The Plight of the Provo Bachelor: A Growing Problem

Disclaimer (and now that I think about it, this applies to all of my Plight of the Provo Bachelor posts):
The views expressed in these blog posts represent the opinions of the author. Not necessarily facts, but more observations based on personal experiences. I know some of these topics can raise a bit of a stir every once in a while, so I want to make it clear that these are opinions and beliefs I'm expressing. If you don't agree with my opinions, then...

There is an issue that I've been noticing more and more lately. And I'm not exactly sure when it started, but I feel like I know some of the major contributing factors to it and why it's sticking around. I think addressing it is one of the main things to do in order to stop it from growing any bigger.

Guys just aren't asking girls out on dates any more.

Okay, yes, it obviously still happens, but not nearly to the extent that it used to happen, nor in the same way. And while guys may deny it all day long, it's evident to me that it's not the case. It's not just guys who are to blame; there are definitely problems from both sides of the equation. I have a couple theories as to why this problem might be.

Theory #1: Guys don't know how to properly ask someone out.

While on this blog I've praised the age of technology that we live in, it's also important to understand how negative the consequences of technology can be as well. And in this sense I don't just mean viewing things like pornography on their smartphones, as that's an obvious issue. I mean that people can just become addicted to the phone itself. I can't tell you how many times over the summer when working as an EFY counselor that I had to tell kids to put away their phones while in class, or at a morningside, or to leave them behind for games night, whatever the cause may be. Having the phone is one thing; checking it every few minutes so you can see someone's latest Snapchat or Instagram post is another entirely. (Mini rant from Louis C.K. about phones here; fair warning, there's some language.)

Communication goes hand in hand with this, and this is the point I'm trying to make with this theory. Texting, and online messaging for that matter, has become a wildly popular way to talk to one another, and for good reason. It's convenient, it's discreet, usually it's not as nearly distracting as actually talking on the phone. But it's impersonal. Unless you really know the person you're talking with, you can rarely, if ever, get someone's full meaning when they write something because the tone just isn't there. When we talk, we have speech patterns that we don't even realize most of the time that we use. But they're there, and often times critical to drive a point home to someone else. If you ever watch a public debate, pay attention to not just what they're saying, but how they're saying it. Inflections, pauses, volume, and even body language – it's all there, and a lot of times one can sway an argument based on all that unspoken communication.
However, as texting has become a dominant way of people to communicate, we've lost a lot of that skill. We neglect the opportunity to have a face-to-face talk or even a phone call with someone because we can just write it down quickly and try to convey our feelings through :) :( ;) and so on. But again, there's a lot more to a conversation and communication in general than just the words that are being said. And with texting, it feels like there's less effort put into a conversation. If I was a girl, I'd almost be offended if a guy asked me out on a date through a text or Facebook message. It feels like it lacks confidence, it lacks personality, it lacks originality – it just lacks those things that a real conversation can do for you. And on top of that, there's virtually no pressure for the person being asked to actually respond to it, which can leave the asker in the dark as to what it means.

(Just so I don't have to say this for the rest of this post, my personal belief is that while it's more than okay for a girl to ask a guy on a date, the responsibility lies with the guy. So for any example I use where a guy asks a girl out, understand that the roles could be switched and the girl could ask the guy as well.)

Say a guy sends a message to a girl that he's friends with through Facebook, saying "Hey, do you wanna go see a movie this week?" And the girl genuinely isn't interested in dating this guy, even though they're decent friends. She doesn't open it for a while because she's busy with something else, and after maybe a couple hours she actually opens the message and reads it. But seeing the content of the message, she doesn't want to continue the conversation by saying yes, but also doesn't want to hurt his feelings by saying no. So she just doesn't reply to it. Now, on the guy's end, he'll be able to see that she read the message those couple hours later, but also that there's just no response to it. Until he gets a chance to talk to her again, however he decides to do so (if at all), he has no idea what that lack of response means. "Does she not want to go out with me? Is she too busy to respond right now? Is she scared of saying yes? Will I ever get a response?" Questions start to form in his mind and these could all be avoided if he had an actual conversation with her.
So now let's say that instead of sending her a message, he asks her after a class they have together. They were sitting close to each other, and once the class ends he gets up and starts a conversation with her. In the process of this conversation he asks "Hey, do you wanna go see a movie this week?" While this does put her more on the spot, he'll be able to get a definite answer from her instead of waiting for a possible response... or an excuse. This actually leads me to my next theory.

