To many Americans, religious or not, chastity before marriage is a quaint tradition at best and emotionally damaging at worst.
After all, more than 90 percent of men and women, according to Guttmacher Institute surveys during the past 50 years, have reported engaging in premarital sex. And the older a single person becomes, many people believe, the more ridiculous it seems to forgo physical intimacy.
That’s the perspective of Mormon poet Nicole Hardy, who, in a New York Times essay last month, described her decision to join the rest of the modern world.
The world is never so hard as it is against those who don’t follow its norms. But those norms are ever shifting. What is acceptable is not acceptable tomorrow.
This reminded me of what my father always said when I was a growing up (usually to my teenage annoyment), “Boy! If it becomes fashionable to eat cow manure, do I need to get you a bowl and a spoon??”
I don’t think it’s helpful to use a manure metaphor when speaking of something as poignant as intimacy, especially in this regard. We’re not talking about “girls (or guys) gone wild,” seeing sex as simply a wild and meaningless activity. Far from this being an issue solely for older, single Mormons, there remains a need for intimacy among people who are middle-aged and older and don’t foresee marriage in their future for a variety of reasons.
Not too long ago, some single Christian friends and I were discussing this. We’re all women, ranging in age between 43 and 58. One of them is an Episcopal priest who ministers to the elderly. None of us will marry for very legitimate reasons that would likely make marriage untenable. None of us can bear children; all of us are chaste and all of us miss intimacy. We muse about it.
My priest friend is torn by what she knows is going on in nursing homes and assisted living centers. Many of the elderly are having sexual relationships that they find fulfilling and, at that stage of their lives and because the widows especially view their departed husbands as their one and only husband, they don’t wish to marry again. Practically speaking, legal marriage would change their tax, financial, and benefits status. Should the church force marriage on them to “legitimize” the comfort and happiness they derive from intimacy?
Now, to be sure, there are some predators and users in that population, too. The elderly ARE having to be counseled about STDs and risky behavior. My friend said that when she knows specifically about inappropriateness, she will discuss the moral and other issues with the folks. But most of it isn’t concrete or even admitted. Most of it is in the realm of lovely, lonely, elderly folks who live in their own sheltered community finding joy and warmth in being close to and wanted by someone. Would preaching against this and calling it immoral at the Eucharists serve a great purpose? Is pushing them to get married at the age of 80+ just so they could be intimate sometimes the right thing to do?
We didn’t come to any firm answers or conclusions in our discussion. None of us could say an unqualified “yes” to those questions. We reflected on many things, though. First, that the dichotomy between single people boiling in lust (the cure for which St. Paul recommends marriage) and the innate human need for intimacy can be very different, indeed. Put another way, there’s a big difference between “scoring” and “hooking up” and making love with someone you care about. Even in marriage, there is a big difference between seeing sex as an entitlement or doing one’s duty and making love to one’s beloved.
We need to think more deeply about our pat answers and stereotypes, especially as people live longer, life becomes more complex (even isolating) and the social, legal, and financial aspects of marriage make it more difficult and untenable for a growing number of people.
Make no mistake, I find the current “hook-up” culture to be demeaning, morally corrupt, and so very sad. But maybe it’s very existence is partly our own fault — that we made sex (and the right to have it) an activity to be “achieved.” By extension, perhaps that puts other people in the role of being “conquests.” Guys speaking of “scoring” and “hitting”; Gals using sex to get a ring and the baby that binds, not necessarily in that order.
What’s been lost is that intrinsic need for intimacy. Societies created the marriage norms but God gave us the gift of intimacy — the need for touching and loving closeness that is unique in humans and is part of but more emotional than the sex act. Sex is a basic drive; intimacy is a basic need. I think we’ve missed that along the way and it’s contributed to the modern world’s perversion of sexuality. The “acts” get more outrageous, the abuses greater, when intimacy is absent. When modern marriage seems to focus more on creating an image, building fortunes and career opportunities, and building the right sort of society-designed unit, intimacy gets lost because intimacy is based on the kind of trust, affection, and respect that isn’t necessarily dependent on looks, bank accounts, portfolios, and what other people think. It involves two people who have gotten to know each other well enough to invite the other into a close bond and to be accepted by the other, as well. Intimacy is a state, not necessarily an act; intimacy remains, an act ends.
The primary purpose of sexual expression is for reproduction. In that, creating stable, family units in which to raise children is the societal norm. But intimacy is an emotional and psychological need that transcends age, social status, and physical health, whose primary objective is not pregnancy. Thus, is sexual intimacy, when part of the emotional and psychological whole, between two loving single adults always immoral? I don’t know. Maybe not, especially between those for whom reproduction isn’t possible. I do think, though, that we’ve minimized discussion of the need for real intimacy, to our detriment.
This was a very sad article. I read it a week or two ago in the NYTimes. The issue was not that this woman found a loving partner who, for some legalistic reason, she was unable to marry and so decided to have intimacy outside of “technical” marriage. It’s that she reached a point in her life where she said “for one reason or another nobody is ever going to marry me. So I might as well enjoy sexual intimcy with whoever I can find willing to have sex with me even though nobody is ever going to love me enough to make a lifetime committment to me.” Very sad. I feel she has accepted a very devalued view of herself and is setting herself up for some serious heartbreak.
CM,
Did we read the same article? I’m not seeing that anywhere in this. Is there a longer version somewhere else that includes it?
But, from what you said, here’s the problem. It isn’t difficult to find SOMEONE to marry you if you’re seriously willing to compromise your principles, needs, lifestyle, whatever, just for the sake of being married. And some people, maybe many people, will, indeed, do that.
