be a meaningful act of intimacy. It is the act through which we create life, and it symbolizes the union of two people, and should not be treated casually. Elder Holland’s thoughts on this subject (primarily in his book Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments) really do resonate with me.

BUT

There have been times in my life when I was ready to throw the law of chastity to the wind. Let me tell you about why I struggle. (Please read these as honest attempts to grapple with a difficult commandment to live and understand rather than an attempt to justify sinful behavior.)

Challenge #1: Living the law of chastity is hard. Our bodies are designed to want and take pleasure in sexual feelings, and as I discussed in one of my previous posts in this series, trying to deny or repress these feelings for years and decades presents challenges.

Negotiating the law of chastity when you’re dating makes things even more complicated. Many singles find themselves in a geographic area, life situation, age bracket, etc., where there are no or few people for them to date in in church circles (see my post on dating). If they actually want to be dating, and don’t want to try and find someone long-distance (which presents its own set of challenges), these singles often choose to date non-members.

I’ve tried doing this on a few occasions, and it’s challenging for a variety of reasons, but one of the reasons is the law of chastity. It is possible to find singles outside the church who do not treat sex casually, who understand its physical and emotional consequences, and who view it as a manifestation of commitment. However, there is not a large population of singles that believe in something akin to our law of chastity, and if you’re trying to expand your dating horizons, the majority of people you meet aren’t going to understand this aspect of your religious life. Even those people who may share some similar values on this issue are probably going to be baffled at why we believe sex can’t happen in a committed relationship that is not marriage. And even if they care about you and respect you, it’s a difficult issue to negotiate.

Let me refer you to a comment (on a recent thread by Kevin Barney at BCC) by the commenter “in the trenches”:

Take me. I’m 30 and single. I can count on one hand the single LDS men I’ve gone on dates with since I graduated at 21 from BYU because I’ve lived in areas with very few single members and therefore have been in family wards for basically all of my 20s. I’m cute. I’m smart and independent and have a really great career. I get asked out ALL the TIME by non-member guys, cute, nice ones. I’m human. I want to go on dates with nice, cute boys. But I also have 14 years of dating experience and I can tell you, it is a CONSTANT walk on a tightrope to date non-member guys, because it’s not just intercourse, it’s everything else that leads up to intercourse, too. It is EXHAUSTING constantly trying to enforce those boundaries, even with very well-intentioned and respectful guys, and it is difficult if not impossible to do it successfully 100 percent of the time. (I would say that is also true with two LDS people once you get past your mid-20s … it is just a different deal when you are 27 than when you are 17 or even 22 or 23. I’m sorry, but it is. Trying to give a relationship time to develop the way it should to enter into a marriage and also walk that line is HARD, no matter who is involved.)

What I think “in the trenches” is trying to get at is that, for better or worse, older singles (both inside and outside the church) tend to be cautious about jumping into marriage. At the same time, they’re typically looking for relationships with serious commitment. And trying to obey the law of chastity when you’re in a committed relationship with someone that you care about (especially if you’re trying to give the relationship time to develop) is pretty darn tricky. And if one of those people isn’t fully committed to the law of chastity, well, then, it makes it that much more difficult. Even if he/she is trying their hardest to be respectful, he/she doesn’t emotionally understand why such caution is necessary. And then when you pit that against strong sexual desires…

Challenge #2: Even though I do not view sex as something to be treated casually or lightly, I’ll admit that I don’t fully understand the law of chastity.

One of the main reasons I struggle to understand the law of chastity is because I see a disconnect between what our leaders teach us and what is happening around me in the daily lives of my non-member friends. While I do see the problematic consequences that can come from casual sex, sexual infidelity, etc., that’s not all I see. I also see adults who are not abstinent making wise and careful decisions about their sex lives in ways that bring them happiness and fulfillment and that don’t necessarily lead to horrible physical and emotional consequences. Take Stella’s story on my previous thread about “no sex”, for a specific example:

…I finally decided, at 30, that I would figure out my sexuality on my own. It’s been freeing in many ways….It didn’t lead to any addictions of any kind. It didn’t lead to thoughts of guilt or evil. It didn’t put a rift between God and myself, though I can’t go to the temple anymore, I’m ok with that because the temple, honestly, was never a place I felt really good in….I have come to realize that it is possible to feel close to God and not deny my sexuality as well.

