Twenty years ago, during my penultimate semester as an undergrad at Brigham Young University, I found myself in a moment in which none of my five other apartment roommates were home. That was an extremely rare occurrence, as typically we were crammed into the small space like sardines (much like everyone else who lived in apartments south of campus). It was such a rare moment, in fact, that I took advantage of the silence to get on my knees in the living room and say a prayer. I asked Heavenly Father if the woman I had chosen to marry me at the time was truly intended to be my eternal companion. Having been subjected to incessant pleas from my church leaders to get married as quickly as possible, I was under a lot of pressure. At that time, a whopping 60% of all males got married before graduation. And the trend of getting married young still persists, with 84% of all BYU graduates married during school or within 12 years of graduation.
The feeling of taking part in a “meat market” or a “marriage factory” bothered me. I remember visiting formerly-single friends at Wymount Terrace who had made the plunge during school, living in meager conditions in one-bedroom apartments, beds propped up on cinder blocks, a baby sleeping in a makeshift “crib” which was actually a plastic laundry basket. Women who didn’t get accepted to the Elementary Education program were changing their majors to Marriage and Family Studies. Men studying liberal arts were assumed to be pre-med or pre-law to prepare themselves to be sole breadwinners. I remember taking an elective religion class in Marriage and Family Preparedness just to help me find a wife. It did result in a first date to go rock climbing, but the woman considered me too overbearingly marriage-minded to agree to a second date. She was a smart woman.
Not that the woman who accepted my marriage proposal had lesser wisdom. She seemed attracted to my penchant for strict obedience, in fact. She was a returned missionary from South America as well, and believed even more strongly than I did in the importance of finding a marriage partner as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, other than also being from the state of Texas, that was the full extent of our common ground. The mighty prayer that I had bellowed out to God in my BYU apartment was efficacious enough to convince me to press ahead, however, despite obvious sinking feelings that she was not a good match for me. We were married in the Dallas Texas temple within six months.
What I have described is the quintessential experience of pioneer stock Mormons. It can feel nauseating to realize that the trauma is extremely common. Like being crammed into a BYU apartment, the feeling of being a sardine crammed into an aluminum can stays with you. You graduate from school, the physical spaces in which you live get larger, but your social, emotional, and cognitive spaces remain constrained. It’s hard to escape the feeling of being a widget traveling along the conveyor belt of the great plan of happiness. The Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints produces tithe-paying Mormons like Pepsico produces beverages, and women’s bodies are the toolset.
As long as both partners in an eternal Mormon marriage are on board with being faithful widgets, the marriage can be a lasting source of satisfaction. But it is obviously a precarious foundation, given how easy it is to encounter new information and gain new experience that destroys the fairy tale. And so it was for my BYU sweetheart and me. I told her about my doubts in the church’s truth claims while she was pregnant with our second child and I was working on completing my doctorate degree. Focusing on the cons of Joseph Smith, I laid it all out for her. She cried for days, and not because she believed what I was saying.
Eventually, though, after an eye-opening study of the Kinderhook Plates, she also opened up to the possibility that the church might not be what it claimed to be. Whether egged on by me or of her own accord, she reached some of the same conclusions that I did. We took advantage of a relocation after my graduate studies to stop attending church. The constraints now removed, we engaged in a failed experiment with non-monogamy for about a year. In that same year, I had several dangerous encounters with alcohol. And at some point, I made a mental association between all broader cultural norms and the church’s teachings. The idea of marriage itself thus became a source of friction. I formed emotional relationships with other ex-Mormon women online, which led to a painful divorce. One of the emotional relationships transitioned into a real relationship, though it also ended in flames. The church became a conduit through which I squeezed all my excuses about life’s disappointments.
Fortunately, I was able to move on in life. I have re-applied some of the cultural constraints where they have suited me. I have remarried. I now very much feel at peace with the balance. When the push-and-pull of conventional expectations causes an itch from time to time, I can interpret my response through the lens of adult maturity and experience. This is a far better place to be rather than resenting the shackles of a patriarchal cult.
