I went through the temple 20 years ago this coming December, right before getting married. I was a BYU student before the era of church released videos that show temple clothing or the hidden cameras that have made temple ceremonies commonplace on YouTube. I was 21 years old and had absolutely no idea what I was going into when I entered the temple on a cold winter evening in 2002.
My parents were both converts and we’d had no extended family participate in temple ceremonies, and I was young enough that most of my close female friends had only gone to do baptisms so far and my male friends hadn’t really said much to me about it (other than it was amazing, but too sacred to talk about).
The closest experience I’d had to a person newly receiving their endowment was at a far away temple two years earlier. My boyfriend at the time was leaving on a mission and went through prior to leaving for the MTC. While his family went with him to an endowment session, I went by myself to the baptistry and then joined them in the cafeteria afterwards.
I was actually a few months older than him, but he suddenly seemed wiser and more mature than me. He’d been initiated into a club that I wasn’t eligible for yet, even though I desperately wanted to be. As we walked through the temple halls to the cafeteria, I almost turned the wrong direction and his mom said “Oh, you can’t go to that part of the temple yet!” and grabbed my arm to redirect me. I wondered what secret thing I’d almost caught an accidental glimpse of, and I worried about innocently getting turned around in this large building and setting off imaginary alarms. In the cafeteria I awkwardly wondered if I was expected to pay for my own dinner or if his family was buying it for me (or did they even charge you to eat in the temple?). As we sat eating, they talked in code language to my boyfriend about the temple ceremony because I wasn’t allowed to know the things they knew yet. I was happy to be there, but also uncomfortable and nervous at the same time.
Afterwards I sat in front of the temple on a bench with my boyfriend, and I asked him how everything had gone. He slowly nodded, rubbed his palms onto his knees and said, “Everything…was…totally normal.” It sounded like he was talking himself into it more than telling me, and I remember thinking, “Was there some chance that it *wouldn’t* have been normal? Why isn’t he saying it was incredible and spiritual and life-changing?” I didn’t push for any more details based on the lack of openness his endowed family members had just had with me at dinner, and I remember noticing the new garment line on his knee and wondering how they felt. From my recollection he seemed a little shell shocked, and didn’t have the words to express his feelings, especially to his unendowed girlfriend who was counting on him to have just had an intensely spiritual experience. The pressure was on him to tell me he liked it, and I probably would have been worried if he’d admitted to me that he didn’t.
I didn’t end up marrying this boyfriend, and it’s anyone’s guess what he was really feeling that night. It’s possible I completely misinterpreted his reaction, but two years later I remember thinking back to his semi-stunned silence outside of the temple. I felt similar confusion, but I was engaged to be married at the time to a returned missionary who I *could* talk to about it. I told my soon-to-be husband that I was surprised at the outdated style of the temple film and its relatively low-quality production. I was used to seeing movies like Legacy at Temple Square or seminary films that moved me to tears. I expected the movie in the temple to have been created by the same filmmakers, with emotional scenes and outstanding actors, music and cinematography to match. Instead I saw an almost twenty year old film with bland acting and a lack of creativity in the editing and camera work. How was this produced by the same church that wrote the young women’s songbook I loved and the seminary films that held so much influence in my life?
The filmmaking style had reminded me of a funny ad from the 1980s for mosquito repellent set in a nudist colony, and every time the naked Adam or Eve were strategically blocked by a tree or an animal I had to suppress a giggle. It was too much like those old commercials, where actors in the foreground would pass objects around as naked actors and actresses walked through the background of the scene blocked by them. I also remember Eve holding an animal (a baby deer?) against her naked chest and couldn’t stop thinking about how uncomfortable that would be, especially if the animal squirmed or kicked in any way. And when the narration talked about creating “lions, tigers, and bears”, I always wanted the temple patrons to exclaim “oh, my!” in response. There was nothing spiritually powerful enough to move my mind off of these more mundane (but amusing) details, and that was disappointing to me.
But beyond the silliness, I felt an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach when they told me to covenant to hearken to my husband. Barely over a decade earlier, I learned that my mom and young women’s leaders had all been covenanting to obey their husbands. I wondered in the initiatories if my husband was given a similar blessing as I was when they blessed my ears to “hear the words of my husband” (I learned later that he wasn’t). I let the temple sealer “give” me to my husband like I was an object rather than a person, and I acknowledged silently to myself that I was probably only the first of many wives that would be given to him eternally. I bowed my head and said “yes” to so many things that didn’t feel quite right, but I was so young and inexperienced that it didn’t even cross my mind that there could be anything wrong with what I was being told to agree to.
Fast forward to last fall, when my early temple experiences came rushing back – triggered by (of all things!) a newly released music video by Taylor Swift. The details aren’t critical, but in case you missed it, Taylor released a viral ten minute video of an old song called ‘All To Well”. (You don’t need to listen to it if you don’t want to, but it’s RIGHT HERE if you want to.)