It is a hard road to travel. When you’re not married you have to take into account the other people your partners have been with. It takes a lot of guts to tell the man you love to go and get tested before anything is going to happen. And still, even then, you have to be very careful in avoiding a lot of things that are just not worth the chances. You have to learn about condoms and birth control and so many things you didn’t deal with when being abstinent. However, there are very good and logical ways to do this and that has been a good education for myself.

One night stands were never ok for me and so it still does take a lot of work to actually get to a place of intimacy and sex. I have more understanding and empathy for married couples who find themselves in bad sexual situations. Truth be told, from what I’ve seen, there are more bad sexual relationships going on in marriages than good. I wonder if it’s because one or the other isn’t sure what they want/like etc….because even the thoughts of sex were off limits.

For me, learning what I like and don’t like, learning about sex in general has been very rewarding and satisfying. I know this isn’t helping the post at all, I just wanted to share the fact that having sex, for me, didn’t do so many things I had been taught that it would. I always heard that once you had it it became SO much easier to have it again and again and to get careless. That’s not true. Its just as easy or not easy to control it as it was before I started having sex. It’s helped me better understand problems in sex. I’ve now had a few partners and honestly, only one of them was a really good match sexually. This makes me grateful that I know more things to see and understand when finding a life partner. It helps to go into a relationship knowing my limits and desires. It has helped me know the frustrations and figure out ways to deal with them ( I dated a man who only wanted to have sex once a week and that was a huge struggle between us) et etc etc.

It’s, in all honesty, made me feel normal and aware instead of infantile and repressed. And while I don’t have a boyfriend now, it’s still a struggle to not have sex, but at the same time, I am in control and I know myself and my body. I know how to handle things and I am not frustrated anymore. It’s been the best decision I’ve made the past two years.

I’m not sure what to do with stories and experiences like this. I know that the gut reaction of many in the church would be to say something like “you can find happiness in sin, but you can find more happiness in living a higher law,” but to me statements like this feel too simplistic to describe the reality on the ground. Many people I know seem authentically and deeply happier (*not* in a “ooh, look I’m sinning”) kind of way from having sex. And they are not necessarily facing all the horrible consequences I was told about by my YW leaders, and it makes me wonder.

I fully acknowledge that I don’t fully understand all these issues. Additionally, I take my covenants with God extremely seriously, and I’m choosing to live the law of chastity even though I don’t fully understand it because of the covenants I’ve made. These covenants are something that I cannot easily set aside. And like I said initially, I have no doubts that obeying the law of chastity has been the correct decision for me.

But I also want to say that my personal decisions regarding the law of chastity are open to future revision. Currently, the best choice for me is to be sexually abstinent, and there’s a very good chance this won’t change until I’m married. Now that I’m dating again, I will not allow others to pressure me into any kind of sexual actions (or any degree of physical intimacy) that make me uncomfortable. But I reserve the right in my future relationships to make decisions about my sexuality that are right for me, whatever those decisions may be.

A final note: While I realize this issue produces strong feelings, and I encourage people from divergent positions to express their thoughts, opinions, experiences, etc., I do not want to see any judgments about other people’s experiences or thoughts if they differ from your own. You can disagree, question assumptions, etc., but any calls to repentance, name-calling, etc., will be deleted. Let’s all assume that those of who have made different decisions regarding this issue are doing so for real, meaningful reasons.

However, the fact that my perspective on the church is informed by feminism is not one of them. And I find myself bristling when concern with feminist issues is placed in that category, as if it were an affliction to be borne. As if some people have to struggle with illness or unemployment, and others come down with a bad case of feminism.

