NO DATING TILL 16!

I hated that with a passion. It didn't stop me, but it made it less convenient. It would have been better to be able to have my boyfriends over to my house and have a relationship with my parents.

Anyway, trivial but let me just say it again, I HATED THAT ADVICE FROM THE PROFIT!!!!!!

Some creepy bishop that wants to hug me and ask me about sex disgusting and locking young people in the room isn't that illegal.

I hate the pervert "huggy" bishops.

AMEN!

There is one good thing about that rule. It sets firmly the idea in Mormons heads that girls under the age of 16 are not ready for dating, let alone sex or marriage. It makes it harder for them to deal with Joseph Smith marrying 14 year old girls when they find out.

I haven't met many who have a problem with that. A. Double standard, it's okay for a guy. B. It's okay for a profit who was commanded by god. C. It was a different time, many girls married at that age. Doesn't matter that's not true, all they need is a PH holder to say it and they blindly believe.

Yeah, it doesn't bother them. I told my mom about that, JS marrying a 14 year old, and she used the that-was-common-back-then excuse (and apparently she had already known about that marriage too, which surprised me). I tried telling her that actually it wasn't that common and she got mad at me and said, "Oh come on, you know that's not true, you know it was common." And something about I was just being bitter and spiteful and stubborn. Sigh.

That's not unique to Mormons. My brother didn't allow his 4 girls to date until 16. One day one of the girls came home from school and asked that the family go out for pizza for dinner. Little did they know a boy had made the same request of his family. Both families end up at the pizza place and my niece and this boy had a "date."

I hated being in the YW program! I always felt second class to the YM who got to do so many more things.

I hated the fact there were stupid rules that none of my nonmo friends had to follow.....so I basically said fuck it and did my own thing. Church for me was a Sunday only deal. I didn't see mormons except for Sunday. Friday was party night....



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/27/2012 02:02PM by Lethbridge Reprobate.

I hated EVERYTHING. There wasn't one thing I liked. Hated camp, hated all the classes with the idgit crazy girls, hated being groomed to breed, hated being told to turn my brain off, hated the divide it put between me and the "regular" people at school that wore normal clothes. Pretty much anything anyone can remember I hated!

Seconded! Especially the crazy idgit girls, and the breeding agenda, wow.

Although I liked sneaking off at girls camp, breaking the rule about the buddy system and spending all day by myself. It's not like I enjoyed camp the way they intended me to. LOL! Nowadays, I think there would be search teams sent out, but back then I think even the leaders hoped I had gotten lost.

Everything else though... blech. I was always sneaking off from any mormon activity. At church I was lurking in the bathroom or hiding on the stage. At home I was up a tree, at school I had my nose in a book or had snuck into the closed fourth floor, always pretending I was somewhere else. And then finally I was sixteen, and I could spend some evenings away from home. With non mormons!

Being a teen is hard enough. Being a mormon teen can be almost unsurvivable under the wrong conditions. I think I left skid marks as I left home at 18, so desperate to join the real world.

Susan I/S Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
hated the
> divide it put between me and the "regular" people
> at school that wore normal clothes.

That was the worst part. Being the weird Mormon kid at school.

Word!
I hated young women's.
I hated Sunday school where all I heard was:
you weren't born a man,
so you must eternally serve men...
That's what I got out of church.
oh, and the "you must be perfect or you're a failure" talks.
and the crappy no shorts girls camp...
or the mind numbing personal progress busywork shite...
and on and on......
but the basic was woman=servant/slave.
No thanks.

Hated not being allowed to dress or look like the other girls. Even the other mormon girls were allowed to wear pretty much what they wanted, so I really stuck out.

Sometimes the separation was actual, like with priesthood meeting and MIA. Other times it was a wall of scolding, fear, shame, and judgment.

As a result, girls were pretty much an alien creature to me. I didn't know how to talk to them, how to just be with them because, actually, what I wanted most, was to get naked with them -- WHICH WAS WRONG!!! BAD BOY! SHAME ON YOU! GO CONFESS AND REPENT! So, if sex was out of bounds (and I was naive to believe no one else was doing the deed), and being in the proximity of girls switched on the hormones and sinful thoughts, then it would just be easier to avoid girls. Dating (if I could ever figure out how to ask a girl out) seemed pointless and frustrating.

FYI, you weren't supposed to have boyfriends. That is no *group* dating until 16. ;)

What did I like about being a teen mormon? Raised in Utah in a partially active family. Never fit in. My best friend in grade school was from a jackmormon family--but she attended. She was always singled out--which put me in the same situation. Once we hit Jr. High--she went inactive and I was left to deal with the bitchy mormon girls.

My mother allowed us to wear what we wanted--so no big deal.

How we were treated was an entirely different thing. The main reason I went inactive when I knew my marriage was going to fall apart was to save my kids from the same treatment I and my siblings had while growing up.

The worst part though--was those bishopric interviews.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/28/2012 10:26AM by cl2.

Driving privileges were granted at age 16, and *dating* technically speaking seemed to be centered on who was driving as much as anything.

Before LDS kids in our community could "date", they'd just have their parents drop them off at the school ball game or the show or the dance, whatever activity,then if they had a partner then they would hold hands, make out, and do all the stuff that kids would do on a date, except they didn't drive themselves there and they would not be driving their date home. It could be
planned/ arranged in advance by the couple, but as long as they weren't driving it was technically *legal*.


if you had an older sibling that drove to the dance, including bringing you, then left the car in the parking while they were at the dance, and you could get into the car with you partner, you could make out and do whatever else in the car, and it wasn't TECHNICALLY a date because the couple never drove/rode together. so whether or not the wheels rolled with the couple in a car had more to do with it than anything else. the LDS kids in my community made a totally mockery of the no dating until 16 rule. and their LDs parents let them do it. My parents were not easy like that.

