What Years of The Church of Jesus Christ Singles Culture Taught Me

Being single for a long time teaches you things. Some of them are useful. Some of them are painful. And some of them arrive wearing a nice blouse and carrying enough red flags to reupholster a Buc-ee’s.

I’ve spent enough time in LDS singles culture to earn an honorary doctorate in it. Mutual, singles wards, mid-singles wards, firesides, conferences, service projects, institute classes, dances in the same buildings with the same fluorescent lighting and the same panic in the air year after year — I did all of it.

After a while, you start noticing patterns.

Not just in dating, but in the entire machine built around being single in the Church. The whole thing begins to feel less like a program and more like a traveling dinner theater where nobody knows their lines and half the cast is pretending not to make eye contact.

So here’s what I learned.

First: The Mutual App Is Not For The Faint Of Heart

If you are going to be on Mutual, you need to understand one thing right away: it is not enough to merely exist. You have to market yourself like you are selling a timeshare in Branson.

You are not just a woman with interests and a testimony and a personality. No ma’am. You are now the vice president of branding for your own life.

Your “about me” needs editing and re-editing. Your photos need variety. One should say, “Yes, I can look nice.” Another should say, “I leave the house sometimes.” And one should suggest you may actually be funny and not just posing next to a decorative sign in a beige cardigan.

Because life is unfair, and on dating apps you have about two seconds to catch someone’s attention before he swipes past you like he’s sorting mail he doesn’t want.

And men, while we are gathered here today, let me say this with love: please consider what women are seeing.

We are seeing gym selfies. Car selfies. Fish pictures. Sunglasses in every photo like you are in the witness protection program. Group shots where nobody can tell which man belongs to the profile. Cropped pictures where it is painfully obvious you removed an ex-girlfriend like you were trying to erase evidence from a crime scene.

And please do not give us a profile where every picture says, “I enjoy protein powder and emotional unavailability.”

Put something on your profile a woman could actually respond to. Give us a sentence. Mention an interest. Show a little humor. Spell-check the thing. And for heaven’s sake, do not post a photo that screams, “My mother and I are extremely close, and you will be competing with a woman who already monograms my towels.”

Also, if a man immediately says he hates staying on Mutual and wants you to move over to WhatsApp, trust your instincts and block him. There is almost never a decent reason to leave the app that quickly. At that point, he is trying to get you off the record faster than a politician in a scandal.

Safety matters. Paper trails matter. Common sense matters.

And women, one lesson I learned the hard way: if he opens with “hey,” do not reward that with your full autobiography, your Myers-Briggs type, your hopes for the future, and a moving account of your seventh-grade science fair. Match effort with effort. Let him show you whether he knows how to carry a conversation without needing to be led around like a goat at the county fair.

As exhausting as online dating is, every new match does deserve a fresh start. I know that is annoying. I wish it were not true. But if you are going to show up, show up honestly.

Second: Singles Dances Are Their Own Anthropology Field Study

I went to enough singles dances to develop observations that deserve to be published in a respected journal.

The men often traveled in packs. I understand this on one level. There is safety in numbers. But from the women’s side of the cultural hall, a group of men standing in the corner all night does not look mysterious. It does not look confident. It looks like a panel of judges at a livestock show.

You may think you are simply hanging out with your friends. We are wondering whether you are discussing us, ranking us, or forming a subcommittee on why nobody has spoken to a woman yet.

Meanwhile, women are nervous too. Women are frustrated too. Women are tired too.

So if you are a man at a singles dance, here is my heartfelt Southern plea: go on over there and talk to somebody. Ask someone to dance. Fast songs are your friend. Women notice when you actually get out there and move around instead of spending the whole night leaning against the wall like you were hired to inspect baseboards.

And yes, I heard the comments over the years. The hot ones do not come. The attractive ones are not there. The women who did come were not worth the effort.

Well, bless your hearts.

Women can feel that attitude from across the room.

We are doing our best too. We are trying to show up, look nice, be open, be brave, and keep a decent attitude in an environment that can feel about as relaxing as a pop quiz. We do not deserve to walk into a church activity already feeling judged by men who have contributed nothing but a limp handshake and three hours of standing near a table.

By all means, women should put effort into how they present themselves. Men should too. Everybody should. But if your standards for everyone else are sky-high while your own contribution is sitting frozen in a folding chair near the refreshments, that may be something to take to the Lord and perhaps a mirror.

Third: I Really Did Try

This is the part I want to make very clear.

I showed up.