There are those who hold far more conservative political views than I do. I might disagree with their perspective. But it would be condescending in the extreme for me to treat this as a kind of personal trial for them, and express sentiments along the lines of, I feel so sorry for you that you are afflicted with this, and I can only pray that you will be able to overcome this point of view and find peace. Yet I’m thinking of a TA at BYU who commented on a paper about feminism written by one of my sisters, “I feel so sorry for women like you.” Or a home teacher years ago who compared having feminist questions to dealing with the effects of emotional abuse, both situations that required recovery. Or the sentiment I’ve heard more than once along the lines of, I used to see things in a feminist way, but now I’ve moved beyond that particular trial, and I hope you will as well.

I think there is sometimes a tendency among Latter-day Saints to hear any question about doctrine or practice as a request for personal reassurance. But when I raise questions about the implications of male-only priesthood, for example, or the way in which liturgical practices are gendered, I am not looking to be reassured that a) God loves women, or b) the church is true, so not to worry. In fact, if both those statements are correct, it  makes such gendered practices more difficult to make sense of, not less. And I think resorting too quickly to such answers can be an all too convenient way of not grappling with challenging questions.

Yes, church practices regarding gender have caused me personal pain; of course these kinds of questions are more than abstract ones for me. But I see them as qualitatively different from “trials,” at least in the sense the term is generally used in the church. I realize people have very different perspectives on these issues, that there is disagreement about what various doctrines and practices actually mean. But I think we owe each other the courtesy of taking other people’s questions (feminist or otherwise) seriously, rather than dismissing them as a kind of personal trial for the person who raises them.

http://the-exponent.com/2010/01/22/announcement-exponent-ii-submissions-request/

Niblets nominations

If you don’t want to do any nominations, you can also amuse yourself by starting to look through the nomination thread, which already references some great posts from 2009.

P.S. Our very own Ziff will be doing the statistical analysis of the eventual Niblets results!

To make a long story short, in one of my singles wards I almost went inactive (I’ll tell this story at a later date), and I was nervous about switching to a family ward because I was afraid I would feel even more alienated and out of place. Luckily, the opposite was the case–I attended the most amazing family ward I have ever been in, and I can’t even begin to enumerate the blessings that came into my life because of being in that ward.

However, as I’ve gotten older, even though I’ve primarily been in good, supportive, loving wards, being in a family ward has gotten increasingly more difficult. My post on marriage primarily addresses the reasons why, and a lot of the comments echo my own feelings (see especially comments #5 and #26 by Ardis) but I’d also like to reference thoughts by Karen H and Lynnette from a recent post by Kevin Barney at BCC. In the comments of Kevin’s post, there was a discussion about why church attendance is difficult for singles. Karen H. commented,

Trust me when I say that single members understand that they are an exception. For faithful single members it is a gut wrenching, frequent tear inducing, constant heartache of understanding. Not only do they deal with the loneliness of being single, they accurately see the lack of potential dating partners, and they are literally told that this life experience that they would do anything to change, will also keep them out of the highest level of heaven. What is the most often “comforting” phrase that they hear? “You’ll find someone in the next life.” That’s right–they are told the spiritual equivalent of “this life’s pretty much a wash for you. Then you’ll die.” Then, based not on scripture, but on an oft repeated cliche, they’re told “don’t worry, then you’ll get to marry a dead guy.”

And Lynnette wrote,

LDS singles are well aware that they’re supposed to get married, regardless of how well (or not) they’re treated at church. Really. I promise….Much of the time, I feel like I’m holding on by my fingernails when it comes to maintaining activity in the church. My ward is fabulous, and yet it still feels just brutal some weeks to go and deal with the implicit message that I’ve failed at the most important thing in life. I have to admit that for me, this is less an incentive to redouble my efforts to get married than an incentive to simply not go to church anymore. I wish I had something more constructive to say, but honestly, I’m at a loss.

By it’s very nature, church-going is often painful for singles, and I’m not sure that this is entirely avoidable, unless the church is going to stop teaching family as one of the core principles of the gospel, which they’re not going to do; I’m not sure that most singles would even want this. However, there are ways of making family wards a more inclusive and supportive environment for singles. Let me talk about my experience in the family ward I was in after leaving the singles ward–I think this will convey ways that church can be a friendlier place for singles.