Society has treated singlehood like a disease that needs to be cured at any price. The Mormons’ belief that ties marriage to salvation/entrance to Heaven is especially excessive. If this woman was made to feel so badly about the situation by her church, no wonder her self-esteem has suffered. I’m not sure which is worse — being forced body and soul into some sort of marriage because your salvation depends on it or remaining single and seeking solace in sex. Not real intimacy — sex.
Honestly, I think the heartbreak and permanence of being forced to marry someone, anyone, for the sake of being married is worse. Single people can change their behavior if they want to do that. They aren’t legally and spiritually tied to someone else. But once those vows are uttered and the legal ties are in place, even a bad marriage is difficult to sever cleanly. From what I know of the Mormon faith and community, it would be far more of a stigma and problem to be a bad, unhappy wife (even if the hubby is a monster) than a struggling single woman. That’s why they’re very wary about whom they marry and they’re not finding a plethora of good husband candidates.
OK, I see that this is an article about the woman that mentions that she wrote an essay that was published in the NYTimes. It isn’t the essay itself which can be [url=http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/fashion/09Modern.html]found here[/url]
It centers around her visit to a Planned Parenthood clinic while still a virgin to be fitted for an IUD even though she does not even yet know who she may end up having sex with. She then explains how she got there, why she never expects to marry, and concludes:
[blockquote] I would have an IUD instead of children; I would have intellectual and spiritual freedom; I would write poems and finally live inside my body; I would, for the love of God, feel a man’s hands on me before I died. [/blockquote]
Sex without love is a soul destroying experience for anyone, but especially for a woman. She is indeed preparing herself for a sterile (in all senses) relationship.
CM,
Being in a marriage without love is horrible. Being in a marriage without love primarily because your church elders said that you may not go to Heaven because you’re not married is THE most cruel, horrific existence I could imagine.
You may not agree with how this woman has chosen to break free from the role that was cast for her but the point is that she IS free and she can change her choices at any time. With God’s grace and the love of others, she may, in time, choose differently.
But don’t you see that if she were to live the life prescribed for her by her Church dictates and elders, she would HAVE no choices? Her physical well-being and even the state of her soul upon her death is predicated on being married to a Mormon bloke and being an obedient, unquestioning wife, no matter how cold, cruel, and loveless he may be. Can you not understand just how depressing and dehumanizing that would be?
And you’re the one saying that she is going to have sex without love. That may not be the case. But, tell me which is worse: Having sex without love within an unhappy marriage (or having no sex at all within marriage) and longing for that promised intimacy or having sex without love with someone outside of marriage, realizing it’s empty, but having the freedom to learn from that and grow?
Marriage is not a panacea. Quite honestly, I know more truly lonely, unhappy people who are married than lonely singles. In my experience and from those of my friends, it’s far more lonely and sad to be connected to someone who has become cold and incompatible than it is to be living on your own, with the complete freedom to change and improve your life.
[blockquote] But don’t you see that if she were to live the life prescribed for her by her Church dictates and elders, she would HAVE no choices? [/blockquote]
Who’s saying she should live the life prescribed for her by the Mormon church?? Heck, I don’t think she should be a Mormon in any way shape or form to begin with. The point is not that she’s “broken free” from what the church prescribed for her. The whole church thing is a red herring anyway because she could simply look for a spouse among non-Mormons. What she’s done is conclude that she’s not ever going to enter into a loving relationship that leads to marriage and gone to a Planned Parenthood clinic (while still a virgin) and gotten fitted with an IUD even though she has no sexual partner so that she’ll be ready to have sex essentially “come hell or high water” when she meets somebody she decides to have sex with. Reminds me of the old saying “when you want something in the worst possible way, that’s usually how you get it.”
[blockquote] But, tell me which is worse: Having sex without love within an unhappy marriage (or having no sex at all within marriage) and longing for that promised intimacy or having sex without love with someone outside of marriage, realizing it’s empty, but having the freedom to learn from that and grow? [/blockquote]
Why are those the only choices? How about just not having sex without love period.
I agree completely with CM about this particular woman. She is going to give herself to someone who won’t give himself to her. Then she will almost certainly find herself in love with him and experience terrible rejection. Then she will do it again, and again, and eventually she won’t fall in love, but her heart will feel dead. That is the result of living like that.
If a woman in a nursing home thinks her deceased husband is her only true possible husband, then she shouldn’t have sex with anyone else. However if she feels free, as she is if her spouse is dead, to marry someone else, she should do that. If the change in benefit status is so extreme as to deprive one of the partners of the means to live or a place to live, I think the church should marry them without their being civilly married. The church hasn’t gotten there yet, but I think it will. Meanwhile, they ought to marry and then deal with the consequences, or not marry and not have sex. There is no reason why they can’t have a relationship in which affection is shown without deliberately arousing each other and without engaging in sex. It should be easier for them than for teenagers.
Teatime, nothing in what you write shows any indication that what Scripture and the Christian tradition has to say about this issue matters at all to you. This isn’t an open question for Christians. It is a painful temptation to struggle with for many, but it isn’t an open question.
Susan Peterson
[blockquote] I agree completely with CM about this particular woman. She is going to give herself to someone who won’t give himself to her. Then she will almost certainly find herself in love with him and experience terrible rejection. [/blockquote]
Well, that’s what I was trying to say. It’s not just that this might happen, it’s that she’s setting herself up for this to happen for sure. She’s announced to herself and to everybody else who reads the Times that “the man I’m going to have sex with, who I don’t even know yet, is not going to fully give himself to me. But that’s OK. I’ll take whatever I get can get. I’ll get fitted with an IUD right now before I even meet this man because there’s no chance that any man I have sex with will want to have a family with me.” Very very sad. This has nothing to do with two people who live together as spouses but for some technical or financial or whatever reason don’t get legally married. I’m not in favor of that either, but this isn’t even remotely in the same category.
