Dating: A Variation of Shelby's Lectures on Love

Dating has come up almost as much as "love" and "marriage" in my life recently.

Read this article, Time to Stop Hooking Up then come back here.

I was talking at work the other night about how I had a completely different college experience than most. I went to a private university with an honor and dress code (that is actually observed by the vast majority of students). Members of the opposite gender couldn't be in your apartment before 10am or after midnight (1:30 am on Friday nights). Bedrooms were off-limits. I still don't go into men's rooms. Abstinence was followed because we reaffirmed every school year that we were willing to live the code we signed when we decided to attend our college, a code that is rooted in our religious beliefs. My alma mater is the #1 stone cold sober school in the country, and I can't imagine it will ever be dethroned.

You know what I got from this? A regret free education that's left me with many amazing male friends in my life that I got to know through casual interactions or "dating". I also developed a strong sense of what I'm worth and what I deserve.

I don't let men text me to make plans. When a guy and I start to text and I can tell he's fishing to figure out if I'd be interested in going somewhere with him I lay it out, "Ask me in person and we'll see what I say". I've used this on multiple men (last month actually). I know it freaks them out, they've told me. I've asked men for their numbers. I've called men to ask them out, or have asked them out in person, so I know how it goes. It sucks, your heart beats fast, you say the words, then it's over. And  you know what? It makes it more special.

I date. I don't accept "hang outs" if a guy wants to get to know me. Sure, chat me up at a party, but if you want to see more of me let's plan something. A guy, a girl, some food (although I'm a terrible eater...), some talk. My church says a lot about dating that I won't get into, but bottom line is I won't accept less than courtship. I'm worth so much more than being a casual part of your life. If you just want to be friends we'll figure it out real quick and be friends.

I'm very careful with affection. Read that article again and tell me I shouldn't be.

My approach may be old fashioned, and when I'm back on campus at my undergrad it is more than surreal to be in such a wholesome atmosphere, but I built a foundation there that still informs my interactions with men. I didn't date as much as some women there, but I had healthy and wholesome relationships and while I bat around phrases like "Remember who you are" "Return with honor" and "Stay vertical", I mean them and I live them.

This article also reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend this fall about the order of things between men and women. In the "world view" sex is step 2, 3, or 4 in a 10 step process, getting to know that person intimately, if at all, is usually closer to 7, 8, or 9. In my Mormon world it's opposite, with sex as 9 or 10 and getting to know someone intimately being step 3, 4, or 5. I like it better this way. You only get to step 10 after step 9, which is marriage, which means that most likely step 10 is reserved for one person. Isn't that nice? I think so.

More about love...

You know how Marie Curie comes up in your English assignment in 5th grade and all of a sudden she's everywhere that week? That night's episode of The Simpsons, the next Friday's episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, various and sundry other sources.

Whelp, since my Valentine's Day entry love talk has been everywhere, esp in relation to relationships. I've had more than three conversations in the past two weeks with disparate (nonMormon) friends about relationships and marriage, Sunday School was about how to have a good marriage and how to treat your spouse, and my friend posted an Ensign article on Facebook that I think is so on point about everything I've been trying to communicate.

One of the amazing things about LDS doctrine is that it's very simple and logical. Spiritual and moral reasons aside, not drinking, doing drugs, sleeping around, staying out of debt and having a 72 hour kit makes sense. So what do we say on marriages and love? (taken from Agency and Love in Marriage by Elder Lynn G. Robbins)

"There are no perfect marriages in the world because there are no perfect people. But our doctrine teaches us how to nurture our marriages toward perfection and how to keep the romance in them along the way. No one need ever “fall out of love.” Falling out of love is a cunning myth which causes many broken hearts and homes."

"Too many believe that love is a condition, a feeling that involves 100 percent of the heart, something that happens to you. They disassociate love from the mind and, therefore, from agency. In commanding us to love, the Lord refers to something much deeper than romance—a love that is the most profound form of loyalty. He is teaching us that love is something more than feelings of the heart; it is also a covenant we keep with soul and mind."

"Because love is as much a verb as it is a noun, the phrase “I love you” is much more a promise of behavior and commitment than it is an expression of feeling. “I love you” is a phrase we should be using in our homes much more than we do. "

"Scripturally, the Lord is very clear with us on this doctrine—you can’t “fall out of love,” because love is something you decide. Agency plays a fundamental role in our relationships with one another. This being true, we must make the conscious decision that we will love our spouse and family with all our heart, soul, and mind; that we will build, not “fall into,” strong, loving marriages and families. “Don’t just pray to marry the one you love. Instead, pray to love the one you marry.”"