*The first week I was in my ward, three or four people came up to me to introduce themselves, ask me if I was new to the ward, etc. As I spent more time in the ward, this changed–people got to know me, and then they would come up and ask questions about my life and how I was doing.

*I had a calling within a few weeks, and the entire time I was in the ward, I had callings that felt meaningful to me.

*A month or two after I started attending the ward, they had a panel discussion in a joint RS/Priesthood meeting about teaching and raising children. They asked me to participate on the panel because they genuinely wanted to hear my perspective on this issue. After being on this panel, I was called as a primary teacher because the primary president valued the thoughts I had shared.

*People in the ward took an active interest in my life. They would ask me about how school or teaching was going, and they would talk to me about their own lives. These interactions were not motivated by pity, but by a genuine desire to get to know me and develop a meaningful relationship with me. I did not get intrusive inquiries into my dating life.

*Multiple families regularly invited me to their homes to spend time with them, since they knew that my family (parents, siblings, etc.) were far away. (Incidentally, this is something I welcome as a single in the church–my family is far away, and hanging out with other people’s families that I feel comfortable with makes me less homesick for my parents, siblings, and nephews.)

*Men in the ward weren’t afraid to speak with me at church, ward activities, or when I visited their homes. Quite a few men in my ward had been in the graduate program I was in, and so I had some great conversations about the program, professors we enjoyed, the stresses of graduate school life, etc. These men’s wives did not freak out that I was getting to know their husbands because they understood I needed friends and people to talk to (and they also developed friendships with me based around our shared interests).

*The members and leadership of the ward treated me like a mature, intelligent person. I was treated like an adult, rather than someone still in young men or young women’s (which, honestly, is how singles are sometimes treated). No one ever told me that I would understand “X” gospel principle when I got married, had children, etc. Ward members recognized that because I had unique experiences, I had unique insights to share, and they valued my insights.

*I was given home and visiting teachers that I feel were inspired choices. At the time I moved into the ward, I did not have a car, and I was assigned home teachers who could drive me to and from church. And my visiting teacher took me to the grocery store about once a month to do my major shopping and counted that as her monthly visit, which was a fabulous arrangement by me. (One piece of advice: do not assign singles to solely home- and visit-teach one another–they should not be segregated from the rest of the ward members.)

Overall, this ward was a place that embraced people for who they were and made sure that everyone felt welcome. Honestly, I don’t think singles are the only people who can feel out of place at church, and I think a lot of these strategies can be used to make a church more inclusive, welcoming place for everyone (in whatever life circumstances they may find themselves). Also, I recognize that each of us has limitations and challenges (i.e. my sister Vada has a difficult time reaching out because she is chasing her small children around all the time). These are meant as broadly applicable recommendations and not as judgments of individuals or leaders, all of whom are dealing with a myriad of challenges. Also, I am fully aware that singles can and should be part of this effort to reach out and and make wards a more inclusive place. Still, these suggestions are a place to start.

The social issues I think are easier to figure out than the doctrinal issues. Returning to the initial comments by Karen H. and Lynnette, what makes church especially difficult for singles is not necessarily how they’re treated by individual members (though this can make something that is by it’s nature difficult even more difficult). However, church is primarily difficult because of the unrelenting emphasis on marriage and family.

Like I said, no one is asking for the family to be downplayed at church, but trying to figure out how to maintain an ideal without completely alienating those that don’t fit it is challenging. Here are a few suggestions I have (though I acknowledge these are incomplete and insufficient):

*As Katya said on my previous thread, don’t resort to platitudes or false comfort when talking about marriage to singles (i.e. “you’ll get married in the next life”). It’s much easier to hear empathetic comments like “I’m not sure why you haven’t had the chance to be married and have a family yet, but I’m sure that must be really hard. How do you deal with it?”

*If you’re a teacher, be aware that many people do not fit family ideals. if you’re teaching a lesson on service in the family, for example, ask at least one question that applies to people who don’t fit the ideal: you could say something like “not all of us have family members that we can serve on a regular basis. What challenges does this situation present, and how can we overcome them?” Ask questions about dealing with the real challenges of the here and now rather than saying something like “here’s how this lesson will apply to you singles in the future.” Incidentally, this suggestion is more broadly applicable and can be adapted to approach other people in non-ideal situations like divorce, infertility, etc.