No, Susan Peterson, my Christian faith and belief mean nothing to me. Do you really think that leveling a mean-spirited and unfair judgment like that helps your argument?
I am posting from the standpoint of someone reading words filled with disillusionment, confusion, and pain, written by an author I have never met. I don’t choose to judge her and hold her up to the standards of my own personal morality. Why? Because I don’t KNOW HER but it’s obvious from her words that she is hurting and confused. When you encounter such people in real life, do you start berating them for their choices and analyzing them according to Scripture or do you listen and try to understand what has led them to this place of pain?
The Jesus I know and worship listened, fed, healed and THEN taught. Even though He is the Author of all creation and knew the people He encountered better than they could ever know themselves, He listened. He even defended public sinners against their accusers. And He told the woman about to be stoned for adultery that He did not condemn her. HE did not condemn her — God Himself did not condemn her nor allow the religious law to be carried out against her. I have no doubt that His actions, His words, and His later teaching affected her profoundly.
But let me repeat this because it’s important. He Who knew her from before she was born did not make public pronouncements or judgments against her nor allow the penalty of the religious law prescribed by the Scriptures to be applied to her. So, how can I, as His follower, NOT try to understand the pain and the reality of this woman’s life? And how can I dismiss, judge, and condemn her out of hand, based on the Scriptures? The same Scriptures in which My Lord teaches compassion and ministers to the troubled in a very personal and loving manner?
You and your friend seem to see this woman’s words as some sort of triumphant declaration of human freedom. I see them as a pained cry that based on a life that has hurt her deeply and limited her choices to those which deny her human dignity. One in her position cannot fully comprehend the wondrous love and freedom that a life in Christ offers unless and until she believes she has worth and can imagine being so loved. THAT is the first step — judging and condeming her aren’t.
If you can reconcile all of these things and feel that your approach is the holy one, then that’s your call for yourself. But don’t you dare judge my faith or my dedication to my walk with Christ.
CM and I, who know each other only by posts on the internet, hardly see this woman as making “a triumphant declaration of human freedom.” We both think it is incredibly sad. I would say that she is in despair throwing herself deliberately into a miserable slavery.
It was the things you wrote about the people in the nursing home, as well as your including sex outside of marriage as an option to be balanced against other options, which made me say that you were not showing that what scripture and Christian tradition says about sex outside of marriage -I said “means anything to you” but perhaps I should have said “is decisive for you.” I made no broad general statements about your walk with Christ. I am referring here only to your comments on this thread.
You said “But, tell me which is worse, having sex without love within an unhappy marriage (or having no sex at all within marriage) and longing for that promised intimacy or having sex without love with someone outside of marriage, realizing it’s empty, but having the freedom to learn from that and grow?” To me this shows that you are analyzing these things starting from the point of view of human experiences and human feelings and trying to figure out what would ultimately make a person happier in the here and now, and trying to make your own judgment about it as if the issue were open for you to make a judgment about it. But it isn’t open. God already forbade sex outside of marriage. He actually didn’t forbid having sex without love within marriage, and he only advised, in the person of St. Paul, against not having sex within marriage, and in any case we usually can’t do anything about that if the other spouse withdraws from us. So we already know which is worse. Our job, if we are not married, is to marry as wisely as we can, if we can. If for some reason we cannot, and God has called us to the single life, we are to obey Him in that life and try to give love ourselves through our profession, to our friends and family, to some good cause. If we are married, our job is to love the person we are married to; not necessarily to feel in love with them, but to act with love towards them. In most cases this will result after a while in feelings of love, but that isn’t the criteria. God has no objections so far as I know to social set ups in which marriages are arranged, although I imagine that He objects to parents who do so out of greed for money or power rather than thinking of the good of their children. I might point out that a system of arranged marriages usually results in far fewer people unmarried and lonely than our current system.
It is not that I don’t know where you are coming from on this; believe me, I do very well know. I mean, I understand what you are talking about. I am sympathetic to these feelings as feelings; I know the kind of pain you are talking about, personally. I know what it is to say to myself, “God wouldn’t want me to suffer this kind of pain.” I also know the kind of pain the woman we started with in this story is letting herself in for, personally. Many things in my own life story confirm me in the understanding that we aren’t very good judges in our own case, and that God’s law is a much safer guide. In any case, it is His law. And it seems to me that someone who acknowledges that would not ask the “Which is worse” question which you asked.
Susan Peterson
[blockquote] CM and I, who know each other only by posts on the internet, hardly see this woman as making “a triumphant declaration of human freedom.†We both think it is incredibly sad. I would say that she is in despair throwing herself deliberately into a miserable slavery. [/blockquote]
Yes, that’s the point. We’re not judging or condemning her. We’re feeling incredibly sorry for her for the terrible decision she has made because she thinks she has no other options.
No, #12, you can try to use semantics but the words remain. You were trying to make this about what you think I may or may not believe. Why you wrote what you did is now clear to me from what you indicated about issues like this not being up for discussion. I disagree. One can discuss anything under the sun and it does not mean that, by discussing different sides of an issue, it reflects upon your own values and decisions. I was a journalist and a teacher for many years and am quite able to step outside of myself and my own beliefs/values to consider situations.
Furthermore, the issues aren’t as cut-and-dried as you portray them to be, unless you can fully rationalize away all of the odd relationships that God apparently permitted in the Old Testament. Our Fathers of Faith found themselves in some interesting circumstances. Just as people in the 21st Century do. Just as the people Jesus met did. Throughout the OT, there is discussion, debate, and bargaining, oddly enough, between God and the people He created.
