Pluralism in Singleton (a single male perspective) *A guest Author*

The following post was written by a friend, I hope you like it. A little bit about him: His name is Brett Giles. He am 32 years old, and currently lives near Paradise Valley, Arizona. He works by day as an accounting clerk for a mining company and divides his time outside of work between his own writing, spending time with his 5 year old daughter, and deciding if he should play guitar, watch Doctor Who, or finally finish whichever book is on his bookshelf. There is a question that I get asked surprisingly often. It’s not so much a question as a trend. Let me put it briefly this way: who/why/how often/when/have/are you (not) dat(e/ed/ing) (very often/right now/this weekend/that person huddled in a miserable ball in the corner) etc. Sometimes these questions come from older people. They mean well, usually they are married or in committed relationships themselves and wonder if maybe it would my life easier/better/more fulfilling if I dated and maybe even found a "partner." Sometimes it comes from single people my own age. If it comes from a girl, my ego assumes that the hidden question behind this question is "do you want to date me, why haven't you, yet?" Sometimes the question comes from my males peers, my ego is still beg enough that it occurs to me that the preceding questions may still apply but that is irrelevant. There are a lot of answers to such a general, well, more of a theme than a question, but I think the best answer is "I have/am." Whoa, you ask; You have/am? What does that even mean, and how is it possible? I have learned a lot about the publishing industry, I have written a lot of different kinds of writing, and there is something of an inside joke in the publishing industry about the bestseller that nobody has ever read. It goes something like this. There is a book that an up and coming writer writes, and he miraculously sells it to a big publishing company. They don't read it, because there are hundreds of books they publish every year, they just skim it and make sure it is formatted correctly, maybe scan a few passable passages and then they send it to the printers. People buy it for Christmas presents, or because it has an interesting cover, etc. etc. etc. But nobody ever reads it. Now imagine the same thing in the dating world. I think there are men who have dated a lot of women without the women ever really knowing it. Your mind just exploded. What does doing on a date mean? You buy a girl dinner, maybe that's taking her to a nice restaurant or maybe you spend more money at a potluck dinner because she is there. Or you actually only go to the potluck because she it there. You sit next to her and talk to no one else the entire night. Maybe the activity is even a movie night so you take her to a movie. Does that qualify as a date? The lines are getting pretty blurry. You're probably saying, “right, you really think that counts as a date?” Let me come back to that. But seriously, (and I need to put in a disclaimer here--probably should have done this earlier but well, what can you do?--I have no greater insight than anyone else into the male mind) the question of why more LDS men (ages 31 to 45 there are plenty of disturbing and strange reasons why the 45+ single guys aren't dating but let's try and focus, shall we?) are not dating is impossible to answer for so many reasons, but the answer, as far as I can tell is that we are dating. How is that possible? Oh, it's pretty easy to explain. Let me go into some of the statistics to maybe clear this up. There was a recent poll of LDS people (another disclaimer here--I'm trying to cut back honestly--none of these polls are scientific, but hey this is a blog post not a scientific journal) and it resulted in the following results: Question: Are you now married, widowed, divorced, separated, or never married? Married 143 (21%) Widowed 9 (1%) Divorced 136 (20%) Separated 4 (0.6%) Never married 379 (56%) Question: How old are you? 18-21 5 (0.7%) 22-25 38 (6%) 26-30 99 (15%) 31-35 192 (28%) 36-40 185 (27%) 40-50 110 (16%) 50+ 46 (7%) http://www.ldsmag.com/article/1/12850 Now, I want to cite one other study to give just a little bit of context to these answers and then I will go on. According to one website, "After age thirty, there are ten unmarried Mormon women in Utah for every eight unmarried Mormon men. After age forty-five, there are twice as many single women as men. After retirement, there are five times as many." (http://janariess.religionnews.com/2014/03/13/smart-single-mormon-thirty-somethings-fit-church/). So keeping all of these statistics about dating in mind is going to be important for the next, say, 15 seconds or so. Rest your eyes. Okay, now forget them. Now let me remind you by making some even more unscientific speculation. The quote I provided states that the male:female ratio at age 30 is about 8:10, but by the age 45 it is more like 5:10. That means there are about 10% less eligible men to date for every 5 years a woman "survives" in LDS single life. Maybe I am wrong about the statistic