Drawing the Line

I completely understand that attending a singles ward means that marriage will be a major ward goal—if not THE ward goal. The leadership wants to get the ward members dating and engaging and marrying. And heck—I’m all for it myself. I think its great to have lots of ward activities that allow men and women to get to know each other better and spend time together.

But sometimes these activities can go a bit too far. At the risk of sounding like a witch, I have to draw the line somewhere—since the planners of such activities so rarely will.

The activities I speak of are those that are, frankly, asinine in nature. They require you to randomly pair up with a complete stranger and spend the entire evening together. This might be done by throwing a shoe into a pile, picking out another shoe, and finding its owner (ala Cinderella) or getting a sticker and having to find the matching sticker on a member of the opposite sex.

Dumb.

The planners of such occasions are so focused on the goal of marriage that they lose sight of common sense. I feel safe in saying that approximately half of the men in any given Singles ward could be labeled as “creepy,” “socially inept,” or even “smelly.” Why would I want to leave it to random chance to be hooked up with that? I don’t. And I won’t.

I don’t think being single means I have to subject myself to cruel and unusual modes of meeting men. If Elder Oaks says online dating is unnecessary (and he does), my personal corollary is “Random Pairings-off of singles at the behest of ward leaders is also unnecessary.” And I stand by that.