I truly don’t understand why you find that problematic or how you can insist that there are pat, one-size-fits-all answers in our tradition when one sees the discussions evolving over time. Has that evolution stopped? I honestly don’t know. But if you compare the Church’s teachings on abortion, for example, over time you know that the discussion has taken on some rather shocking twists and turns.
And while your post clearly holds up marriage as the ideal state (although I was surprised by your defense of arranged marriages) and singlehood as a “make the best of it” situation, the New Testament offers more commendations toward the single life. This line, in particular, jumped out at me:
[blockquote]I might point out that a system of arranged marriages usually results in far fewer people unmarried and lonely than our current system. [/blockquote]
My goodness. In that one line, you are stating that it’s better to have an arranged marriage than to be “unmarried and lonely,” which is precisely what is causing the woman in the article so much pain, and her subsequent rebellion. Her Mormon tradition makes being single an offense so problematic that no matter what good she might do in her life, she will have difficulty getting to Heaven if she does not marry. You, too, find it preferable for a woman’s choice in marriage be taken away rather than risk “loneliness?”
And this is precisely what I’ve been trying to point out. When it’s all about sex and not at all about intimacy, the subject is lost. IMO, the very reason we have so much rebellion acted out in sexual ways is that people are longing for intimacy but are settling for sex. We have a problem with forging real, intimate bonds and relationships that don’t involve sex, and it goes against our history and nature. Whereas we used to live in tribes or large extended families, with all sorts of nurturing relationships, we are now self-centered individuals whose entire world rests within our tiny, nuclear families and our four walls.
And this mentality brings forth painful cries from a woman in an article, caught between the prospect of being forced into marriage or putting her eternal life in jeopardy, and it convinces elderly people that sexual intimacy is justified in the face of no other intimacy at all. I will not judge them.
I do think that we as Christians must consider this: Our God came onto this Earth and once asked, “Who is my mother? My brothers, my sisters?” And He said that His teachings would put husbands against wives, fathers against sons, mothers against daughters. We’re not hearing that when we become so insular and self-absorbed that we prescribe marriage as the cure for loneliness and against sin and we don’t reach out to build real community, loving others and bringing them into our fellowship. This is the kind of intimacy that is so needed, wanted, and sorely lacking. And this was also the thrust of Jesus’ teachings.
Community is increasingly difficult to find, especially if you’re an unmarried woman. Married women eye you as a threat (even if hubby is the most repulsive creature on the planet, they think you want him, for some reason. LOL, I’ve been quite blunt on occasion about how ridiculous that notion was and they didn’t like that, either!); many married men wonder if there’s an opportunity and some attempt to find out. Consequently, all of my friends are single women and we have formed our own community. It remains fluid, though, and all are welcome.
But I understand now why, when I was growing up, our dinner table (especially during the holidays) often included widows, elderly never-married women, mentally challenged folks, and others who were in need of a good meal and friendship or would otherwise be alone. Weirdly enough, my parents had a terrible marriage and were like oil and water on most things but on this they agreed — when you knew of someone in need, whether they were related to you or not (and most weren’t), you stepped up. You fed them, listened to them, and gave them what they lacked. I have honored that tradition and have come to see how rare it is in this world.
The woman in this article would be welcome in my home. I would listen to her, console her, and offer my friendship. I would tell her that sex is a poor substitute for intimacy and that a single life can be a very fulfilling one. I suspect that’s what she needs more than anything.
Well, I certainly agree with your conclusion in your last sentence. She may come to that conclusion herself.
Did you imagine that I would not welcome this woman as a person? Or that I don’t understand the various feelings you describe?
I thought you were speaking about right and wrong, not about what it is likely that people will feel. Of course God wants us to care what others feel. But His laws about sex and marriage do not seem to me to be precisely aligned with our particular cultural ideals which identify romantic love with marriage. I also think that people who start with a romance, and people who start by having their marriage arranged for them, so long as it isn’t radically against their inclinations, can wind up being bound together in the same kind of married love after 20 or 30 years, if both couples stay together.
Being a marrying sort myself I do tend to feel that marriage is the happiest state for most-not all, but most, and that our current set up may wind up leaving out many who might have been happily married under another system. I suppose every system will leave some unhappy one way or another.
What your parents did seems very good to me.(and they may have loved each other despite ‘being like oil and water.’ ) I am not in a position to do something like this because of my lack of the housewifely virtues. I do have a single friend who I trust not to care about that who sometimes eats with us or goes places with me, or with me and my husband. But I think of her rather as someone more elegant than myself who graces me with her presence, than as someone who is my beneficiary!
I think that we have been arguing at cross purposes here; each of us has been taking on a different opponent from the one we were actually facing. So I think we should call a truce.
Susan Peterson
[A truce would be a good idea. This is an interesting comment thread, but please be careful not to be personal about one another and keep to the issues – Thanks – Elf]
LOL, I would be happy to agree to a “truce” if I perceived this to be a war (of words), which I don’t. If my part has been perceived as such, please forgive me. I am merely passionate about bringing forth real, frank discussion about singlehood, as a single person. Particularly in faith circles, it seems that we’re talked about and around but never with. I applaud you personally for including single friends in your larger life. Many people aren’t that secure.
And that lack of security, while troubling, points to a view of marriage that single women, in particular, have forced upon them. (I’m excluding the vixens who make a career of bad behavior.) This view’s commandment is: Thou Shalt Not Get Caught. Any reasonably attractive woman who has been single well into her 20s and beyond has seen it repeatedly and wishes she hadn’t. We may seem to laugh about it, brush it off, rage about how the men are pathetic, and, yes, wonder about how stupid or intentionally blind their wifeys might be. But it hurts to have married men regularly pursuing you and then berating you when you refuse them. It devalues you.