The song is about a brief relationship she had around her 21st birthday with a famous actor. It tells the story of how he manipulated, lied, abused and mistreated her. He used their considerable age difference and his worldly experience to take advantage of her unquestioning youthful love of him. It’s an emotional song that many people were able to relate to as they thought back on relationships in their lives where they were treated poorly but didn’t understand it at the time. Only later when they’d gained wisdom and outgrown their youthfulness could they look back and understand what happened to them.
Because Taylor was 21 in the song, it got me thinking about where I was at that same age – and that led me right to the temple.
Why did I go in, sit silently, bow my head and say “yes”, even when it made me feel small inside? Why did I get married with almost no family members present? Why did I keep going back for another decade, uncomfortable every time but assuming that I was the problem, not the temple?
I think I did it for the same reason a young Taylor fell in love with that actor and let him walk all over her – we were young and hadn’t experienced enough in our lives to know that what was happening to us wasn’t okay. Somehow watching Taylor’s video unleashed my 21 year old feelings about the temple that had been bottled up for almost two decades. I climbed into my bathtub and cried for a half hour straight that night. It felt very cathartic to finally acknowledge to myself how much I had disliked my first temple experiences.
To be fair to the church, the temple has been improved significantly in recent years for women going through it today. Despite that, so much inequality still resides in those walls – and young girls often go in not knowing what to expect, and don’t know how to react when it feels wrong.
I want to say to any young girl going through the temple today (or anyone who once was a young girl going through for the first time), it’s okay if you don’t love it. It’s okay if you’re uncomfortable, and it’s okay if you feel unequal. It’s also okay if you don’t know how to stand up for yourself yet and don’t say a word for years, going regularly and seeking calm and inspiration that may never come. The temple isn’t for everyone, and if it doesn’t bring you joy there’s nothing wrong with you and you don’t have to keep going.
It’s okay to not love the temple.
20 Responses
It’s OK to stop doing things that make you uncomfortable and that you don’t like. It’s OK to stop believing things that make you uncomfortable and that you don’t like. Maybe this uneasiness is a sign that you should get far away from this business.
I think our culture has unfortunately programmed a lot of us to ignore feelings of discomfort, especially as women. We never hold the priesthood, extend callings, give blessings or preside. We look to external sources for confirmation if something is okay or not more frequently than we look inward.
Maybe the uneasiness is because that part is not true. If it makes women weep and sob immediately (as it did a young friend of mine) then maybe the form is broken. Thank you so much for writing this.
And it’s so sad that we try to figure out what is wrong with us for not loving those parts that make us weep rather than questioning its truthfulness and application to our lives instead.
Thanks for writing this. I don’t need permission not to like the temple (I’ve figured that out) but I do need to forgive my 21-yr old self for just powering through things that felt wrong, ignoring my own intuition and experience and knowledge and trying to justify things that shouldn’t be justified. And this post helped me see that 21 yr old me was doing her best and didn’t know any better.
I was watching the short film that Taylor Switch directed about herself as a 21 year old girl being treated badly but not knowing how to respond because it was coming from a person she felt like she was in love with. I felt so bad for that poor young girl, and then realized we have all been that poor young girl at some point in our lives (which is why the song resonated and went so viral). One of those ways is in accepting inequality in our religious institutions – because we love those organizations so much.
I watched the video after reading the post and was also struck by the gas-lighting / him making her feel crazy, and how there was not some major horrible thing he did so she would be questioning herself. Lots of parallels …
My experience was much the same as yours, only a few decades earlier. It was all so sacred that I wasn’t even told to bring an escort, So I showed up with my fiance’ and immediately we (converts) felt humiliated and confused. They’d overbooked weddings that morning, so there wasn’t room in the Brides’ Dressing Room for me, and I didn’t even know that there WAS a Brides’ Dressing Room for a few years. I put on my bland wedding dress in a locker room. And covenants, wow! Blood oaths! We were acknowledging that we would be killed by the brethren if we shared what we’d learned. Grotesque, to say the least. My father was a Mason and had a “attitude” toward the LDS church, because the Masonic lodge is where Joseph borrowed all of the symbolism, rituals, and ordinances that are mostly still in use by the LDS church today. Joseph added more sexism into the mix with the addition of polygyny (multiple wives, but no women can have more than one husband). We STILL do plural sealings in our temples, so temples aren’t particularly female-friendly.
I remember going to the actual bride’s room, which I shared with a number of other women also getting married the same day. I thought how odd it was that everyone was his fine with this, since most other brides in the world would never want to share their room to get ready in with a dozen other women getting married/ just married. (And you could only have one person there with you to help you get ready, because otherwise it would be too crowded.) I remember a girl coming back who had just been married, and thinking, “OH MY GOSH, SHE JUST GOT MARRIED A MINUTE AGO AND IS ACTING LIKE EVERYTHING IS TOTALLY CHILL.”
