Recently, Richie T interviewed Nicole Hardy author of Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin. Nicole left the church when she was 35 and in the interview she talks about her journey and the struggles she faced when she was still a member.  Even though Nicole is no longer a member, a lot of what she said resonated with me.  I am not saying that I have any plans on leaving the church, quite on the contrary. I actually feel stronger in my faith today than I did even a year ago. That being said, there are a few things that I personally struggle with to this day, and one of those things Nicole brought up in her interview as well.

When Richie asked her why she claimed she had had such a hard time dating, she gave an answer that I swear could have been stolen out of a page of my diary.

The first point she brought up is that LDS guys (for the most part) seem to be intimidated(?) turned-off(?) threatened(?) or just not attracted to more opinionated and strong-willed women.  Now, I don’t think it would be fair or accurate to say this is true of ALL Mormon guys, nor do I think that you can even pin this to a strictly LDS hangup. I think that there will always be men out there that want a quiet subservient woman whose only job in life is to bear his children and stay thin and beautiful while doing it.  The same is true on the other side however, in that there are plenty of women out there whose only ambition in life is to be a wife and mother. They don’t want to work, they don’t want to go to school or see the world, they simply want a stable home where they can raise however many children they have decided on, while their husbands go out and brings back bacon.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE bacon, probably more than most women would care to admit, but I have to say that I don’t identify with these women, and I am not attracted to the kind of men that want these kinds of women.  I have been on numerous dates with good LDS guys who make it very clear that my role (in our non-existent future marriage) will be to stay at home with the basketball team’s worth of children he plans on impregnating me with.

What? Like bearing children is difficult or something??? I work 8 hours a day at Discover Card and you don’t hear me complaining!

Again, I want to be clear. I am not trying to come down on people who want to have kids.  I also don’t think it is wrong to want to have a lot of kids.  I think there is an argument to be made about fiscal responsibility and living within your means to which one might include how many children you choose to bring into the world, but that is another topic for another day.

If your life’s ambition is to have a billion children…GREAT! If you sole drive is to be a mother or a father…AWESOME! Kids are wonderful! Without good people willing to spawn, our race would die off or become a bunch of degenerate miscreants. So to all you men and women out there that have the pure desire to raise healthy children in healthy environments, I say, Go Forth and Multiply!!!

That all being said, I’m gonna get a little vulnerable for a moment.

I don’t know why, or how it came to be so in my particular case….but I can tell you that even though I would consider myself a deeply loving, caring, and yes, even nurturing person, I have never felt any particular drive to be a mother.

Here is where I begin to feel like a social, cultural, and spiritual pariah.

When I pluck up the courage to tell someone that I’m not sure if I ever want to have kids (Be it an acquaintance, relative, or probably the most devastating someone who I am interested in romantically), I very often get the same reply, with some variations depending on how polite they are trying to be….

WHAT? You don’t want children?? How can you not want children? Wanting children is probably the most natural and normal and human and God like desire on the planet next to eating and breathing.  What good LDS woman who believes in the gospel doesn’t want children? Are you sure you aren’t just being a little selfish? Do you not believe in the Proclamation to the Family?  Do you not understand the plan of salvation or the eternal plan of happiness where the whole point is that you are going to create your own world and then fill it with CHILDREN??? What is wrong with you?

This is about the point where my self-worth goes into a nose dive and I retreat to the safety of my room and my dog and cry myself to sleep.  And 9 times out of 10, I am not going to hear from that guy ever again.

To be fair, I don’t blame them.  To be honest, I probably wouldn’t be nearly as upset by their comments if I didn’t believe them to whatever extent.  I can’t tell you how many years I have spent beating myself up because I seemed to lack that inherent feminine trait of wanting to be a mother.  I don’t need anyone to ask me what is wrong with me, I do a pretty good job of doing that myself.  I don’t need people pointing out to me the inconsistency with my hang-ups and the doctrine of the church, and I sure as sunbeams don’t need someone citing The Proclamation verbatim in an attempt to prove though divine revelation just how screwed up I am.

I am not a stupid person.  I am not a lazy person.  I am not an evil person.  I believe in the gospel.  I believe in God’s plan.  I believe in eternal families and children and all of that wonderful stuff.  So you can imagine how much inner turmoil it must cause someone like me to believe in all of those things, and then turn inward to find the desire to do them myself, and come up empty handed.  It makes me feel like I am fundamentally broken, that there is something lacking in my very soul, and that I will most certainly be in big trouble when all is said and done.

I don’t know why at this particular time in my life I don’t feel the desire to be a mother.  I can’t say that this is how I am ALWAYS going to feel. Who knows? Maybe I meet a guy, fall stupid in love, and can think of nothing I want to do more than make babies with him.  Maybe I never get married and it becomes a moot point.  Though I still kinda feel like people would try and fault me for not having the desire regardless of the opportunity. It kills me to think that I have missed out on the opportunity to have an amazing relationship with a good LDS guy because my reservations were a deal breaker for him. I want to get mad at them, I want to say that they should love me for who I am regardless of my ability to produce offspring for them…But then when I take a step back, I realize that for most people, LDS or not, children are important, if not critical.  For many people children are the point of marriage.  I see that a lot in the church, and I fully support those who believe this to be true.

When it comes right down to it, I have to believe that God knows my heart and He alone knows what makes me tick and why I am motivated to do the things that I do.  I have come to realize that even though I am an incredible LDS woman with so much love to share with the world and within a relationship, I am going to be dismissed by the better portion of the male population.

People tell me that I should date a guy who doesn’t want kids either.  My reply is that I don’t want someone who says they NEVER want children, because I can’t say that either.  Some say I should date guys who are divorced and already have kids and don’t feel a need to have anymore.  I can see what they are driving at, but they are still kinda missing the point.

What I want is to find a guy who isn’t on one side of the fence or the other. I am looking for someone who isn’t so black and white.  I am looking for someone who first and foremost knows that at the end of the day, the relationship that we have with each other is the one that is going to carry on into eternity.  Even if you have kids, they are going to eventually grow up and get sealed to their eternal companions and so on and so forth.  I am looking for a companion first, and then once I have that, we as a couple can begin to discuss if and when children are a good idea for us. I feel like children are the ultimate expression of love between two people. I don’t feel like they are something you just do because you think it is what you should or ought to do. I don’t think kids should be something you have because you are trying to check off all of the items on the eternal to-do list.

I wish that I could feel like that last statement I said wasn’t taboo or blasphemous.  But more than anything, I wish that I didn’t feel, or that I am being made to feel by the members of the faith I cherish, that there is something inherently and fundamentally lacking within me simply because I appear to come up short in this one specific and yet apparently critical aspect of the gospel.

Maybe I’m not alone in this. I hope we can have more open dialogue about it though. It couldn’t hurt.

~Anonymous