He described Mormon spouses investing less in our relationships in the here and now
I considered myself unpopular at BYU. My hair was very short, kind of a punk rock do with bleached bangs. I often wore tie-dyed jeans and a men’s thrift store blazer with a concert tee underneath. In Pennsylvania, I never had a shortage of guys who were interested in me, including lots I thought were totally out of my league. Men hit on me all the time. Maybe they thought I was easy because I didn’t wear a prayer bonnet. Whatever. When I got to college, I expected this male attention to continue; instead I felt like I disappeared completely.
I have read a few female Mormon memoirs that resonated with my own experience. In Therese Doucet’s A Lost Argument, she describes feeling invisible inside the church, particularly at BYU, and contrasts that with being noticed by men outside the church who had deep discussions with her.
The strangest thing of all, though is that he can see me. I’m invisible to nearly everyone here. I’m used to people’s eyes passing over me as if they saw right through me.
In Elna Baker’s New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance, she talks about her string of failures with Mormon men until she takes the advice from a book her mother was given in the 1970s. The advice makes her totally successful with her Mormon male target, FHE Dad Brady:
Did you serve a mission? Brady asked me. I waited for him to tell me what he wanted to hear.
If I wanted to make a relationship with Brady work, I didn’t have to flat out lieall I had to do was pick up on what he wanted and pretend that this was me
Of course, there’s the distinct possibility that the non-LDS men are primarily interested in sex and simply using conversation and feigned interest as a form of seduction. When you take premarital sex off the table (so to speak), on what basis do single men engage with single women? (more…)