Menacing Society #2: There Must Be Something Wrong...

Admit it - you know you've said it (or at least thought it) at some point in your life:  "Anyone that old and still single has something seriously wrong with him/her."  I know I said it more than just a couple times when I was younger, before I really got to know anyone who was older and unmarried - back when dating and courtship seemed as easy to me as elementary school arithmetic.  My equation went something like this:

Dating Efforts + Worthiness to marry = Happy Ending

There are way too many people who think it's that easy.  Most married people I run into seem to have forgotten their dating lives, and revert to this equation, or a variation of it.  And why not?  It makes it easy to explain why people go unmarried for so many years.  Either they're not trying hard enough/don't want it bad enough, or something is wrong with them that makes them unworthy of another's affections.

And suddenly people become my personal date doctor, and try to diagnose why I'm not married.  After asking about my dating efforts, to make sure the efforts are healthy, I become the subject of a superficial psycho-analysis.  I say superficial, because most people base their hypothesis on assumptions.  Whether they say it directly to me or not, most people are terrible at keeping their thoughts off their faces.  Suddenly their eyebrows will contort, and they'll look at me as if they're trying to read my soul for the answer.  And here are the test results:

1 - "You're not physically attractive enough.  You're just a sweet spirit."
My response:  Looks may make a big impression, but if it were really about looks, then there are TONS of couples that should never have married, and several others that should be married.

2 - "You lack the necessary social skills."
My response:  I may not be socially compatible with you, but trust me - I have WAY too many friends for you to be making that claim.

3 - "You're too picky."
My response:  Are you seriously suggesting I marry someone I really don't want to?  Really?  So, you really don't care about my happiness...

4 - "You've got a skeleton in the closet."
My response:  No.  No, I don't.  And it's offensive that you would automatically assume that of me, simply because I'm not married.  I mean, what kind of skeleton is bad enough to keep every girl I'm interested in from getting close to me?  And if it's that bad, how could you think I'm capable of it?

5 - "You must be gay."
My response:  I don't even know where to start with this one.  One of the most awesome people I know, Melissa, was asked if she was lesbian by an old acquaintance after revealing that she was 28 and unmarried (the other person didn't even ask Melissa if she was dating someone before asking this)!  Her response blew my mind: "No.  But if you need to tell people I'm lesbian because you're so embarrassed to know someone who's 28 and single, then you have my permission."  I mean, really!

There are other reasons people make up to explain why I'm still not married.  They're pretty ridiculous excuses, and less believable than the ones I've listed.  But even then, people still get married - every day - with any number of the reasons I listed above.  So it's pretty clear that it's not that simple.  Obviously I don't have it figured out yet, but I'm pretty sure the equation for marriage is better represented by the following:

My point is, finding the right person, and convincing them that you're the right person for them can be complicated.  And sometimes, you can go a long time without finding that special someone through no fault of your own.  Could it be that there's no simple explanation for why some people go unmarried for so long?

If you ask my opinion, I'd say that sometimes you have to consider divine providence.  I look back at all the efforts I've made to get married, make myself more attractive, meet new people, etc.  Then I look at all the other experiences I've had, and how it's changed my relationship with my Heavenly Father.  I have grown and changed a TON each year, and my perspective is completely different than what it was just a few years ago.  I'm grateful I didn't get married before turning 25 - there's a lot of me I wouldn't have discovered yet.  Not only that, but I've had incredible experiences through service that I wouldn't have been exposed to had I been married.  And the older I've gotten, the more comfort I find in my prayers that one day I'll be happily married to a woman who was absolutely worth the wait.

And let's face it - I'm not old by any means.  Anywhere outside of Utah, no one would think twice about the fact I haven't "settled down" yet.  But here, it's a social norm to be married by the time you turn 25.  And since I'm outside of the norm, the Sociology text-books would call me deviant.  Deviant sounds like a cross between defiant and devil, therefore I must be a menace to society.