*If you’re a leader with some control over talks, lessons, etc., don’t focus on the family at the expense of other basic gospel principles. All members, both married and single, need to hear more about the Atonement, faith, repentance, listening to the spirit, etc.

So, there are my list of suggestions. Any other suggestions, stories, insights? I’d especially be appreciative of comments from singles who have found ways of dealing with hearing about families and marriage at church week after week after week while still maintaining their emotional sanity. For me, I find the best practices are to focus on feeling the spirit, to connect with friends in the ward (even if we’re naughty and talk in the halls during Sunday School), and to give myself permission to leave if church is not aiding my spiritual growth that week.

I have never been married, so this post is not about being married. Instead, it’s about the fun and excitement you experience when most everyone around you (including younger siblings) gets married and you don’t. I want to start with a couple of personal stories which are difficult for me to tell, but I’m hoping they’ll prompt others to share their own stories. And I’m hoping they’ll help illustrate how difficult it can be to be single in the Mormon church.

Both of my younger sisters are married, and both of their marriages prompted or corresponded to an emotional crisis in my life–it was pretty much all I could do to make it through their weddings and receptions without bursting into tears (not tears of joy). My next youngest sister (Vada) got married when she was 22 and I was 24. Her marriage was generally difficult for me because she was the sister who was my “competition” when we were growing up–we had similar interests and talents, and we often found ourselves (mostly subconsciously) trying to see who could do things first or better. Clearly, she was “better” at dating and marriage than I was.

But her wedding was even more difficult because when she started dating her husband, her husband’s brother and I went on some double-dates with them. To make a long story short, she and her husband got engaged, and his brother and I went on a few dates, and then he started dating someone else. At the time, this whole series of events had huge symbolic significance for me. It represented how my sister (and everyone else I seemed to know) was “good” at dating/marriage/relationships and how I was a “failure.” I worried that there was something fundamentally flawed with me since I couldn’t manage to find any Mormon guys who were seriously interested in dating me.

In hindsight, I realize this perspective wasn’t accurate. Dating and marriage is complicated for most everyone, and while I may find some things harder than other people, I am not a “failure,” nor is there anything inherently wrong with me. But at the time, watching my younger sister get married when I felt like such a failure was not easy.

My next youngest sister’s marriage was probably even more emotionally difficult for me. She got engaged to her husband right about the same time that I got engaged to my ex-fiance. Initially, we even talked about how we might get married the same day/week to make things easier on family members who had to travel. But as her marriage plans went forward, my ex started having second thoughts, and in the end, she got married and I didn’t.

In hindsight, I am glad that what happened did happen. You should not get married if you are feeling conflicted and uncertain, and I am glad my ex did not just marry me because it was what he was expected to do under the circumstances. But it was an enormously painful experience. Not only was I trying to process being engaged to someone who was highly ambivalent about marrying me, which was difficult in and of itself, I was watching my sister marry someone who was certain he wanted to marry her. Again, it was hard not to make comparisons and wonder what was wrong with me. Moreover, my ex and I both went to the wedding/reception, and I spent the entire day fielding questions from friends and family members like “When are you two going to get married?” I finally had to run and hide in my aunt and uncle’s house because I couldn’t calmly say one more time something like, “We’re taking our time with things to make sure we are ready to take such a large step.” This experience was especially painful because not only did it reinforce my own “failure,” it came at a point in my life where one of the things I wanted most in my life was for things to work out between me and my ex.

All this being said, I am extremely happy for my sisters. They have married wonderful men, and despite how difficult their weddings were for me, I see the blessings that have come into their lives from being married (and I have some pretty fantastic nephews). I am also happy with the path my life has taken, and as much as I want to get married and have a family, I love my job, and I love that I was able to go to graduate school. I’ve been able to do things as a single person that would have been much more difficult if I had gotten married at a younger age.

