And now we shall talk about...Marriage.

Get ready for a long one. I started writing, and then had so many things to say that I figured I might as well just get it all out in one shot. There’s a unifying theme here, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s coherent.

My little sister feels that life has wronged her. Actually, that my brother and I have wronged her. As the youngest child she feels that she ought to have had at least three nieces or nephews before entering college, and we have failed to provide her with even a sibling-in-law. She came to BYU as a freshman this summer, and a few weeks before I left she asked me, very earnestly, “Amy, have you ever considered adoption?” I informed her that this wasn’t the best time in my life to be raising a child, especially on my own, and you’d think by now she’d have learned not to be disappointed. In fact, I’ve told her for years that she will be the first in our family to get married and while she has always scoffed in the past, she finally admitted to me last week that, strangely enough, it actually was possible. I think I will wait to get married until after she’s happily settled in with her husband, and maybe a child or two, just so I can prove my point.

I remember one of my first meaningful conversations with my roommate in Virginia. It must have been shortly after our first fast Sunday in the singles ward, where the average age was 27 or 28, and where there were twice as many girls as guys. Several female ward members had stood up to bear their testimony of the ward, talking about their trials (read: singlehood), but adding emotionally that, “I’ve been in this ward for five years and you guys are just like family to me!”

So my roommate and I had an early bonding moment when we confessed to each other that we really, really, really didn’t want to end up there ourselves. It wasn’t even so much about getting married (although of course we wanted to be). It was more about bearing testimonies of singles wards that you’ll never leave and living impatiently through the trial of being unmarried and swarming around the “new blood” in the ward before any of the other girls get to him and talking about how difficult Mormon culture makes it for you and everything else that comes packaged along with being older and single in the Church.

I made a commitment that year. No matter how long it took for me to get married, I would not become a Bitter Single Woman.

I have found that this is a lot easier said than done. Don’t misunderstand me here—I’m quite happy with my life, even with all the ups and downs, and I do consider myself a very positive person. I’m optimistic about the future and about life in general. I know I’ve always managed to be happy in the past, even when I’ve been confused or hurt or disappointed, and therefore I trust that I will continue to be happy in the future. And overall things just get progressively better as I learn about myself and about being a friend and about the Atonement and the role of the gospel and the nature of truth and the importance of family.

But I think we all have this natural ability to zoom in on whatever is not going well, even when everything else is. This is not a bad thing, necessarily, because it helps us to see what changes we need to make, what we’ve let slip, what we can do to be even happier than we are. However, when one thing is persistently not going well, despite all the patience and effort you’ve put into it, it’s almost impossible not to feel just a little jaded.

There’s this John Bytheway book that I read years and years ago when I was too young to be thinking about marriage (but didn’t yet know that I was too young) in which he talks about the people who make their single state the topic of every conversation—“Nice weather today!” “Yeah, but I’m still not married,” or something like that. I remember at the time thinking that it was sort of a silly exaggeration, but hanging out with progressively older singles I’ve come to realize that it’s not as much an exaggeration as I thought. I have met people like that—they’re rare, but they’re out there. It’s these sort of people who make me want to avoid becoming the Bitter Single Woman at all costs—they’re not really fun to be around, and they don’t really seem particularly happy. And they tend to be living their lives as though they’re just getting through this time until they can finally be happily and eternally attached.

But I still can’t help but feel that what I’m doing is sort of “in the meantime,” and it’s hard to find the balance between being honest about where I am in life, and appearing to dwell on it. On the one hand, I feel like I ought to be open about the fact that, yes, I am single, and yes, I want to be married, and yes, dating has mostly been a frustrating and miserable experience for me. I shouldn’t have to cautiously sidestep a topic that’s very much on my mind, especially since if I can vent and occasionally laugh about the situation then it doesn’t seem like such an immense, impenetrable problem. But I’m afraid that if I become too open about my frustrations people will begin to think that’s all there is to me—which is not at all the case! I’m afraid that in my attempt to counteract the Bitter Single Woman by speaking casually and honestly about marriage and singlehood, I am in fact becoming her.

How do I prevent this from happening? Some people are very good at shrugging off the marriage issue and I admire them for that. But I’m afraid that if I just stopped thinking about it and resigned myself to the not always unpleasant possibility of eternal spinsterhood á la Uffish Thought and Melyngoch’s hypothesized abode (minus the procreating cats because of my allergies), I might stop making any effort whatsoever at procuring myself an eternal companion. If I don’t think about it, I’d be in danger of lapsing into complacency and withdrawing into my independence, and there would be no way out at that point. And I do want to be married.

I have lots of reasons to want to be married. There are, of course, a few superficial reasons, like wanting someone who will go to movies with me, or being able to bring someone along to meet my cousins at the next family reunion, or having someone to bake cookies and make dinner for (better yet, with), or having a ready-made friend to hang out with at awkward social gatherings without feeling clingy. And then there are the bigger reasons. I want someone to be there for me and, maybe more importantly, I want to be there for someone. I want the safety of knowing that you have committed yourselves to each other, but I also look forward to all the challenges, expected and unexpected, that come along with that commitment. I get scared sometimes, scared of the thought of losing my independence, scared of being emotionally tied to someone who I will never fully understand, scared of the fact that I will sometimes make mistakes. But I would much rather deal with those fears than avoid them.