I watch TV shows and see brides being the ONLY bride, with their mom and sisters and best friends and a make-up artist and someone doing their hair… all in one nice suite that’s just for them on their special day – and I feel sort of ripped off that I just had the crowded bride’s room, only one person, limited time, and someone else picked what I wore to be married in (and it wasn’t very flattering or normal looking, and it messed up my hair).
I can also totally imagine myself getting dressed in a tiny locker room by myself, and not even knowing about a bride’s room! (And I can only guess what I would’ve thought of the penalties and blood oaths of your day. I would’ve probably been shell shocked but gone along with it, too.)
This system just doesn’t care about individuals. It’s like a cattle call, get ’em in, get ’em out. When they got rid of the “hearken to your husband” stuff a few years ago, I wanted to write a letter asking to be released from membership, then wait a year and get rebaptized, then wait a year and go through the temple again, with the kinder, gentler promises. No can do. If you leave and come back your “blessings” are restored. One fellow said that our covenants are “automatically updated” to the latest versions. So they can change things howsoever they want and we’re stuck with it. I just reject the whole premise of it now. God know us, loves us as individuals, and will help us have the desires of our hearts and minds. We over complicate it, so much and NEVER to achieve the best case scenario with for women.
Thank you for saying this; I think it’s a very brave thing to do. I had a similar experience my first time through, and my feelings since are much like yours.
I had many similar thoughts, down to the discomfort of the awkward ways Adam and Eve covered their nakedness. I fully expected a Bart Simpson moment when suddenly we would be mooned – because that’s what the cinematography set up! In most media, this type of covering is either for intentional sexiness or humor. It was so off in the temple. And that doesn’t even touch on the theological issues I had with the temple, but the film only made the experience more challenging.
It was just so…goofy. I’ve heard men talk about going through pre-mission as hormonally charged teenage boys, trying hard not to think about naked Eve on the screen and get turned on. It’s funny, because we won’t let girls wear a sleeveless shirt at girl’s camp in the summer since priesthood leaders will be there, but in the temple Eve is totally naked.
I have also stopped going to the temple.
For me, the moment came when we were asked to be on a sealing team, where we would go and just do sealings. So I would hear the words of the sealing over and over and over. And I thought, what am I hearing? Is this what I said yes to? I was pregnant at the time, and I’ve barely been back since. I’m just not interested in going. Even with the changes.
I struggle with believing that our Heavenly Parents set this up. That this is the order of things. That only through my husband do I make covenants with God. I don’t believe polygamy is the order of things.
I would go and yearn for more understanding. Hope to have the heavens opened for me. Have a spiritual experience. Something. Anything. I thought that the more I worked to remember and memorize things for the veil I would gain some insight. Nope.
I find more peace and connections with my Heavenly Parents when I go to the beach. Or being by water. I haven’t been to the temple for years, and I’m ok with that. I’m open to the idea of going back someday but not right now.
I think a lot of us finally get to a place in time where we realize it’s not getting any better, and going over and over again is just making it worse. And then we’re like, “Why did it take me so many years to figure out that I love being by water (or for me, in the mountains) so much more than being in that building doing those rituals?” (And then we finally find peace!)
I live these temp,e posts and find so much comfort in them. I have never enjoyed the temple endowment ceremony, and knowing I am not the only one is so helpfully normalizing. I appreciate that the topic cycles through regularly, so I can be reminded and feel the fellowship and support of others who feel likewise!
Thank you for the post. I’m really struggling over renewing my recommend. I don’t enjoy the temple and haven’t for a long time. I no long believe God requires it, don’t like garments or think they’re necessary. For me now it’s all about whether I want to attend live sealings for family members. Still pondering on that one…
I have have the same feelings. I hate when people tell me to go more and that will help because it does not. I felt confused, demeaned, and awkward. When I got married the sealer told us not to look at each other because we had all the after and to look at him only. He then spoke for 30 on the endowment. Exactly what an excited bride and groom want to hear. I had an amazing reception and have a wonderful 20 year marriage even if I had an awful wedding.
How funny – my twenty year anniversary is in December and my sealer told us to look at him rather than each other. Were you married in the Bountiful Temple?
My husband always said he couldn’t remember what the sealer said, but he remembered looking at him and his incredibly blue eyes. How funny it is to me that what my husband remembers about the moment we were married is gazing deeply into the blue eyes of… an elderly man he’d never met before.
Abby it really is inappropriate to make light of the temple ordinance. You have every right to feel uncomfortable in the temple but to disparage it and to encourage people to not gain a testimony of the temple is opposite of what our prophets teach us. It’s either true or it’s not