I suspect that this is one of the sources of pain for the woman in the article. Her sisterhood of singles shares this pain and it needs to be discussed honestly. Society feigns outrage when famous men get caught and unleashes its fury but, let’s face it — there is a certain amount of winking and back-slapping that goes on in the male circles. Still. The women are cast as hussies and home-wreckers.
The faith community needs to take the lead in having an honest discussion about the state of marriage and the fact that many people are simply not suited for it. We use lofty words like “impediments” and “callings” but I think we have to get more basic than that. In addition to sound people whose inclinations and temperament favors a solitary life, there are a lot of very damaged people out there who, for a variety of psychological and emotional reasons, should never marry.
We are creating suffering for many parties when we force-feed them the platitudes about there being “someone for everyone” and marriage being the expectation and the norm. The inevitable spouse suffers, the subsequent children suffer, the guys and/or gals (sometimes both) that are propositioned suffer. Society suffers.
Marriage suffers. Yep, it does. If the church, in particular, and society want to foster healthy relationships, then they need to nurture single people, first and foremost. Healthy, secure people who aren’t told there’s something wrong with them if they’re not in a relationship or married by age 26 and whose place at the table is valued would have a far greater chance of becoming excellent marriage partners or happy, confident singles.
I get so tired of the church wringing its collective hands over the state of sexual morality when it hasn’t done a blessed thing to arm young people, especially, with the confidence and tools they need to live into the full dignity and grace with which they were created. They are given a formula, a prescribed future, and told to sin no more. They need a living, breathing relationship with Christ and His Community, the Church. That means welcoming people, supporting people, gathering with others unlike yourself, and not being afraid of authentic relationships with those who aren’t in your postal code, income bracket, marital status or educational attainment.
Why? Because the platitudes, formulas, and prescriptions become bewildering the very first time a known married Christian grooms or propositions that single person for sex. After several times, the platitudes and formulas begin to look like pie-in-the-sky promises or even lies. More than that, and the single person can come to believe that it is all a lie and all that’s possible for him or her is to grab some moments of pleasure on his or her own terms.
I understand that. I have never even started that trajectory but I could have, I think, if I had less self-esteem, faith, and fortitude. And that’s why I feel for the woman in the article and why framing her predicament in terms of Scripture and Christian teaching isn’t helpful. She’s already decided that it’s all hypocrisy because she’s been hurt by it and no one is offering her anything tangible.
Teatime, while your points are well taken I don’t think they bear on what this woman herself is saying about herself. Did you link to her actual essay? She says that she found herself a 30 something virgin because her religion had taught her not to have sex outside of marriage. (She actually never complains that Mormonism teaches that being unmarried is a second class state.) She also goes on to indicate that one of the reasons she may not be married is that she doesn’t want children and there aren’t too many Mormon men looking for childless marriages. She also starts to feel foolish for being a virgin, but it’s not at all clear that this is what her religion is teaching her or this is what her culture is teaching her.
From the essay:
[blockquote] Most troubling was the fact that as I grew older I had the distinct sense of remaining a child in a woman’s body; virginity brought with it arrested development on the level of a handicapping condition, like the Russian orphans I’d read about whose lack of physical contact altered their neurobiology and prevented them from forming emotional bonds. Similarly, it felt as if celibacy was stunting my growth; it wasn’t just sex I lacked but relationships with men entirely. Too independent for Mormon men, and too much a virgin for the other set, I felt trapped in adolescence.
My first act of open rebellion was to go see “Brokeback Mountain†in Seattle’s rainbow-striped Capitol Hill neighborhood with a pair of lesbian friends. I was not ready to have an alcoholic beverage or a cup of coffee, to lie with a man or smoke a cigarette. But I could watch a movie, even if that movie was an obvious attack on the sanctity of hetero marriage, with its handsome, straight, Hollywood actors acting as if homosexuality were not perverse. Because while I am also straight and believe in God, one thing became clear that day: I could empathize with those gay cowboys. I knew, as an unmarried, 30-something, happy-without-children Mormon woman, how it felt to grow apart from one’s community. I knew what it was to be fundamentally bound to an ill-fitting life, to be the object of pity and judgment, to feel I had no choice but to be the thing that made me “other,†and to be told that if I prayed hard enough, God would bless me to want what I was supposed to want. [/blockquote]
Notice that she IS complaining about how she’s viewed in her community, but that this relates to not wanting “what I was supposed to want.” The whole thing about children is very subtly worked through the essay. But remember the last paragraph in which she says that her new future would be that “I would have an IUD instead of children.” “OK, I’m not going to have children and I’m not going to get married to someone who wants children, but I’m still going to have sex.” She goes on:
[blockquote] Stage 2 of my rebellion happened immediately after the movie, at Babeland, our city’s world-renowned sex-toy store. My lesbian companions were supportive of, if perplexed by, my commitment to the Law of Chastity; they were protective of my innocence, in the same way another friend once knocked a pot cookie out of my hand, lest I become unwittingly stoned on her watch. But what could be more fun than taking a 34-year-old virgin to a shop selling everything from art-glass dildos to vibrating nipple clamps? And what could be funnier than watching said virgin earnestly study each product’s list of features for water resistance, battery life, noise factor, shape, size and heft? [/blockquote]
Gee…I don’t know. I actually don’t have any lesbian couples I hang out with nor do I have friends I go to sex shops with. Nor do I have friends who keep their kitchen stocked with pot cookies. Maybe her problem stems not from the Mormon community she comes from but with the friends she’s chosen to hang out with?
