All Single Survival

Kay Senzee
Winter 1981

“Single! Over 30! Intelligent! Why, woman, are you still going to church?” My friend then laughingly summarized the years of turmoil I have spent trying to answer that question by saying, “Probably one of the Four G’s: God, guys, guilt, or just plain goony.” Such a simple explanation.

I have never had trouble with the question of why I am a Mormon. I simply dismiss that “why” with a panaceaic “the gospel is true.” Rather, my problem has been coping with the pain, alienation and anger that belonging to a family-oriented, patriarchal organization brings – an organization that, until recently, has refused to admit that I, a lone, older female, exist. God, guys, guilt, and goony all present problems for me, and I have rationalized various solutions as I have gone from youthful hope, to anger, to unwilling acceptance, to my current state of “what-the-hell” resignation to issues and emotions I’m just tired of fighting.

God’s gospel is a prism of perfectly fitting principles. The Church tilts the prism to high-light that aspect of the gospel that will convert and hold the greatest number of people. Today’s Church uses its great persuasive powers to appeal to the married majority, and the prism angle of the family togetherness to shine through what many see as the darkness of our decaying society. The authority of the priesthood, which gives a worthy male power to cope with his unstable world, also adds to that family appeal. A single woman, I need the perspective of God’s entire gospel, not just the current Church focus. I must base my religion on a belief that stretches beyond the public relations department, that goes beyond the Reader’s Digest cutouts.

So how do I maintain my membership? I selectively study the scriptures and theological works to gain an overview of God’s gospel. I selectively attend meetings with what I hope is an objective sense of humor. For example, I do not attend Mother Education classis in Relief Society and am not too concerned about hitting stake conferences with pre-announced “family” themes. To those who criticize or worry about my soul’s future, I respond that the future can take care of itself. My attitudes have become defenses in my soul’s battle to survive in the Church today. Finally, I am blessed in a way that unfortunately is not available to many single sisters. I attend a singles ward. However, even there I must maintain my selectivity and sense of humor. For example, about one in six sacrament meeting speakers comments on the reverence of the sacrament service. Reverence, my eye! It’s just the unnatural silence that results from being in a room with 400 adults and no children!

Guys in the Church are another matter. I assume my experience – bright-eyed girl goes from the mission field to BYU to find Mr. Right before she graduates – is typical. When he didn’t appear, I went on for more education, thereby effectively cutting out the many Mormon men who turn tail at the mention of a woman having a master’s degree.

After several romances didn’t work out, I entered my Glare and Hostility phase. I would return to my Midwestern hope with chin stuck out and withering phrase ready. “Go ahead,” I dared family and friends. “Just ask about men and marriage!” After Glare and Hostility came Pleading and Bargaining: long, tearful episodes on my knees making every deal I could think of with God just so He would send me a live, semi-willing male body. Sometimes, even now, I get mad at God and think that just as I will have to explain my life to Him, he will owe me an explanation or two.

Pleading and Bargaining was short-lived. I entered the It’s My Fault phase. Obviously my personality or my body or my mind was at fault. I started taking advantage of the self-help classes the Church periodically offers for what I had previously considered life’s losers. I learned about hair and face and weight, played countless games of volleyball, and attended so many exercise classes that my body gave out, automatically putting an end to this phase.

Next, I lost myself in Good Works. If I couldn’t make it to the Celestial Kingdom with a partner, I would saint myself in. Only when I had given up looking, narrowed my roommates to one, and settled in, did I move to the Bitter and Cynical phase. I had a hard time facing the disillusionment of the unfulfilled promises of marriage and children that were in my patriarchal blessing, a blessing that has to be received from an eternal perspective because it isn’t happening now.

Currently, I am in the Detachment and Logical Assessment phase. There are simply too many women for the men in our Church. I laughingly suggest that “the one for me” – if there is such a thing – was killed in some war or that I am destined to be the 56th wife of some dutiful servant of God. I really believe neither. Sometimes I even secretly feel relieved that whatever kingdom I do earn in the next life, I will have earned it on my own. I do no have to take the added responsibility of either pushing my partner or being pulled by him. I also have a strong support group of men and women, married and single, who help me accept myself without the shadow of waiting for Mr. Right that has followed me for so many years.

I do find myself subject to the third “G” – guilt. Such feelings make it difficult to continue attending Church. I feel guilty for having somehow let down those long lines of ancestors who contributed their bit so that I might culminate these latter days with progeny who would be a joy unto the Lord. In feverish moments, I sometimes see unborn Senzees sadly shuffling over to some other good family line, hoping to be their seventh or eighth child instead of my first or second. My patriarchal blessing mentions the joys of children. Soon I will be biologically incapable of bearing those children, and I will have no answer for those of my line whom I have disappointed.

Often I have thought that the marriage relationship is life’s major test and that I have failed even to take the test by not making my patriarchal blessing a self-fulfilling prophesy. A dear bishop gave me a rationalization I can live with. Life is a test. Some who are especially battered and scarred inside have not been asked to face the Celestial challenge of marriage. It is enough for them to simply make it through, pointing to two ward members – a nymphomaniac and a homosexual – who fought their battles daily. Perhaps winning the not doing something battle is just as important as winning the doing something battle. Those who may be mentally or severely physically handicapped are not compelled to marry during earth life. Why then, just be cause internal battlefields can’t be as easily seen as some external ones, do we condemn and demand marriage of those who are meeting their own tests? Although valid, this bishop’s argument is not one I often allow myself to hide behind.

Yes, I feel deeply guilty about not being married and having children. I was raised with those expectations. I was thirty before I stopped defining “women” as “married, with children.” Somehow, I had felt that the married seventeen-year-old was a “woman”; I, as a girl. She had an edge on me with her secret knowledge and her automatically assumed role that did not have to be justified. I, on the other hand, had and still have to justify my very being. I have to define myself in roles other than wife and mother. I usually do it by my vocation or my current avocation – “Hi, I’m Kay. I take a photography class.” I have also tried to justify myself by providing myself with the accruements of marriage: buying a house, planning gardens, painting things, and pretending my house is a home.

In trying to justify my existence, I have not found much support in the Church organization. Although grateful for scraps tossed the singles’ way in recent conference talks when a sentence suggests that the Church remembers the singles, I note that with the exception of organizing singles wards and older YSI groups, not much has been done to actually confront the singles issue. The Relief Society Board, for example, still insists that the 150 single women in my ward have a Motherly Education class. I continue to feel angry and sadly disappointed that I will have to wait for the Church to expand its vision.

Perhaps the fourth “G” – “goony” – fairly well sums up the other three. My background, my beliefs, my service to others, my educational goals, my life’s view have been so formed since before birth that I have chosen to be – perhaps could not be anything other that – a Mormon. For me, to be a single Mormon woman is a painful experience; to be an intelligent, single Mormon woman is an illogical experience; to be an older, intelligent, single Mormon woman is an almost hopeless uphill battle.