Here I Go Again...

It's Angry Blog Post Time!  Remember my post back in May about the overwhelming amount of "Single Saints" articles on my now-former ward's website?  Go back and refresh, I'll wait.

I thought they'd died down, but then this happened:

Single Saints:  The Talk

I know, I could just stop following the page and take myself off the list, but I'm a masochist and like to see all the Boston things I'm missing while I'm in my Hawaii apartment studying for the GRE on a weekend because I have no friends in my singles' branch here.  

My online written response was a simple, "oh, good grief," but my actual response was a little bit more wordy.  This "advice" (and I use the quotes because this is advice in the most loose sense, so much so that it's not actually advice at all, come to think of it) basically assumes that all LDS Single Adults have the emotional maturity of nineteen-year-old BYU freshmen.  Ooh, and stereotypes!  Did you know that, after being rejected, all single LDS women binge-eat and watch six-hour-long Jane Austen movies?  Yes, it's true!  Gag me.

While I'd love to go on about how dumb this all is, I'll instead move on to my larger point, which is the following:  IT'S NOT THAT FREAKING BIG OF A DEAL!!!!!  All these articles and stories about the talk just reinforce this idea that dating is this huge, scary, overwhelming thing where you have the potential to  have your heart completely destroyed beyond repair, and this idea is the reason nobody dates!

I dated* a guy one time.  Do you want to know how our "talk" went?  Him:  "I really like you."  Me:  "I really like you, too."  Both of us:  "Cool, now let's proceed to the snogging**."  That was it.  Done.  You know why?  Because there were enough unspoken indicators that we were already on the same page and we weren't all "high stress" about it!  

My advice (for what it's worth):  Date people that you like.  If you like them, show them.  If you don't like people, don't date them.  Girls, don't keep saying "yes" to a guy if you don't like him, no matter how good the free meals are.  Also everyone, if you're holding hands/snuggling/snogging, at least one of you is going to get the idea that something more than friendship is brewing, so don't be slutty.  Let's get the dark, looming cloud away from dating, shall we?

*Note the past tense.  Take that, all you "Not everyone is in a relationship, you know" commenters.  Not that being in one should sway one's opinions at all.  Want proof?  Check out this post, written pre-relationship.

**Kidding...sort of.