By David Randall
It has come to my attention that some of these people we see hitting the online dating scene are actually right here at BYU - Mormon Betty heaven.
As we speak I have a magnet on my fridge advertising BYUdate.com a 'date-a-base' just for BYU students.
Yet how can this be? We are at BYU. The field is white, already to harvest. The ripe and lovely fruit is hanging from the vine. All that''s left for the glowing RMs to do is, in the words one of the counselors in my old stake presidency, pluck a flower from Brigham''s garden.
Talk with an aunt, or your mom''s visiting teacher and it seems like getting married here should be as easy as breeding cattle. Just pick the cutest girl in the ward with a testimony and head for the temple.
But apparently, it''s not that simple for many. And I''ll be the first confirm that fact based on my own life experience.
So why is it that dating at BYU can be so tough sometimes?
I''m happy agree with my bishop that the pickins are flush, but time and again, when I''m going in for what looks like an easy lay-up I get brutally stuffed by a girl who''s at least 6 inches shorter than I am.
Well, after one such stuffing, I developed a theory, which seemed to shed some light on the issue. I call it the Meat Market Theory, and an explanation of said theory is what follows.
To begin with BYU is different from almost any other dating culture. Not just because people actually date here, but because we are surrounded by almost 30,000 (minus marrieds) dateable candidates. In high school, the work place, other student wards or almost anywhere else BYU students come from the dating pool was limited because of either geography, lacking LDS population or social cliques.
In these other social situations we would look around and pick candidates somewhat by the process of elimination. We could feel pretty safe about the pick, because it was really the best option available at the time.
At BYU there is never any such security. There is always another option out there. The girl sitting across from you in the library, your neighbor, the guy in your marriage prep class, and the thousands of random smart, good-looking people with some temple recommends in their pockets. There is always a potentially better option, thus people are less likely to get together or stay together just because they are put together.
This is painful for those of us who were used to being treated like the cream of the crop. We used to get credit being returned missionaries, musically inclined and motivated. Now we''re forced to check our credentials at the door. Our impressive stats have been drowned in the sea of Mormon overachieving.
So what do we do? This online dating seems like one way to get past all of Meat Market stickiness. You get to know more about the person even if it is with a picture attached with little pressure behind it. But I don''t think it''s the only way, and definitely not the best way.
I think successful dating at BYU just takes looking past the Mormon fa?ade in those around us. It comes in investing enough in those around us to be able to make more reasoned decisions about those we date, and allowing our selves to find people we are really compatible with, i.e. make friends first.
In a way, as my coworker pointed out, when you are in some other social group you are settling for best person in the area, but as I pointed out, at BYU you have to settle as well, because you can never meet or date all the girls or all the boys. Maybe we just have to learn to settle on less than perfect information and less than perfect people, find the best option and run with it.