However, even though I know that marriage is a huge step, that I could have been married but it wouldn’t have been the right thing, that I have made the correct decisions in my life and am happy with where I’m at, it’s not always easy. Part of this has to do with the fact that I do want to get married and have a family. Part of this also has to do with the difficulty of negotiating church as a single woman. It’s difficult to see women you babysat (or could have babysat) being treated as more fully adult than you are because they are married and you are not.

To be honest, in the world outside church it’s not as difficult. For example, at work, I am first and foremost a teacher. My world is consumed with figuring out how to connect with my students, grading papers, conversing with other teachers about classroom pedagogy, etc. My interactions with other people in this environment revolve around my identity as a teacher, which is an identity that I embrace and value. I experienced something similar in graduate school–my interactions with other people in that environment revolved around my identity as an academic, which was an identity I embraced and valued. At church, my primary identity should be “daughter of God” or “sister in the gospel,” but it’s typically “unmarried 30-something single woman.” My primary identity is often defined by what I am not rather than what I am.

You might get lucky (like me) and end up in wards like the ones I’ve primarily been in: people embrace the positive aspects of your identity, ask you about your schooling or teaching (rather than your non-existent dating life), and give you callings that help you feel like you have an important contribution to make. However, it’s hard not to feel like there’s something wrong with you because you can’t seem to do what everyone else around you is apparently managing. Even though you know many of the marriages around you likely have serious problems, and you much prefer your single state to an unhappy marriage, when the church teaches that your sole purpose in life (especially when you’re a woman) is to get married and have a family, church is not an easy place to be sometimes.

While I have personally decided that the blessings the church brings into my life outweighs these struggles, I am not surprised that the church is losing a lot of its single members. When you don’t fit the ideal, and you’re reminded of this on a regular basis, it’s difficult to not end up wondering what is wrong with you (as evidenced more directly through my experiences with my sisters’ weddings) and go elsewhere to find peace and fulfillment.

It’s with this context in mind that I find the prohibition on prayer to Heavenly Mother so troubling.  Because in essence, it closes the loophole.  If we want to find out for ourselves if this is a divinely inspired directive, to whom can we go?  We can’t exactly ask her if it is in fact her will that we not talk to her.

I imagine that people are thinking at this point, it’s not as if you have nowhere to go.  You can certainly pray (in the prescribed manner) about the legitimacy of this proscription.  But the more I think about that option, the more it bothers me. Because to ask Heavenly Father if this is legitimate implicitly supports the idea that it’s his decision to make, and that communication with her must be mediated through him. If women are indeed full agents in the eternities, as I hope they are, the only way to explain Heavenly Mother’s silence is that it’s her decision.  She’s the one, therefore, who should be accountable for it, and should be the one to ask about it.

I was recently explaining our doctrine of Heavenly Mother to a non-member. He was attempting to be respectful and polite, but he was also clearly baffled. You believe in a divine feminine, but you’re not allowed to talk to her? And I have to admit that the more I attempted to explain, the stranger the situation sounded to me. I find it especially troubling given that one of the most powerful doctrines in Mormonism is that of the direct connection between the individual and the divine.

Of course, it’s possible that for a reason unknown to us, Heavenly Mother has chosen to be the silent partner and communicate to us through her husband.  It’s true that Heavenly Father often opts to communicate through others.  But that communication, as I mentioned, never rules out the possibility of bypassing those others and talking to him directly.  There’s no comparable direct line to Heavenly Mother–or at the very least, the line has been placed on the other side of a barrier that says “do not enter.” (I have to credit my sister Melyngoch for the question: Heavenly Mother, is this line secure?)

Our model of revelation is that we don’t get it until we ask for it.  What, then, are we to make of a situation in which we can’t communicate with the divine person who could give the revelation?

Introductory note #2: This is not my post on the law of chastity itself. Instead, this is a post on trying to figure out how to deal with your sexuality when you’ve made a commitment to live the law of chastity. So, I don’t want the comments on this post to end up in a debate on the merits of the law of chastity (I’ll give you a chance to have this discussion at a later date). Instead, I want to discuss a more complicated (and to me, pertinent) problem: how do you deal with your sexuality when you’re committed to living this law, especially when there’s no clear end in sight?

