Week 1- Things May Not Be as They Really Seem

There are very few things worse than waiting hours and hours in a line for the most loved, highly glamorized, and extremely coveted theme park attraction just to find that when you reach the front of the line that the ride will be closed for the next HOUR.  Not to mention this was going to be the last ride of the night and 1st and only time one might get to ride it this trip.

Then the question arises do you leave the line to go to the next best ride hoping that the wait there isn’t too long? Or do you wait the additional hour and hope that it is everything thing that you ever imagined? Both options could lead to something grand, but no one truly knows for sure the outcome. The wondering is heightened due to a person having to pick one or the other and possibly never knowing the outcome since they may never get to experience the unpicked ride.

Much like this ride many young single adults across the nation are faced with this dilemma. With the increasing marriage age and cohabitation and decreasing marriage rates and long-term commitment no one can truly know the outcome of their future in starting a family. 

Trends across the nation show that the biggest cause for postponing marriage is for wanting established careers, more money, increased ability to fulfill responsibility and many others like it. Some are hard to put a definitive time frame on when the goal will be achieved leaving room for uncertainty on the age that people will begin to settle down.  All we can really know for sure is that the age of marriage is increasing at a rate that could lead to less and less marriages among young adults. 

Trends of cohabitation and divorces per marriages increasing could promote fear that decreases desire to be married and avoiding possible divorce. This fear could lead to waiting until a person is 110% before committing to marriage. 

To bring in a gospel perspective, from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, that may increase the uneasiness among followers as we match worldly trends of delaying and waiting longer for marriage, is based on the teaching of the importance of family, for obtaining the highest level of spiritual blessings. Being taught in home and at church that marriage should be among the top priority many at this time have been left to feel unaccomplished if they are not yet married. Creating predetermined and an often-unrealistic age in which they thought they would meet such a milestone and haven’t regularly leads to low self-thoughts. 

On a college campus highly populated by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints it is easy to look side to side and think everyone around me seems to be getting married. With the expression of “BYU-I DO” or “Mrs. Degree” there may be an increase in the self-imposed failure mentality if it is not achieved while at BYUI.  Some may feel like a lost cause or that marriage will never happen for them if it doesn’t happen here. While those fears are valid it leads me to a new point of learning. In the past weeks discussing research studies we learned that sample size and diversity will play a big role in the outcomes of data analysis. Looking side to side is easy but as we look out and expand our personal research, we see that the age of marriage within the Mormon Culture is also increasing. In most other places we see that in and outside the church we don’t have to be married by the predisposed age of 19 or 21 yet being surrounded by people who live up to that stereotype may lead us to thinking that is the case. 

It is harder said than done but as we expand our areas of research and look past the population that the precedented belief is based upon, we may find that we are doing just fine and are in-fact not as old and broken as some may think they are. We have time. We can choose patience in the waiting or possible unhappiness in the rushing ultimately that is the choice of the individual.

To jump back to waiting for a ride, we can connect it to having finally reached the age when marriage finally seems possible just to find out it is not the right time for you. Of course, we can jump to the other line and force a marriage, but maybe just maybe it is worth the wait for the once in a lifetime chance to obtain the most wonderful, highly sacred, and extremely pure love and marriage.