If you weren't married by 25-30 in the church, did you start to feel like you didn't matter as much because you weren't fitting in and/or living up to your own ideals? It's the trend to get married later now, making the delay more acceptable, but the expectation is always there from the top-down. Many Mormons will secretly judge single adults as defective. I feel for the singles because the church doesn't fully accept them. They're accepted, but with stipulations attached. If male, they probably won't get notable leadership positions. If female, there will probably be gossip laced with pity. What did you notice about the way older singles were treated in the church?

She posted here for years and felt like an outcast while working and contributing to the mormon church for years.

Remember, some women wanted to help her shop for a coat because she couldn't shop effectively as as a single women?

They said she should date and marry a home teacher who was mentally about fifteen years of age.

They said she and her friends had to sit along the edge of the stage at a pot luck and wait for all married women to eat because being married was living up to church standards and being single was admitting defeat.

Another example of segregating the older singles as second class members. They make sure you know your place in the system, right down to when you get to eat.

Thank you for remembering Deenie. I still miss her. She was a marvelous member of this motley crew! Some of her stories were riveting.

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I had a friend who was told at 26 or 29 (I forget!)that she should just give up finding a man because she was just meant to be single. Some women needed to support the church and families without being married themselves. All said very condescending. I lost track of her but I hope that helped her leave!

I remember my mother telling me once that older single women must all be lesbians. That was the only logical explanation in her mind. An adjacent phenomenon I’ve witnessed in the church is how women who struggle to get pregnant are treated. A very close friend from high school tried for over a decade before finally getting pregnant, and then the pregnancy almost killed her. During the years she was trying, she was told things like ‘maybe you were meant to be a mother of other people’s children’ and she was given constant primary leader and nursery leader callings. Imagine being absolutely desperate to have a child and unable despite immense effort for years and being forced to be surrounded by babies every Sunday. And of course, now that she did manage to have one child, the pressure is on to have more even though everyone knows she almost died the first time. Women have two rolls in the church, wife and mother, if you can’t fulfill those rolls you are second class.

Given they knew her circumstances, it’s sadistic they forced her to be around children constantly. It’s like they thought she’d magically become pregnant if she was in their presence.

There is no place in Moronism for single adults. You are either a child or a parent. Mormonism is a conformist society with one model for adult life.

It’s sad and unfair. To me, this is a major way the church is different from mainstream churches. If you’re not living their version of a perfect life, then they don’t want you around.

Somewhere between black and gay.

Being single and being thirty in a singles ward was rough as hell. I always felt like nobody wanted me around and felt like a failure. The pressure on me was huge to find someone to marry quickly before I got too old. Now I don't care as much at 35 years old. I am grateful I did not get married younger or to a Mormon girl. My life would be worse than it is now. A lot of Mormon girls are robots with no personality. It was like dating a dead fish.

“Welcome to our church, where Jesus loves you. We only tolerate you.”

Yeeeep, tolerate and wishing to go away and so I did eventually. I'm confident I will find a normal and more human female to marry then what the church had to offer. Glad I got out of there before the secret handshake shocker. The handshake house of horrors with ghost sheets with poked holes in them haha. Seemed like someone from the 1800's came up with this, oh wait.

After my husband separated from his ex wife, he attended church alone in a ward near the Army post where he was assigned. He took a seat near the front, but said he was later asked to move to the back so that a family could sit where he was sitting. I think that was the beginning of his exit from Mormonism. He was about 35 at the time.

Fortunately, he met me not long after that.

Yeah, single adults are second class members in the church. The older they get, the less they are valued. I hate the way your husband was treated. They segregated him for being divorced and single. He had the right to sit wherever he wanted! Goes to show how much they need the young to be brainwashed.

30 or above. I was 27 when I got married. I was obviously defective. I was always treated that way in mormonism anyway. I wanted to prove I wasn't defective all my life. My therapist asked me if there were other reasons I married my gay ex and I said, "I always felt like I was defective, so since he was defective, too, maybe he could love me." No truer statement.

I was actually dating another guy seriously when my ex proposed to me. He was SURE I was going to marry this other guy and so he finally decided he was going to get married so he wouldn't lose me.

Women who marry gays are considered "sweet spirits" who couldn't find a husband. Have you seen Carol Lynn Pearson's daughter, Emily? Just an example of women who marry gays.

Some mormon men I worked with at Thiokol, who didn't act like asshole mormon men, thought I was pretty hot stuff and extremely intelligent. I found my current boyfriend in that group of chemists and scientists. He wasn't mormon and the mormon men couldn't figure out why I wouldn't marry him. Oh well. Just took me a lot of time to figure it all out.

Being out of mormonism has made me feel a hell of a loss less defective. So much so that when I found out my boyfriend was getting a divorce, I went after him. I knew he wouldn't reject me.

My gorgeous aunt--and I mean gorgeous--when her husband died, she told me how shocked she was to be relegated to the back bench with the single women--any single woman, all the widows, singles, divorcees, etc. My uncle had been a bishop of that same ward and she still was considered irrelevant.