of decline there; I have never been very good at math. Regardless of the numbers, all these statistics beg the question: Where do all the men go? Well, they stop going to church, they date non-members, or they continue being active but seemingly disinterested in dating women temporarily or permanently due to their own personal struggles (such as homosexuality or pornography addiction which studies I don't really have time to cite show are both much more predominant in men than women). I'm gonna leave all the statistics aside now, because they are pretty exhausting and pointless in my opinion. This brings me back to me. Let me tell you a little bit about my own dating experience. I don't date a lot. There was time a few months back where for one month I went on a date with a girl every week. Not all of them fell on the weekend, but I just felt like dating a lot at that time. Some of the girls I went on dates with were blind dates, I even called friends up and asked for numbers of girls who they thought were cool, and I called them up and went on a date with them. I asked some pretty good friends out on dates, some of them said yes, some of them said no, and life went on. Nobody died; hopefully nobody's feelings were hurt too much. What happened next is what is really frustrating and confusing not only for me, but for some of the girls that I went out with in this period, I am sure. I don't know if this is indicative of a general trend or is unique to my own personality and the girls that I am drawn to. There were a couple of girls who I went out with at that time, and really liked a lot, but I have been sitting in what I like to call "holding" mode because with a girl that cool you really want to plan something special for the dates. I am not that good at planning so as the months have dragged on, more time has passed, and there has to be a better and better reason to call these girls up with every passing day, because "hey, I'm that guy who asked you out late last year and you could never really figure out why but here it is 6 months later so do you want to go out again?" just seems like a bad approach. Then there were some girls who had not been asked out for a very long time, and going on a first date for them was a HUGE deal, like a life altering moment that an attractive, funny, intelligent, charming, spiritual, compassionate guy would ask them out at all. Even me asking them out was pretty freaking cool. Where was I going with this? Oh, yes. Dating. Why don't I date more? How much is more? Let me give you an example of my typical week. I am a divorced guy, so I spend a lot of time taking care of my daughter, I don't know if what I am going to describe is a typical schedule, I am pretty sure it's not, but I'll get back to everyone else, trust me. I wake up between 4 and 5 AM so that I can attempt to get a few minutes of exercise in before showering and getting ready for work. I arrive at work sometime between 5 AM and 6 PM Monday to Friday. Every Tuesday, Thursday, and every other Friday I pick up my 5 year old daughter from school when I get or work, which I make a point of doing at 3:30 on those days so that I can be sure to be at her school at 4 PM, which still forces her to be in after school care every afternoon, but that is just one of the sad facts of single parenthood. I spend time with her on the Tuesdays and Thursdays that I have her from 4 until 7:30 or a little later, I come home, read scriptures, watch TV for a little while so that I can unwind, then I go to bed so I can do it all again in the morning. Sometimes I take her on Monday evenings as well so that her mom can have a chance to go to Monday night activities without having to stress about finding a sitter (which would be relatively close to impossible on a Monday night in the LDS world). I enjoy writing, so I try and block out a couple of hours of every other night to dedicate to writing, say 5 to 7 on Mondays (or 4 to 6, whatever works with the other scheduled things I have) and then I have to go to bed around 9 o clock in order to wake up for my work. This leaves me a couple of hours on a couple of nights to plan any church activities, and personal goals that I have, read any books that I want to read, socialize with friends, or you know, all the other things we love to do with our free time (I am attempting to learn to play the guitar, I have already talked a lot about me aspiring writer goals, I have a calling to try and organize mid singles activities, the list could go on and on). I have already described how I take my daughter two weekends a month. That means that IF I wanted to date, WHEN I do want to date I should say, I have two weekends a month to dedicate to that. Something pretty inevitably comes up on at least three of the two free weekends that I have every month. Like I said, I am not good at math. I have travel to do something with my family, a friend is in need of consolation because he/she is going through a breakup/divorce or some other life crisis, my work is looking for volunteers for some kind of service project. Again the list