Theory #2: People aren't being honest about their intentions.

I briefly mentioned above that there's the chance of not wanting to hurt the asker's feelings by rejecting them. But that can cause another problem, which is that instead of giving a straightforward yes or no, the person being asked gives an excuse to not go out.
I can understand not wanting to hurt someone's feelings. I really do. I've hurt others before and it's a tortuous process, because sometimes you can instantly see how crushing it is. Sometimes it can drive someone to the point of depression, which I'm sure isn't ever the intent. But for me, having been on the end of receiving those excuses for answers and then never knowing someone's true feelings (eventually I have to just guess at it), I'd rather just have a yes or no. And you know what? If it's a no, it'd hurt a bit, but I would bounce back a lot faster afterwards. I wouldn't think any less of a person for being honest. I'd probably think higher of them, because they might have had to overcome a personal insecurity to even say that out loud. They were straightforward about their feelings, and that's an admirable quality to have.
Another big thing is that the connotation of a "date" these days seems to have a lot more weight than it used to. But really, it just boils down to a simple definition: planned, paid for, and paired off. There's a talk that Elder Dallin H. Oaks gave back in 2005 (so even then, this was a problem!) to a group of young adults at a fireside in Oakland, California. The entire article is a great read, but midway through it gives those "three P's" as a guideline for what a date qualifies as. Here's an excerpt from that talk:
"Unlike hanging out, dating is not a team sport. Dating is pairing off to experience the kind of one-on-one association and temporary commitment that can lead to marriage in some rare and treasured cases... The meaning and significance of a 'date' has also changed in such a way as to price dating out of the market. I saw this trend beginning among our younger children. For whatever reason, high school boys felt they had to do something elaborate or bizarre to ask for a date, especially for an event like a prom, and girls felt they had to do likewise to accept. In addition, a date had to be something of an expensive production... All of this made dating more difficult. And the more elaborate and expensive the date, the fewer the dates. As dates become fewer and more elaborate, this seems to create an expectation that a date implies seriousness or continuing commitment. That expectation discourages dating even more...
"Simple and more frequent dates allow both men and women to 'shop around' in a way that allows extensive evaluation of the prospects. The old-fashioned date was a wonderful way to get acquainted with a member of the opposite sex. It encouraged conversation. It allowed you to see how you treat others and how you are treated in a one-on-one situation. It gave opportunities to learn how to initiate and sustain a mature relationship. None of that happens in hanging out."
A date is not a commitment to marriage, far from it. Like Elder Oaks says, it's an opportunity to get to know someone one-on-one. When hanging out, you can certainly get to know someone, or a lot of people. But that's pretty much the only way you get to know them – in a group setting. And that's not how it's going to be when you get married. Not that I can speak from personal experience, but when you're married my understanding is that you're with one person for eternity. Not you, the person you're most interested in, and all your best buddies. Just you two. So that's what a date is, and should be: a practice setting for getting into that eventual relationship. One date doesn't mean that you're already in a relationship, let alone that you're going to get married the next week or month. (Though I have heard the horror stories of those who have been on first dates and they found that the asker was "madly in love" with them. I know they're out there.)

Here's a penguin to lighten the mood. I know I can get kinda heated when I get into these rants.

Should marriage be an eventual goal? Yes, of course – otherwise, why date at all? But should that mean that you're planning to marry every person you go on a date with? No. In fact, you're probably going to get rejected a decent amount before you find someone who is interested in dating you seriously with the intent of marriage. So don't worry about that part every single dang time you try to go on a date!
Coincidentally, this last point leads me to...

Theory #3: Guys are afraid of rejection.