She goes on to say that her dates with non-Mormons didn’t work out because they all wanted sex after a few dates and then she says:
[blockquote] So why wasn’t I dating Mormon men? In a nutshell, the pool is small, and people marry young, for obvious reasons. The leftovers were left over: closeted gay men, porn-addicted virgins, along with the merely awkward, uncompromising and unlucky.[/blockquote]
So the left-over Mormons were losers. Clearly then her only choice is to go get an IUD and start having sex with non-Mormons. I guess finding a non-Mormon who didn’t want sex by the third date was a complete impossibility? So there are no Christians who date? Or maybe you just don’t run into too many when you’re hanging out with lesbian couples and people who bake pot cookies? Or maybe it’s that “I don’t actually want children, I just want sex” thing?? And maybe this actually DOES come back to Christian values and teaching?
CM,
She’s clearly in revolt against Mormonism and its teachings. I didn’t want to “go there” because, frankly, I don’t think I can be objective about that particular group. I hope that when I say they’re really not Christian, it’s not perceived as offhand and that I’m simply coming to this woman’s defense, but I really wouldn’t include them as a Christian denomination. Their teachings and practices are quite different.
Oddly enough, my state (Texas) is attractive to many varieties of Mormons for some reason. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints evangelizes heavily here, door-to-door, and has grown due to their success in that practice. I found that the only real way of getting rid of them, lol, is to know something about their teachings, engage them in conversation when they show up at your door (and they will — every week, without fail, until you engage them), and then firmly, thoroughly reject their beliefs. If you show any interest or hesitance, look out. I wound up with quite a few Mormon neighbors who were previously lukewarm Catholics.
Anyhoo, I don’t know if you recall when the state of Texas raided one of the FLDS (Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints) compounds and took all of their children into custody? That happened near my city and a portion of the children were brought here to live while the proceedings dragged on. The mamas would come to town and visit their children — you couldn’t mistake them. “Little House on the Prairie” dresses and hairdos. This is the crowd with arranged marriages and multiple wives. A Warren Jeffs group. (Another reason why I winced when Susan indicated that arranged marriages can be better than winding up single. LOL, I’m wincing again.)
Whether it’s LDS or FLDS, they’re both sides of the same coin when it comes to their views of women and non-Mormons. It’s a closed society. My son had a good school friend in the neighborhood who came from a Mormon family (LDS) and the boy’s mama NEVER associated with the rest of the mothers. She wouldn’t come to our homes and we were not invited to hers. They allowed their son to have non-Mormon school friends but their little girls were not permitted to have contact with friends outside of their sect. The girls were (are) carefully reared to be marry young and raise large Mormon families.
OK, nothing wrong with that if it’s what you WANT to do. Freely. But there is no real freedom to choose in this. The woman in the article is rebelling because she doesn’t fit the mould. There are indications that she might be willing to find a middle ground in the Mormon way but that’s impossible. Since she didn’t want to marry young and have children, there is no place for her in her faith community. (Actually, I’d call it a cult.)
Obviously, you find her rebellion shocking. Yes, her words are shocking — and they’re meant to be so. Her hurt has driven her to the antithesis of her Mormon upbringing. I’m not surprised that she sought the company of lesbians — if her entire life prepared her to be a young Mormon wife and mother but she had too much of an independent streak to appeal to Mormon men and she didn’t feel called to have children, then she has no place in that world. Again, she sought the antithesis of it.
Do you realize the depths of Mormon indoctrination and belief? No, as a Mormon, she couldn’t date “other Christians.” We “others” live in error. Mormons feel it’s their mission to save as many of us “others” as possible, so some go to cemeteries and conduct Mormon baptism ceremonies on the unsuspecting dead.
http://www.catholic.com/library/Mormonism_Baptism_for_the_Dead.asp
I don’t know the particulars but it wouldn’t surprise me if, from the Mormon view, dating a non-Mormon wasn’t as egregious, perhaps even more egregious, than partying with lesbians.
I can empathize with this woman for the pain she feels from how society views her as a single woman. But I can’t fully understand how much more poignant the Mormon aspect makes her struggle, and her rebellion. Knowing a bit about life for Mormon women and knowing how it feels to leave one’s religious roots and to not “fit in” probably makes me a bit more sympathetic to her. I read her words but there’s a lot more behind them.
Teatime, again I’m thinking you’re reading way more about you and your experiences than you are about her. It doesn’t say she wasn’t allowed to date non-Mormons. Indeed, she did date them. But the ones she dated all (according to her) tried to pressure her into sex post haste. That was the problem with her relationship with them– not pressure from the Mormon church not to date them. Also, no indication her upbringing had anything whatsoever in common with the polygamist Mormons (or more acurately, the Warren Jeffs cult) with their total mindcontrol over young girls. I’ve only known one actual Mormon family and the mother had a $250k executive job and they had exactly three kids. And they were VERY big in the Mormon church. This certainly wasn’t the case of the woman being kept ignorant, barefoot and pregnant.
When Susan was talking about “arranged” marriages she wasn’t talking about 14 year old girls being sold into sexual slavery to 50 year old men in some polygamist cult. She was talking about the kind of things some of the Orthodox Jews and the Hindus do — looking for the very best possible mate for their child on the assumption that they can do a better job of it than their kid who knows little of the world and has little access to important info about the people they date. No evidence that these kind of marriages don’t work out as well or better than the ones contracted by the parties themselves — and of course in almost all of the cases the parties meet the proposed spouse and can reject them if there is just no chemistry. It’s really not enormously different from e-harmony!