My daughter is now almost 33 and a single mormon, tall, blonde, blue-eyed beauty. She doesn't understand mormon culture very well, but it has been difficult for her. I suspect she is going to get married to the 32 year old she has been dating for over 2 years (like I said, she doesn't get mormon culture--he has wanted to get married for a long time). She doesn't tell me things like this anymore as I told her she'd marry him years ago, but her heathen mother can't be correct. She gets home from Alaska next Thursday. I have signs she is coming home for good or at least getting married before they go back to work for Princess Cruises again next summer.

I know a lot of single mormon women. I FEEL for them.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/12/2018 11:01AM by cl2.

Interesting about your aunt. Even extreme beauty didn't save her status. Now that you mention widows, it's annoying how the church always uses them as a trope. It goes back to Monson being kind to the poor, helpless widows *eye roll*. Single women are treated like babies. Their purpose is to prop the church, not be elevated by it the way young adults, married couples and families are.

Yes. That was a really difficult thing to deal with, but it was more multi-faceted than just feeling ostracized.

1) People didn't treat me like an adult.

2) I felt like my Mormon family members discounted any achievements or were less supportive of good things I was doing, because I wasn't married. It was like "that's all well and good, but when are you going to breed the kids."

3) The church didn't really help when it came to forming relationships. They just heaped guilt on you for not being married and hosted childish activities. The strict rules regarding sexuality also made relationships difficult to navigate.

4) My authentic self was being stifled by Mormonism, so again forming relationships was difficult.

I agree with all of this.

anon2828 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If male,
> they probably won't get notable leadership
> positions.

Actually, although true on its surface, I have been surprised at seeing a fair number of both divorced and never-married men serving as counselors in bishoprics and elders quorum presidencies, especially in the "mission field." When wards get desperate enough, they sometimes break the normal conventions on who they call to positions. 1% Inspiration. 99% Desperation. Or so it seems.

I fell into a woman's trap she was using the older singles ward as her personal dating service. Being a convert i didn't realize it until she said she couldn't go out one Saturday and then another Saturday then was married.
I was pretty heart broken for a few weeks. And was later surrounded by members who "took care" of me. So the ward i was in really wasn't casting me aside. However i did have some awkward hook ups.
Including a woman that was 15 years younger then i was. This was encourage by her mother and father.

I felt that way in TSCC. Like I didn't matter, or like I was defective. When I was in my early twenties, many were confident that I would get married in the future. When I was approaching my late twenties, everyone was like, "Nah, it's not going to happen for you.Maybe you were meant to be single." Maybe they're right. I'm thirty-six and still single.

When I dated, I only dated men outside of TSCC, because only men outside of the church was interested in me. Those relationships didn't last, because I held onto the illusion of "temple marriage." The second relationship didn't last, because my ex became abusive and possessive and I knew that I had to get out of that toxic relationship.

Many members would look at me like "What's wrong with her that she's still single?" I even asked myself that: "What's wrong with me that men don't like me?" Whenever someone in the bishopric called me about a calling, I would hope that it would be something other than Primary (because I was in that calling before for about two years), they always put me in Primary. I was in that calling three times throughout my near twelve year stint in the Morg. I was a Ward Missionary once, but I never really did any real work. I just attended the Gospel Principles class and received the weekly "Ward Mission" email. I wondered what the hell I was doing in that calling since I didn't really do a damn thing.

I went to YSA events and eventually SA events. I started going to SA events early at twenty-seven because the YSA events weren't fun for me anymore at that age. (One of the members of the first ward that I belonged to said, "Oh, you're joining them a few years earlier" indicating that I was never going to get married. Haha.) I went to have a good time, but I never met anyone. There were men that said that they were interested in getting to know me, but all of the effort came in through my end, so I gave up on them. Not to pull the race card, but I'm not sure if my being African-American helped. I am open to interracial relationships (I'm multiracial and grew up with diversity, so I learned at an early age to see people as PEOPLE), but most of the men were not open to me.

Now that I'm out, I don't think about it as much. I would still like to have a family, but I doubt that that's in the cards for me. I am a part of the poetry community, and people don't care that I'm a single woman in my mid-thirties. I've met single women in their forties and fifties that had helped me break out of the mormon mindset that was ingrained in me. And I am glad that I didn't marry in the church. I would prefer a guy that would see me as his equal partner, and not want for me to be a robot that heeds to his every word.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/12/2018 08:27PM by severedpuppetstrings.

It's even worse when you are an overweight teenager and your patriarch mentions NOTHING in your patriarchal blessing about marriage or posterity when all the rest of your laurel class is promised all of it. My dear friend shut down emotionally after her disappointing blessing and it became a self-fulfilling prophesy. She had her opportunities in college, but because she was devout and did not question, decided it wasn't to be. She went on a mission. She became a school teacher. She is still devout. and single.