"It is only by our constant, committed effort that we will make the love we share with our spouse a constant for eternity."

Putting it out there: I have very little romantic relationship experience (although I love my friends dearly), but I 100% believe that love takes work and that the constant and daily effort to make your partner happy is how to have a successful relationship. I've seen it work and know it's true. 

Old-timey love

I've been trying to formulate my thoughts for a Valentine's Day entry for a couple of days now. I'm no big Valentiner. I've never been in a relationship over any holiday besides Halloween, and even that was long distance. I haven't received Valentines since grade school, and I don't foresee much Valentine's revelry for awhile yet.

That being said, I've known love, in many forms, including the romantic/relationship variety, and the heartbreak when it's gone.

So, my topic? Old timey-love and how I think, in a nutshell, it's the modern equivalent to a hard crush. Because of this, I think we’ve all been in love and/or loved a lot more than we might admit.

I'm mostly basing what I know of old-timey courtship from novels. For the sake of this argument I’m using Pride and Prejudice, but most Austens, Brontes or Dickens will do. Let's take Mr. Darcy. After knowing Elizabeth for an estimated six months he declares his love for her. He loves her. With no reciprocation, he has decided he loves her and asks her to marry him. What would happen these days? Darcy would probably have said "I like you a whole lot, let's go out sometime" and indeed, modern adaptations of said event have made that very change. I also wonder if he'd have "asked her out" sooner, or have chalked it all up to a silly crush and gotten over it before it came to a declaration of love. 

With shorter life spans, infant mortality, and premarital fidelity, old-timey people had to mean business. I’m not sure we’d describe their admiration of each other as a “crush.” Even with Kitty and Lydia Bennet they meant business. Everyone was a prospect for lifelong companionship and procreation (you can argue this is most true of women of the time, rather than men). The jump to love, or at least enough admiration to make a marriage was readily made. Gosh, take a look at Lydia. Not the best example of old-timey values, but she wanted to get married. Now, with ridiculously long lifespans, and a diminishing urgency for marriage, why would we admit to being in love so soon? We don't jump straight to that oh-so-dangerous four-letter word. Why would we? We have plenty of time, and plenty of benefits without "love." I say if a person is physically attracted to another, has an emotional and social connection, and is concerned for that person's well-being more than the average, those are pretty strong ingredients for love. 

I am not saying all the boys or girls you fancied in college were the love of your life, but there's got to be a fella or a lass you might have really crushed on hard, or even dated, that you might not have spoken the words to, but meant much more than a mere fancy. Gosh, how many people have you been in love with? My number's still low, but maybe more than I've admitted to myself. And I'm not saying it's bowl you over, heat of the night, kill yourself love, but on some level I think we love a lot more than we give ourselves credit for. Just me?

But back to old-timey love for a moment. It must be addressed that in the old-timey days some couples just weren't in love, and some couples, based on their dozens of children, were very much in love. Going back to the Darcy example I think he did love Elizabeth after that first six months. Was he ready to accept her as a wife? No, but he loved her. Let's not over-romanticize old-timey love (oddly enough, I don't think that's what I'm getting at). With a good novel there might be love, but the author(ess) lets it continue to develop into what it needs to be. Darcy and Elizabeth have another six months to get on the same page. Anne and Captain Wentworth have eight years, almost all Austens after an initial recognition of love take further months to make it into what it should be, same with the Brontes (here I cite Anne and Charlotte. Emily I do not support as a healthy example of appropriate love).

While I don’t think old-timey persons had the same concept of “crushes” as we do, let’s not ignore that we might label some minor relationships in Pride and Prejudice as crushes. We are told Jane Bennet had a man in love with her when she was 15, and Lydia and Kitty are certainly obnoxious in their fancies for men, and lest we forget Elizabeth’s attraction to Wickham. These were all pretty minor. Going back to my initial point, old-timey love is equivalent to today’s hard crush. I’m talking the kind of crush where you make yourself run into someone, you think about them all the time, you love their face, you notice where they have grey hairs (you know how I roll…), you can’t wait to talk to them about something that reminds you of them, your face hurts from smiling when you’re around them, all of those extra things you do when a crush has developed into something more. Reciprocated or not, the basis of a relationship or not, I say these types of intense crushes border or cross into love territory.

I think we've taught ourselves to undermine and devalue and pervert so many fundamental and simple things that love has become one of them. We've invented "crush" like we've invented "adolescence" and "Mcjob", to label something that's come about with how the times are a-changing. I think deep down we don't want to forever "crush" on someone any more than we really want to have a "fling." Fundamentally and simply put, we want to love and to be loved and any degree of "crushing" is a step to finding that. Indeed, the intense crush I speak of is well on its way to love.