Among the many things, I hated that I didn't really want to be a Mormon, but felt a duty to be loyal to the "traditions of my fathers." They sacrificed so much, after all. I hated being at a party drinking a beer and having to endure all of the "Aren't you a Mormon" comments.

TM is told no dating until they are 16.

Reply: "How come Joseph Smith married a 14 year-old then?"

What would parent say to wiggle outta THAT one? "Things were different back then" would be my guess.

I've actually heard TBM's say something about the average age of marriage being younger than it is today, as their excuse for Joesph Smith marrying a 14 year old.

I am not Mormon and never have been. However, I have been doing research because we are military and moved here. My neighbor's daughter plays with my daughter and keeps telling my daughter she "is almost old enough to go to young women's" with her. (She is 2 years older than my daughter.) Anyway, I saw someone say something about JS marrying a 14 year old and had to tell you what the neighbor girl (who is 14) said about that. She told us that JS was "only truly married and had sex with 1 person." So I asked why he would marry all of the other women then. Her response: "The rest of the women he "married" so he could take care of them because there was no one else to take care of them." Pffft!

My BF turned 16 and got his driver's license 4 months before I did. So I'd ask to go to my friend's house--she already drove and would pick me up. Then BF would pick me up and return me there. My parents thought they were really making a huge concession when they told me I could go on a date 2 weeks before my 16th birthday. I remember laughing thinking how funny it was that they really thought that was the first time we'd gone out.

That was one reason I was not about to enforce that rule on my own kids. I'd rather know where they are and who they are actually with.

Being a teenager is no walk in the park to begin with, unless you're lucky enought to be an early maturing boy or late maturing girl. Being a Mormon can be a plus or a minus depending on your peers and environment. In the northeast I found my Mormon peer group enormously brainy, articulate, friendly, and non-judgemental, albeit few in number at my school.

When we moved to the southwest I found no shortage of Mormons but they were needlessly stuck up and insipid. Some even acted like royalty. Imagine that! I quickly developed a social life outside of religion and dropped seminary entirely.

Being a gay teen, now there's double-jeopardy. For those BIC it takes enormous character to put up with a contstant, negative undercurrent. Converts, especially those like myself who were forced by parents to convert (and previously raised on mainstream Protestantism supplemented by MAD Magazine), have a better time of it, namely biding their time until age 18, high school graduation, and a real life afterward.

In the town I grew up in some poor lds kid drove around in a hatchback. The back window was painted white and had a huge CTR shield painted on it. Two thoughts: the white paint would make it harder for anyone to see what was going down in the back seat. The CTR shield would make it harder to go down in the back seat. I think the white paint won the battle.

Ditto for me. I hated the no dating till 16 almost as much as I hated the dress code. No tanks in the AZ summer was brutal.

Funny. I was just thinking about this earlier today. Personally, I don't understand why any child younger than 16 would date anyway. You can't even drive until your 16, so would your parents just cart you and your date's butts around until you get your driver's license? Now that I'm in my twenties, I can take a step back and see that 16 is a great age to start dating. Any younger than that is just...too young.

Think about this deal.

I am upset because there were local ppl totally skirting and flaunting their breaking the dating rule based on the technicality of who was actually driving where. Ppl who were de facto dating before 16, like you, coupled with the fact that I was NOT doing that and totally respecting those rules, and then my show boat TBM MOM busted me for *attempting* to go on a date anyway because I was invited to picnic that happened to include my boss' niece ( the purported datee ) and a dozen other fellow employees and family members. that would be quite a date huh! quite an opportunity to score some booty! (SARCASM!)


that was just round one.

Then my (stupid ass MORmON) parents decided I should dance with a girl who was only 11 at dance festival because she was the purported ward darling and my parents were playing ward politics and wanted to kiss that family's ass.


Noting their earlier penchant for strict rule keeping and then insane inconsistency, I refused because it was against the rules, (and because i did not like the girl which was my right) yah, right on the same page in the hand book as no dating until 16. I got whipped with a lariat rope before that deal was over.

and there you were at the same stage of life de facto dating your under age rear end off! .....I sure do feel sorry for you! (ever been whipped with a lariat rope ? I'd gladly trade you circumstances at that stage of life, ANY TIME, if it were possible !)

BTW Guess what I hated about being raised MORmON - the Church and everything about it !


another way to skirt the dating rules, and then pee on your date, by MORmON royalty

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY143Twz5E4

1. I had my first date on my 8th birthday being a nonmo.
2. The only two of our twelve children who dated before 16 are the only ones not TBMs. They are the only ones who have escaped the control of the church.
3. The real reason for the rule is CONTROL.
4. How are people to learn about the opposite sex if they can't date until they are 16? The view of TSCC is perverted. It is hard enough for men to understand women, or for women to understand men, but to skew their ability to learn about how the other half thinks is bizarre.

I hated all the time I wasted going to stupid young women's activities, attending church and seminary. I was really shy and didn't have any friends in my ward so every camp, activity and conference really sucked. I was miserable at every single one but if I didn't go, my parents would yell at me. I just wish I could have had more free time to hang out with my friends and have more fun. I remember high school as being stressful trying to balance school work with my job and having to deal with church crap all the time.