I’m not “shocked” that this woman is “rebelling” against her background because I don’t this she IS rebelling against her background per se unless doing anything outside the teachings of your childhood religion is ipso facto “rebellion.” That’s why our arguments are missing each other like ships in the night. The background explains how she came to be a 34 year old virgin, but at the point where she writes the essay she’s no different from the 16 year old girl she meets in the Planned Parenthood clinic. “I want to be like everybody else. Everybody else has sex. Being a virgin is weird. I don’t want to get married and have kids but I want to “feel a man’s hands on me.” [her words] So I’m getting a IUD and then I’ll find somebody to have sex with.” Sorry — I see NO relationship between this and her Mormon background. It’s what a very large number of young girls say and do every day. The only reason that this essay got into the NY Times was that she was 36 when she wrote it and not 18. Had she been 18 there would have been no story whatsoever. “Girl is raised in religion which teaches against non-marital sex but then she decides to have non-marital sex anyway.” Pretty much a “dog bites man” story except for the “I was a 34 year old virgin” twist. And if an 18 year old told me “life is passing me by. I’m the oldest virgin I know. I’m tired of being a freak. I’m going to go down and get some birthcontrol and then I’m going to go find a boy to have sex with” I’d tell her it was a really bad idea. And that’s pretty much what I’d tell this woman too.
eulogos said:
[blockquote] Our job, if we are not married, is to marry as wisely as we can, if we can. If for some reason we cannot, and God has called us to the single life, we are to obey Him in that life and try to give love ourselves through our profession, to our friends and family, to some good cause.[/blockquote]
Great comment, the key word here is obey. The heart wants what the heart wants, nothing new here. We’re still obligated to do the right thing and be obedient to God. That is what this woman is having trouble doing. Her body is 30 some years old and her head is about 11 years old. Actually, she is behaving younger than that. Really silly. The virginity is not such an aberration, just her attitude about it. She could be a really loving and wonderful human being, find a great guy and get married. It is her head that is in the way, not her virginity. The self made stamp of freak is what will keep men away. But, at her age, I don’t know that she can get out of her own way.
I actually disagree with the statement that “our job, if we are not married,is to marry as wisely as we can, if we can.” I believe it’s the reverse. St. Paul tells us we are better off NOT marrying. However, if we are not called to the celibate life, then we are better off marrying. I think that current thinking is that BOTH callings are equally valid.
This woman “could be a really loving and wonderful human being, find a great guy and get married.” She could also be a really wonderful and loving single person. What she does NOT want to be is a virgin in any condition whatsoever because she’s decided that that’s equivalent to a physical defect like a missing limb or an emotional defect like a kid raised in an orphanage unable to form emotional attachments. The problem, as pointed out, is in her head. But I don’t believe it’s the Mormons who put it there (not that I’ve got anything going for the Mormons). I believe it’s more likely her sex-shop visiting pot-smoking friends.
CM,
Well, being neither Mormon nor in any semblance of her situation, I can’t be reading my experiences in her own. However, I do know single people who have been in very unfortunate situations regarding sexuality and how it affects them. Those who push marriage as some sort of remedy aren’t being realistic.
In the vein, I want to thank you for your previous comment about singlehood. That’s precisely what people need to consider, especially when they (insensitively, unthinkingly? I don’t know) push the notion that everyone needs to marry and you’re not complete or truly happy unless you do.
It’s simply not true, and not only does it diminish singles but it also projects a falsely exalted notion about the state of marriage. Some people are not called or equipped to marry; pressuring them into it has led to a lot of the trainwrecks we see.
As a single person who has grown very tired throughout the years of hearing married men’s sob stories and come-on lines, of seeing friends and family members abused and hurt by their spouses, I think that the marrieds need to spend more time working on the problems with their “blessed state” than telling singles that we’re defective or incomplete. We’re perfectly fine and, if it’s God’s will that we marry, we will. But we can’t be pushed or guilted or prayed into something so life-changing and personal.
I have a few friends who have obnoxious spouses and who truly deserve so much better. All I can do is love them and try to do nice things for them. Would it be my place to repeatedly insist that they get divorces and should be single? Of course not. So why is it OK for people to insist that everyone should be married? And to manipulate and abuse people over it?
Anyway, I appreciate your kind words on singles’ behalf. Not enough people speak up that way.
I have always thought that one of the great virtues of Catholicism is its exaltation of the single state, especially for women, although admittedly this has been largely (but by no means always) through the medium of the religious life. 1,000 years ago, if you were a woman, your basic role in life was to get married and have children. Among other things, it was frequently a death sentence as many women — even queens and the highest born — died in childbirth. (Or, if you were married to Henry VIII, it could be a death sentence for other reasons. 🙂 )
A married woman was expected to pursue no other intellectual or professional calling (although a few women did). On the other hand, you also had the option to join the religious. If you did this, you might spend a quiet life of contemplation, or you might be involved in active intellectual or organizational pursuits. My grandmother always held up the nuns of her day as women with amazing strengths and responsibilities (at a time when few other woman had public roles). She would point out that nuns administer hospitals, and run school systems, and oversee missions, and many other things requiring great talent and energy. Of course, these things are now open to all women but I would argue (and duck after saying it) that you cannot have 5 children and do them justice in raising them, and run a household by yourself (as opposed to hiring other people to do it for you) and STILL put in the time and energy committments to be a successful full time high-level professional/business person. Not saying you can’t have a job — but you are not going to be administering a hospital system. One or the other is not going to get your full attention, time, and energy. Likewise, if you are a married man, as St. Paul points out, if you have a wife and kids and are faced with some situation requiring great sacrifice, your first thought may not be “what does God want me to do in this situation?” but “what does my wife want and what would be best for my kids?” Not that thinking about the needs of your wife and kids is bad, but it’s the main reason that priests are celibate. It is much harder to be a father to whole flock when you must put the needs of a specific family first.