I'm not saying crushes are a bad thing. You have to like someone before you can love them, and there are as many forms of love as there are moments in time (Jane Austen movie quote, anyone? anyone?), but how about we take a good hard look at ourselves, step back from “crushes” and admit to a few more love affairs than we'd like to believe we've had. You know you loved a boy in first grade, why not one a little later on?

So, this Valentine's Day, if you're alone or even if you're not, look at the loves of your life and see if there aren't a few you missed counting. 

Retro, Vintage, Antique, and Extant AND Ancient!

Alright, let's get this straight. People with Pinterest boards of  "Vintage Fashions" with gowns from 1775 are driving me NUTS. So, here we go.

Retro: of or designating the style of an earlier time. Typically older than 15-20 years and younger than 30. So right now 1984-1999 is considered retro, let that sink in. Anything less than 15 years old is just out of style.

Vintage is the gap between retro and antique. So right now vintage is 1915-1983. I found a definition that said vintage tends to be of higher quality or value, but I'm just going to say it's not mid-century garbage.

Antique is one hundred years old or older, some argue that it starts at 1920. So antique is either older than 1920 or 1914.

Extant means still existing. A dress from 1885 is both antique and extant. It is not however vintage.

Also, a costume is something someone wears when they're not being themselves, even if it means they're dressing how they would have dressed in 1910. Clothes are what people actually wore/wear. In my opinion you don't have extant costumes unless they were worn at a fancy dress party or on stage. Don't make a Pinterest board of "costumes" that is all extant clothing that real people wore as themselves. If it was some duchess' fancy dress costume from 1895 then you can put it in a costume board.

However (and this is where it gets admittedly obnoxious), I will say that costume designers design COSTUMES for actors, and clothes for characters. Get it?

Edited--I'm really going for quantifiable time with these definitions and so thought of the last broad label I could, so...
Ancient: of or relating to the historical period beginning with the earliest known civilizations and extending to the fall of the western Roman Empire in a.d. 476 (link)

So...(yes, I have changed all dates to reflect 2014)
Now--NOW
2000-2013--I don't know, outdated? limbo?
1984-1999--Retro
1915-1983--Vintage
477 AD-1914--Antique
476 AD and before--Ancient

How To Catch A Wedding Bouquet

1) Be tall.
2) Wear heels. Being about 6'2" is ideal when all is said and done.
3) Go to the back. Most brides are worried they won't throw it hard enough and so over compensate and send the flowers sailing over all the anxiously awaiting single lasses. Usually just being tall and in the back is going to clinch it for ya.
4) Don't want to catch it. I've caught 4 or 5, or 6? After the second I was over it, but they kept coming. At this point I try not to participate but inevitably get shoved into the group, and put in the back bc the shorter girls figure that's a handicap. See #3.
5) Snatch it. Just reach up and get it. It's there, it's coming right at you, no one else has a chance. Just take it.
6) Pose with the bride.

The end.

I've caught almost every bouquet since puberty and am pretty sure all the girls that didn't catch it at all of those weddings are married by now, so obviously it works wonders :P

Mormons and the Arts

This topic has been near and dear to my heart for many years now and has come to the front of my mind more often recently. Last night I got the chance to have dinner with some friends and we discussed the LDS church and the arts and our position in it as artists. The Lord has created and fostered in his children the desire and need to create and blesses our endeavors to do so. As the arts increase in availability throughout the world and as content continues to shift and change it's important to remember that art is one of the greatest tools for good in this world. The portrayal of evil is not the supporting or condoning of it. How can we appreciate the light if we do not know of darkness? As we create and participate in the arts of course we must check with ourselves and the Lord to know what we are to accept or reject, but it is my belief, experience, and testimony that certain feelings, realizations, motivations, and blessings can only be received through creation of and participation in the arts.

rant over.

Here are some things to read:

"Brigham Young guessed publicly that there was a lot more singing and dancing in heaven than in hell, and he saw no reason why the saints should imitate the hot place."
-Wallace Stegner's Mormon Country, page 18 of the 2003 paperback edition


"If placed upon a cannibal island with the charge of civilizing the inhabitants, I would construct a theatre." Brigham Young

"God's purpose for the artist is to inspire. To give us visions of ourselves that we might not otherwise see. To make us better than we would have been. The world is better for the arts and artists in it. Few earthly things bring joy more fully to the world than the arts."
The Lord's Purpose for the Artist in the Gospel Plan: Elder M. Russell Ballard, Tuacahn Mormon Arts Festival, 8 April 1995