Like I said, you should almost expect rejection to happen in your life. It's funny, especially for those who went on missions – I'm certain that people saying "no" when you asked them if they wanted to hear a message was almost a daily routine, and as missionaries you just got used to it. Yeah, it's disheartening, but you get used to it and you learn to move on. However, there seems to be this big disconnect once you get home from the mission, and this is probably the biggest reason why: on the mission, the focus isn't about you. It's about those you're trying to help, so you're able to shrug that rejection off as their loss. When you get home, all of a sudden you're trying to do all these things for yourself (school, work, social life, church callings, etc.) and you're thrown into a balancing act. And any time you get something that throws you off-balance – say, a girl turning down your proposal of a date – then your whole life can get out of whack. Now it's your loss. It's a game of spinning plates, and when one crashes down you lose focus and it feels like they all do soon after. I've been there, I know. So what it seems like a lot of guys end up doing is just taking that spinning plate out of the game and then only focusing on the other ones, thereby leaving a void in their life that they may not even notice is there.

Of course, then you've got the girl's side of things to consider as well. If there are plenty of eligible bachelors in a ward, as an example, but they all claim to be too busy with work and school to have an open Friday night (and they very well might be that busy), then that means that the girls aren't getting asked out. And then that can result in some negative feelings, because the responsibility usually lies with the guy to be the asker. Incidentally, this pattern of not getting asked out recently happened to cause some guys to get rejected: Valentine's Day was just a little while ago, and some girls from a ward in Provo decided to have a "Galentine's" get-together, as they were all sure that they had no other plans for that evening. But when a couple of the guys asked some of those girls out for Valentine's Day, they responded saying that they already had plans to get together with the other girls. This sent the message that they just weren't interested in the guys, who then didn't bother to follow up by asking when the girls would like to go on a date because by that point they already had their feelings hurt from the rejection. (Even though the girls may have said yes to another night.)
Also from Elder Oaks' talk: "young women, if you turn down a date, be kind. Otherwise you may crush a nervous and shy questioner and destroy him as a potential dater, and that could hurt some other sister." Destroy is a pretty harsh word, especially coming from an apostle. But there it is.
For a lot of guys, if they're new or inexperienced with the dating game – and I sincerely hate that it's still treated by so many as a game – asking a girl out, even with the understanding that it's just a date, is a big deal. Some wards rely on tricks like a dating suggestion box or tie dates* in order to match people up and sometimes that helps a guy get past his shyness. Those tricks might help some people meet and go out, but it bypasses the traditional way of asking people out, and you risk pairing people up who already know that there's no mutual attraction. Again, I'd much rather just have someone tell me they're not interested instead of hearing an excuse and having to worry about if they really want to go out or not. Especially after going on a first date and feeling like it went super well, then never hearing about it from them again. For someone you're trying to date who you've already got a good friendship with, it really helps to keep that friendship intact if you're honest about things and clear about wanting to go out at all. Referring back to what I said in theory #1, communication is key.
And for that matter, even if you think you aren't interested in someone but you're not dating anyone else, go on at least one dang date if they ask you out! Don't ever think that someone "isn't your type" or is "out of your league" until you actually go on that date. Again, until you get that one-on-one time with them in a date setting, you're going to have a hard time knowing what they're truly like.


I have a couple other theories, but these are the biggest three I've thought of as to why dating and courtship is seen as such a problem these days. My hope is that all this can help out others who find themselves in a funk when it comes to the subject of dating – that it helps them understand the growing situation and why it's problematic. I know we hear a lot about it from our parents and church leaders, almost on a weekly basis. But maybe, coming from someone who's your peer and in the same boat as you, this blog post can give you some reassurance and confidence for the road ahead.


*"Tie date": the last ward I was in used this as an activity multiple times. A guy can submit a number of neckties, up to three, to a couple people in the ward who are in charge of the activity. Attached to the tie is a note giving a day, time, and activity for the date, but the guy's name is left off of the note. After all the submissions are received, the girls in the ward come by and choose a tie based on their availability and interest in the date's activity. Once they've chosen a tie (or ties), the couple in charge let's them know whose tie they chose and then the girl can meet up with the guy some time before the planned date to confirm plans and whatnot. We switched it once for guys and girls too, with girls submitting shoes instead of ties. The point of it is to be anonymous and help match people up with others who they might not normally go out with and to help those who have a fear of asking someone out normally to do so successfully.