I have a healthy attitude about my sexuality, but I don’t have a healthy relationship with it. Which I think is kind of inevitable if you’re a 31-year-old single member of the church who’s trying to live the law of chastity. Luckily, I don’t have a dysfunctional relationship with my sexuality–thus far, I’ve managed to avoid a pornography addiction, and my sex drive and I manage to live in the same body relatively peacefully a lot of the time.

But my relationship with my sexuality is complicated. My own strategy for dealing with things has been to take my sex drive and try to shove it as far down into my psyche as possible. And when and if it emerges, repeat. This worked pretty well through college, but it’s become increasingly more difficult the older I get. I think part of this is hormonal/physical–I’m quite aware of the studies that show that most women’s sex drives peak as they approach their 30s. I think part of it is also that my relationship with the church has changed over the past decade, and this has made me reconsider my relationship to my sexuality on a few occasions.

I spent a large portion of my early years trying to follow the counsel of my leaders and live the commandments with exactness. This meant that when sexual thoughts entered my brain (which they inevitably do unless you’re a completely asexual person, which I am not), I sang hymns, read my scriptures, etc. In fact, I repressed awareness of my sexuality so severely that I had difficulties negotiating relationships with members of the opposite sex–any encounter with someone I liked triggered the possibility that unwanted thoughts, emotions, and feelings would come rushing to the surface, and I didn’t know how to deal with these. So I made them all go away instead.

This is not a strategy that works indefinitely. First, if you actually want to date and have relationships, you have to be a little more open and a little less repressed. You have to be able to recognize attraction and act on it, which wasn’t possible in the state I lived in throughout much of high school and college. About the same time I was figuring out that I needed to be a bit more self-aware when it came to this issue, I was immersing myself in feminism (and critical theory more generally) and realizing that my relationship with the church was going to be more complicated than I initially had supposed. I could no longer obey leaders just because. I had to figure out if their counsel was the right counsel for me.

To make a long story short, I decided the church’s stance on sexuality didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, and I got pretty close to throwing in the towel on the whole chastity thing. However, in the end, I (re-)decided to live the law of chastity, which was, incidentally, the right decision for me. However, at that point, full and total denial of my sexuality was no longer an option. It was here to stay, and I’ve since realized that my sex drive is quite healthy (well, as best as I can understand these matters given that I try to repress my sex drive almost all of the time).

And here’s where I’m stuck (which I suspect is where a whole lot of other singles my age are stuck). While I am by no means perfect, I generally do my best to avoid media imagery, etc., that might arouse unwanted thoughts and feelings. But honestly, even when I’m super careful about media exposure and am preoccupied with life stuff, my sex drive doesn’t go away. It’s quite annoying and frustrating, and to be honest, the church isn’t giving me a lot of helpful advice on how to negotiate a sex drive that won’t stay repressed. I can’t sing hymns and avoid all media for the next 30-40 years of my life (even doing that for the next 5 sounds daunting). Also, right now I’m not really dating, but things are likely to get more complicated when I end up in another relationship. Repression is much more challenging to maintain when you spend a lot of time with someone to whom you are attracted.

I am currently committed to living the law of chastity, and a lot would have to change in my life for me to reconsider this commitment. I know that I’m currently making the right decisions (or the best decisions I can make under the circumstances) in regards to my sexuality, and I accept that the gospel entails hardship and sacrifice. But I find that the church’s discourse on sex, sexuality, and chastity is pretty much non-helpful for someone in my situation–someone who’s in her 30s, hoping to get married at some point, but with no surety that that this will actually happen anytime in the immediate future (or ever). I’ll manage somehow down my current path, but I’m hoping to hear from others in a similar situation (i.e. have spent at least a decade of your life trying to negotiate this issue) and how you’ve managed dealing with your sexuality and living the law of chastity simultaneously. Or, perhaps, what you’ve learned from your difficulties doing so?

P.S. This is an issue of concern for me, but please don’t assume that this is the primary trial of my life. I have a meaningful, fulfilling life with many joys and sorrows, and the issues with my sexuality are often on the back burner. Therefore, if you tell me something like “go out and get a life and this problem will go away,” I will likely delete your comment.