I'm proud of the above posters! I was also proud of Deanie, for speaking out, and doing so with humor. I shared many of the same experiences she did--and she was not exaggerating! Deanie helped me realize that I was not alone.

I'm glad severedpuppetstrings mentioned the other single women she has met, who have helped her. When I got divorced, the Mormons gave me the calling of regional SA representative, and I was 33. A priesthood holder had the title of President of the SA's, and I was his assistant, but I did all the work. It was almost worth that awful singles experience, to meet the wonderful single women. We were a real support to each other.

I empathize with the singles who are led to believe that something is wrong with THEM. For years, I got teased for graduating from BYU, without finding a husband! Only years later, when I left the cult, I realized that I didn't really enjoy the typical Mormon BYU guy. They creeped me out, when they wanted to pray before dates, or give a blessing on the food in a public restaurant. I was already in love with my high school sweetheart, whom I had known for most of my life, who refused to go on a mission, quit the cult and became an atheist. Several BYU guys proposed marriage on the fifth date--and I had never kissed them, even. We had never met each other's parents. The relationships were shallow, short-lived, and desperate (on their part).

The purpose of the older singles dances was to line up the males on one side of the room, and the females on the other side of the room, play some loud music, and let the bodies collide. Often the music was too loud for conversation. Part of my calling was to take our region's turn at supervising the monthly dance. We had to check the classrooms, and make sure they were locked, and that no one was in them. Worse, we had to patrol the parking lot, and check the cars. Some of the men would take a woman out to their car, mess around, then walk her back in to the dance, then walk out to the car with a different girl. I gave the patrol duties to the men. I did the refreshments, and stayed in the kitchen.

The women were a wonderful support to each other, and we would often do things without the men. There was a shortage of men, anyway. The average widower would re-marry within 5 months! We did the math! Most of the women never remarried.

Too many of the older women got manipulated by con-men, who came into our more affluent neighborhood in search of "wealthy widows." I overheard their conversations. I warned my friends about these scammers, but three of the widows lost their houses, because they married the wrong men. In those days, the State prison would bus in a load of "incarcerated individuals" out on a pass for the evening. I had to fight to put a stop to this, but the fight was still going on when I resigned from the singles. My neighbor dated a burglar, and he bragged that he could break into any house in our neighborhood, anytime he wanted, including hers and mine! I was frightened, living alone. Also, we knew who the polygamists were, and they would show up, looking for other wives. We were allowed to kick them out.

One man stalked me, because he knew I was from a GA family, and he told everyone that he wanted to marry a woman from a GA family, who could support him. He was divorced with 10 children, and did not pay child support. He met and married a school teacher, who was the granddaughter of a GA.

There were women scammers, too. There were some women that we referred to as "funeral-mongers." They would go through the obits, and check out the women who died, who's husbands lived in wealthier neighborhoods, or were professional men. They would go to the funeral, and claim to be a good friend of the deceased wife. My own neighbor succumbed to one of these women, and was married after 5 months. He regrets it, and his children regret it even more.

I think there is dignity in not rushing "out there" and selling yourself to the first bidder. Unlike the Mormons, I believe there is more to life than marriage. Be responsible for your children and family, and your future retirement. A single woman does not have to settle for being relegated to the lowest status of all. She should not throw her life away, because of cult nonsense.

Yikes! I went to the temple with two single friends, in our mid-thirties. We were told that we would only be "ministering angels", in the next life, and never "priestesses or queens" like the married women. I remember filing through the rooms, behind my friends, with the words "ministering angels" screaming in my head. I answered those words with "NOT!" God would not be so unkind and unjust.

Certainly, anyone active in the Church who remains single after a certain age is going to be viewed by members as being somehow "defective".

From the earliest levels of Primary and Sunday School, the "road map" to happiness and success is expressly laid out: baptism, priesthood (for boys), missionary service, TEMPLE marriage, children, grandchildren, callings, etc. Often graphics and illustrations are used to make it as clear as possible.

So if someone is still single near or after the end of fertility (or after the typical age range in which traditional family formation is expected to occur)...well...they obviously took a wrong turn (in the traditional Mormon view) and are falling much shorter of perfection than those "righteous" types who are on the right path and hitting all the right milestones in their life.

Of course many Mormons will be diplomatic about it and "charitably" concede that everyone has different challenges in life. But they're always going to be a bit like looking at someone who has a golf-ball sized mole on their forehead. Old singles don't fit the ideal picture of Mormon life, but they can still pay tithing and clean toilets, so "welcome to Church!" some

If anyone ever had any doubts about LDS being a cult, Dallin
Oak's statement about how the demographics change (with many
young men jumping ship) means many young women will have to
settle for being single in life should settle the issue.

Basically he's saying, "if you can't find a good, TR-holding
Mormon to marry, stay single and childless your whole life." The
possibility of marrying a good, decent non-Mormon and having a
family is not even considered as a possibility.