Catholicism is often criticized for having some kind of “anti-life” “sex-hating” bias towards celibacy but I think people who think that are just so brainwashed that marriage or at least sex is such a essential part of life that they can’t even imagine why celibacy brings positive strengths and not merely negation — and especially for women. It’s not for everybody — but then neither is marriage. Catholicism respects the calling of the single life in a way that I truly believe no other religion does.
My problem with the woman who wrote this essay is not that she is rejecting marriage — not at all. It’s that she’s setting herself up to to have the worst of both worlds. Foregoing the permanance and strength of marriage and the emotional fulfillment of children while tying herself to the strains and emotional costs of incomplete and impermanent and almost certainly unhappy (because they are almost certainly going to reach a division point) relationships. Rather than tying herself for life to the men she has rejected as husbands (because, according to her, they are Momon “leftovers” or sexually exploitative non-Mormons) she’ll just have a series of affairs with them, each ending unhappily for one person or the other. Brilliant!
And, of course, she’s also deliberatetly putting herself in a situation hostile to the raising of children while engaging in the act that creates children, so she’s going to have to be relying on an IUD, and abortion when/if that fails, to make sure she doesn’t have any. Another great life choice.
CM wrote
[blockquote]My problem with the woman who wrote this essay is not that she is rejecting marriage—not at all. It’s that she’s setting herself up to to have the worst of both worlds. [/blockquote]
That is spot on. She seems to see no joy or purpose in singlehhod. I was taught that work was an end in itself and that honorable work, done honorably, was noble. One needn’t look beyond that even to find happiness, that the work itself was possibly sustaining. I had examples in my own extended family. If you add God to that mix and search for his purposes in your life, you are complete, not without sadness or lonliness, but I know plenty who find sadness and lonliness in even good marriages, even if just occasionally. This was the sadest of all lives.
I also agree with the comment made regarding her choice of friends. Who would find these folks good to spend time with. Yikes!!! Go to a solid church and pick up a bible and get into a class. Find some real Christians who are trying to know God’s word. It is a good exercise; far more promising and challenging than the shopping she wrote of.
LOL, CM. I wouldn’t go that far in awarding accolades to the RCC for its treatment of women, single or otherwise. But your point about Christianity doing more to improve the expectations of women than other belief systems is sound. One of the reasons that the Christian Church solemnized matrimony in practice was to try to protect women from exploitation. Or so some histories say.
I think one of the main problems with the insistence on marriage is that it’s been simmering in this whole religious/social/political stew. For whatever reason, we like to pretend that the current norms and expectations are the way it’s always been. And, of course, that’s simply not true. We’re starting to see the fallout — when marriage becomes a human “right” and expectation that is facillitated by secular government Pandora’s Box unleashes all sorts of unexpected results. And, again, it re-emphasizes that there’s something wrong with not being coupled.
But, here’s the thing: While I think we all agree that the woman in the article is using poor reasoning and making poor choices, she remains single and can CHANGE her choices and reasoning without any legal fuss or obstacle at any time. It’s quite likely that she will. If she entered into an unhappy, ill-advised marriage, however, change would not be so easy to effect. There would be other lives with whom she was tied legally, spiritually and, perhaps, biologically.
Sometimes single people do stumble onto a bad path but they can find deliverance and true, heartfelt change by working through them. Persuading them that the best way is to pursue marriage is disingenuous (I’m not saying that’s what you recommended, CM, just that it’s a common reaction.).
But that’s the double-edged sword of singlehood, isn’t it? (And the one that seems to bother the marrieds so much.) You DO have more choices when you’re single. It’s freedom that comes with responsibility only to yourself, your compass and your values. Choose poorly and you can try again, without much risk. Choose well and you have the freedom to fully become the person God intended without negative influences.
This woman is a work in progress and she will learn to use her freedom, either as a conscious choice or through a series of bad experiences that will inevitably direct her choices. God will be there throughout, whether she recognizes it or not.
[blockquote] If she entered into an unhappy, ill-advised marriage, however, change would not be so easy to effect. There would be other lives with whom she was tied legally, spiritually and, perhaps, biologically. [/blockquote]
Unfortunately there are already other lives she is entangling in her own. Not only the men in her life but any children she gets pregnant with. And if an IUD is her contraception of choice that’s actually a fair possibility. Only then she will have backed herself into a corner such that she will conclude that aborting the child is the only reasonable solution.
Our choices are never “just” about ourselves — especially when they are our choices about sex.
No T2, not freedom with responsibility to only yourself, your compass and your values, responsibility to God’s compass and God’s values. That is the misstep. There is no difference, single or married. The modern liberal will try to tell you that is true, but it is not. You will just have fewer human eyes on you while you do it. There may be no one to whom you wake who can see your daily movement, but your obligations are really the same.
Um, lostdesert, God IS my compass and the source of my values. Obviously. I have no idea what you mean by “God’s compass” and “God’s values.” God is the almighty, omnipotent, and omnipresent. He doesn’t require a compass and He is the source of values. I’m not playing semantic games — this is an important distinction, particularly in this topic of discussion.
People use God to push marriage on everyone but what they’re really pushing are their own and their society’s values. The OT religious values were apparently OK with bigamy when necessary and, in the NT, Our Lord and many of His disciples were single. So much of this “you will marry or else be second-class” doesn’t come from God — it comes from society. And while I eschew political labels like the one you mentioned, it’s actually the conservatives who are far worse about insisting that women must be wives and mothers to be fulfilled because it’s their duty and God’s plan. Let’s not go there. Church leaders may puff themselves up to make such claims but the Christ did not. And He’s the one I follow.