For roughly eight years, I went to basically everything. Not just the convenient activities. Not just the ones that sounded halfway interesting. Everything. Fort Worth. Arlington. Firesides. Conferences. Workshops. Service projects. Dances. Institute. If there was a gathering of LDS singles within driving distance, odds were good I had already put on lip gloss and talked myself into going.

I got to know a good dozen church buildings in the DFW area very well. Too well. The dances were always in this building. The firesides were always on that Sunday. Every few months there was another conference in another place with the same basic mood and a slightly different snack table. At some point it stops feeling like a vibrant social scene and starts feeling like you are trapped in a church-sponsored version of Groundhog Day.

And I did not just attend quietly in the background.

I talked to people. I sat with new groups. I introduced myself. I asked men to dance. I tried to include the guy standing by himself. I went to the service projects, the workshops, the firesides, the conferences, all of it. Every single time, I had to brace myself for awkwardness, disappointment, or rejection and walk in anyway.

So when people imply singles just are not trying hard enough, I have to laugh.

Some of us tried so hard we should have earned airline miles.

Fourth: The Problem Is Bigger Than Dating

The hardest part was never just being single.

The hardest part was feeling like single adults often occupy this strange little category in church life: too old to be the exciting future, too unmarried to be the priority, and easy to overlook if nobody is paying attention.

There is so much effort put into youth, young adults, marriage, and families. I understand why. I really do. But single adults should not quietly disappear in the process like a side dish nobody ordered.

It takes real effort to keep showing up when activities feel repetitive, when lessons do not reflect your life, when support systems feel flimsy, and when the people planning things seem to assume everybody goes home to the same kind of household.

That is one of the things I wish more leaders understood: single adults do not just drift because they are lazy or frivolous. Sometimes they get tired. Sometimes they get discouraged. Sometimes they get worn down trying to fit into systems that do not seem built with them in mind.

And once they drift, it is very easy for them to fall through the cracks.

Not because they do not care. Because they are tired of being easy to miss.

Fifth: Single Adults Need More Than Matchmaking Energy

Not every conversation about single adults needs to be about getting them married.

Sometimes what single adults need is friendship. Inclusion. Support. Somebody to know their name. Somebody to notice when they stop coming. Somebody to care about their actual life instead of treating them like a half-finished project from the church social committee.

It would help if married members got to know single members as actual people instead of walking reminders of an unmet goal.

It would help if ward culture made more room for lives that do not fit the usual pattern.

It would help if single adults were seen as adults — capable, thoughtful, experienced, funny, wise, and worth knowing for reasons beyond whether they are dating anyone.

Please ask about our lives. Please include us. Please do not act like we are one inspirational quote away from being fixed.

Single adults are not a side category. They are part of the ward family too.

Sixth: Repetition Can Wear A Person Down

One thing people do not always understand is how repetitive singles culture can feel after a while.

The same kind of dances. The same kind of firesides. The same announcements. The same formats. The same awkward hopes dragged in wearing different shoes.

At some point you realize you could probably give the opening prayer, predict the refreshments, and guess which three people will dominate the conversation before you even park the car.

And maybe that sounds dramatic, but if you have been in it long enough, it does something to you. It can make you feel tired in your bones. Not because every activity is awful, but because sameness has a way of draining hope one paper plate at a time.

I remember thinking that surely there had to be people not going to dances because they were somewhere else in smaller groups, doing something more natural, more real, more enjoyable. Because after a while, the dance circuit started to feel like somebody found one template in 1989 and said, “Well, this should hold till the Second Coming.”

Seventh: My Heart Did Harden Some

I wish I could say I stayed endlessly cheerful and optimistic through all of it.

I did not.

Over time, disappointment changes you. Repetition changes you. Feeling unseen changes you. You can only walk into so many rooms trying to be hopeful before part of you starts showing up with your arms folded.

I have tried to think of creative ways around it. Taking classes. Signing up for self-reliance groups. Trying institute. Finding ways to participate that do not make me feel like I am reenacting the same discouraging evening over and over.

Sometimes that helped. Sometimes it did not.

But I do know this: single adults deserve better than being treated like an awkward side issue in the life of the Church.

They deserve support. They deserve thoughtfulness. They deserve community that is not built entirely around reminding them of what they do not have.

And they deserve to be known for more than one word: single.

Because once you actually get to know people beyond that label, you find out what I found: single members are funny, resilient, insightful, generous, observant, and carrying more than most people realize.

They are not a problem to solve.

They are people to include.