could go on. My point is this: I am a busy person. So my question for you: where does dating fit in to all of this? When we are young (or not so young) we spend a lot of time making lists of our ideal mate. Maybe she's blonde; maybe she's a brunette. Maybe she's good with kids; maybe she's good at math. Maybe she is righteous/spiritual; maybe she likes punk rock as much as I do. Then we get a little bit older and we stop worrying about the checklist approach to the ideal mate (or maybe we don't). Maybe we go back to the old romantic notion of "when it's the right guy/girl we will both just know it" or maybe we just wait until we hit it off well enough with someone that it will naturally develop into a relationship which I think is just another way of saying the same thing in a lot of ways. Then we focus more on the "dos and don'ts of dating." What do I mean by that? Well, we are all taught most of our lives that there are certain things that you just DON'T do on a date, and there are certain things that you absolutely SHOULD do. Maybe you should try online dating. Maybe I could set up a blind date for you. Whatever happened to whatshername. Just ask that girl from church out already, she's liked you since like elementary school. Be patient. Don't be alone inside a girl's apartment. Don't invite a girl over to your apartment. Be yourself. Nothing good ever happens after eleven. The first kiss should be something special. Don't compromise your standards. Focus on the temple. Don't date nonmembers. Don't be judgmental. Flirt to convert. Accept people for who they are. Be honest about your feelings. Be yourself. I think I said that one twice. My point in all of this is the following. We are just exhausted as the women we are supposed to be dating. We all fill up our lives with other things after we have been single for so many years, and it is hard to let any of those things go, because hey, they ARE important. Service is important, having meaningful employment, hobbies, friends, etc. etc. etc., they are all great things, but they take time, and so does dating. We all know this, but I think the older you get, the more people stop realizing just how much time dating actually takes. What an emotional strain it is to go out on a date and have to wonder for hours, days, weeks, months afterwards if the girl you went out with really liked you. Sometimes you desperately want her to think of you fondly, and sometimes you don't, either way, as an older guy it is extremely frightening and overwhelming to date, and yet we do it as well as we can manage. I went into writing this post promising myself that I would not focus on me, but talk about the general trends and observations I had noticed and the way that they affect single people my age and a little older and how often we are forced to focus on dating as a means to an end instead of something that is to be a great way of making friends of the opposite sex, forming strong friendships that over time will naturally grow and eventually evolve into a relationship that becomes a marriage. I also said that I wouldn't talk too much about dating, because that is not what this post is all about. Now that I think I have definitively broken both of those promises to myself, I can stop writing. But I have one more thing to say. If you are asking why guys don't ask more girls out, we are, stop worrying. As a single guy, let me tell you that on an almost daily basis, I have men who come and ask me to help them arrange double dates, men who ask if they should go out with so and so, men who wonder if this girl or that is flirting with them, dating is very much on our mind, there are just a lot of other reasons why we are not dating one specific girl at any one time, either because we just aren't interested in her, or because we are VERY interested in her, but we are waiting for the right moment to ask her out, or we have our own personal emotional/spiritual struggle and don't feel like it would be fair to let a girl into our lives at this particular moment. What I am saying is that we are doing our best. There is not one solution. I am not telling girls or guys to be more aggressive, more patient, or anything else. What I am saying is that everybody is in a different place and a million questions about why we don't date more or who we are dating are not going to fix any of that. What will help us all to be a lot more open and happy with dating (or not dating) is if instead of asking so many questions about dating, we be happy with the place we are at in our lives, find peace within ourselves and with God, and with all the other essential things in our lives, and then I believe a person or a group of people will gravitate towards that happy being, a person who shares enough of our interests to embrace us for who we are, stop worrying about when we are going to ask them out on a date and just enjoy being with us, regardless of whether it's a date, a bench at church, or a fun late night conversation. That is the kind of person I would ask on a date again and again and again. How's that for a contradiction?