The problem, that is certainly not unique to me, is actually getting there. One of my other roommates in Virginia would often say, “It takes a miracle,” and I’ve had other people echo that same sentiment because, logistically, it often seems virtually impossible. Those who get there often seem to do so on sheer dumb luck. There are people who are shy or socially awkward or quirky or outwardly quite ordinary, who nevertheless manage to get themselves happily married early on in the game. And there are people who are outgoing or attractive or talented or particularly socially adept, who nevertheless struggle for a very long time to make anything work. One could say that the first group of people are attractive in ways that aren’t necessarily visible at first sight, and that the second people for all outward appearances may be struggling to develop those qualities that are necessary to creating and maintaining a relationship, but I don’t really buy that. I think that everyone, married or otherwise, possesses qualities that are going to get in the way of a relationship; everyone has imperfections and personality quirks. Some people are going to get married before they’re quite ready for it, and some people who would be absolutely wonderful, committed, and understanding (if imperfect) marriage partners are not going to have that opportunity. It’s almost, but not quite, luck of the draw.

It bothers me that there’s a tendency to wonder what’s wrong with people who don’t get married within the standard LDS time frame. I do it myself. If a guy I have my eye on is past a certain age (as most of them are now that I’m approaching that certain age), then I have a tendency to pause and wonder why he isn’t married yet and if there’s something I don’t know about him that I ought to consider before I let my emotions into the mix. I hate that I think this way because it’s not fair to them any more than it is fair for someone to think the same of me.

A friend once told me that if a girl is older (as in 30+) and single it isn’t really fair—there aren’t enough worthy guys for all the worthy girls (and there is an element of truth to that, for some reason that I don’t understand). But she added that if a guy is older and single it has to be because he has either commitment problems or personality problems—there really isn’t any other explanation with all the great girls out there. I thought that was one of the most unfair statements I’d ever heard. But, male or female, there is a stigma attached to singlehood that doesn’t do anything to help singles who are probably already wondering if there’s anything wrong with them, and have quite possibly already convinced themselves that they are incapable of forming and/or sustaining a meaningful relationship.

Bear with me. My thoughts are scattered and they aren’t all going to tie together nicely here.

It seems like, theoretically, marriage ought not to be so difficult. My roommate told me last week what her dad told her, that the person you marry matters less than you might expect. No matter how head-over-heels in love you are with the other person before marriage, you’re going to find hundreds of things that will bug you afterwards and it’s in working through those things that you really learn to love the other person. That makes sense to me. I’ve often thought that all I really need is for someone who meets a few very basic minimal requirements to decide they’re willing to commit themselves to marriage (with me), and then once that’s done we’ll work out all the little kinks. Simple enough if only I could find myself a guy who feels the same way.

But it’s the “basic minimal requirements” part that gets me, because I don’t know what those basic minimal requirements would be. The first few are pretty obvious—I want someone who is a faithful priesthood bearer because of course that’s important to me. I want someone who I am physically attracted to, but I think there are lots of guys, most quite average looking, to whom I could be attracted (especially if we’re talking minimal requirements here). He’s got to treat me well (I’ll do the same for him, of course) and be committed to the relationship. And he’s got to have a handle on basic social skills, but that almost goes without saying.

But after that, where do I draw the line? Is that really all that’s essential? I know I have some superficial non-necessities—I would love to marry someone who sings well, for instance, but I could still be quite content with a husband who couldn’t carry a tune, and I’ve thought that I’d like to marry a college professor (or future college professor) but I don’t have to. But other things may be essential or may not, I’m really not quite sure. I want someone who loves what he has chosen to do or to study. I want someone who will eat the cookies I bake. I want someone who is in decent physical condition. I want someone who I can have fun with. I want someone who gets along well with my family. I want someone who likes to read as much as I do. I want someone who is an early riser. I want someone who will play with the kids. All these things seem very important to me at some level or another, but I don’t know to what extent I can call them essential.

Of course, this only really matters in the hypothetical world in which all I’m doing is finding someone I’m compatible with and just going for it. In this imaginary world all I have to do is lay out my basic requirements, find someone who thinks I meet his most basic requirements, and then decide that since we both want to get married and since we both seem like good people to marry (because I do think I would be a good wife, and a good mother), then we might as well just do it and skip all those awful pre-marriage phases. Except engagement. Maybe we can do the engagement part just to make sure we’re not making a mistake.

But in the real world things are a lot more complicated. I can’t expect someone to come up to me and say, “Hey, I think we’re compatible. Let’s give this a try.” Instead I have to search him out or he has to search me out and I’m not particularly good at the former and not particularly noticeable to guys who are trying to do the latter. And then I have to get past the get-to-know-you phase, and probably measure up to a lot more than the minimal requirements, and likely compete for the guys attention amidst other girls who I’m sure meet more beyond-minimal requirements than I do. And in real life, my own minimal requirements and the questions about what the minimal requirements actually are don’t exactly matter because the person I eventually marry will be who he will be. That will be the ultimate factor that decides what the requirements are.

Wow. If you have made it this far I am impressed. If you have made it this far without skimming I am even more impressed. And believe me, that is not nearly everything I have to say about the matter. I think single people can talk about marriage longer than married people can :). Anyway, I’ll be quiet now—I’ve said what I sat down to say and a whole lot more.