A Response to All the Dating Chatter Out There

This is neither my Mormon Blog or my Angry Blog...but it might be mistaken for such for a second.

At the most recent General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the theme was (apparently*) "go and get married...now." Somehow, the single men of the church interpreted this theme to be "if you're not married right now, it's your fault and therefore you're going to go to hell." This prompted a lot of controversy and chatter in multiple forms, from fake motivational posters to manifestos about how women are equally responsible for the fact that the planet is overrun with young single men. As a result of all of this controversy and chatter, I've witnessed a lot of ridiculous conversations (both on facebook and in real life) in which I've abstained from taking part...until now. Here's my take on the subject, and just so y'all know, I am single (but not the bitter kind).

First of all, where are all of these single men? Apparently they're running rampant through the streets and waving their "I don't want to get married" banners somewhere, but I haven't seen them. Maybe I'm just too busy not gussying myself up and presenting my attractive feminine charms to notice them.

Secondly (and maybe finally, haven't decided yet), dating is not that difficult. Sixteen-year-olds do it all the time; intelligent adults in their twenties and thirties should be able to figure it out. Maybe if people spent more time actually dating and less time whining and ranting about who's to blame for all of the singleness out there, people would do better. Some tips:

• Guys: if you like a girl, ask her out; if she doesn't want to date you, ask someone else out; if it seems like its going well, keep dating her; if you don't want to date her anymore, stop asking her out.
• Girls: if a guy asks you out once, go...won't kill you; if he asks you out again and you like him, keep going; if he asks you out again and you're not sure, say yes and keep going until you decide either way; if you know you don't like him, don't go out with him.

Seriously...not that difficult. I guess everyone gets concerned about all the little feelings out there, but guess what? People are resilient. As a species we've had to deal with rejection for several thousand years. Don't think so highly of yourself that you're afraid to tell someone the truth about how you feel because you might destroy him/her emotionally. A pint of ice cream and a "Very Best of Cher" CD later, he/she will get over you. Granted, you shouldn't be like, "you're awful and I never want to date you again," but if you don't like someone, let him/her know that you don't want to keep dating. Don't stunt your happiness/potential to find someone with whom you actually want to be by leading someone to think that he/she might be that person.

Finally, if you're not married and want to be, don't worry, it'll work out eventually. If you're not married and don't want to be, that's fine too.

Okay, maybe this was a little bit of an angry blog post, but I'm not angry. And maybe I'm wrong about the whole thing; I will admit that my view on human interactions isn't necessarily based on interactions with actual humans, and when it comes to emotions, I am slightly exceptional in the fact that I don't have many of them. Also, I haven't had people yell at my blog in a while, so with hope I'll get my viewership up with this one.



*I say "apparently" because I didn't really feel the marriage pressure all that much as I was too busy picking out themes relevant to my personal spiritual growth.