A woman in the LDS Dating - Midsingles Facebook group posted a meme last week that stopped the scroll for 359 people and pulled 65 comments out of a community. The image read: "There are people who had just one date, fell in love, and got married. Then there's you... in Season 5, Episode 22, Part 2."
The response was immediate and specific. One commenter said she was on commercial break, in the fridge getting snacks. Another said his post-season was on its 75th episode and the cast had all but disappeared. Someone said they were stuck on a channel nobody watches. Someone said they had been cancelled twice and were waiting to see if a streaming service would pick them up. One man said he remembered Season 5. Thirty seasons ago.
What was striking wasn't the humor. This crowd is good at humor. What was striking was the precision. People didn't just agree and move on — they extended the metaphor with real specificity, adding details that only land if you've actually felt the thing the joke is describing. The cancelled pilot who never aired. The woman whose show was retired. The man hanging with the cleaning crew on the lifetime set. These are not just punchlines. They are portraits.
Scott and Laurie read the whole thread. And they want to talk about what's actually underneath it.
The Show Nobody Pitched
Scott
Let's start with the metaphor itself, because it is doing more work than it looks like.
The reason the TV show framing hit this group so hard is not because dating is dramatic. It's because this particular community grew up with a very specific script. Not a loose cultural suggestion — a detailed narrative with a clear structure and a promised ending. Mission. Marriage. Family. The sealed photo on the mantle. The end. That script was so detailed and so deeply embedded that when it didn't play out as promised, people didn't just lose a relationship. They lost the whole show. The writers' room. The guaranteed renewal.
Here's something I want to plant early, because we're going to come back to it: the TV metaphor is funny, and it is also accidentally accurate in a way most people in that thread hadn't quite named. The people laughing about being in Season 46 are not just describing how long they've been dating. They are describing how long they've been the lead character in a story that keeps getting renewed without ever getting a satisfying arc. That is a specific kind of exhaustion. We'll get there.
Commercial Break
Laurie
There's a comment in that thread that got fifteen reactions. Someone said she was on commercial break, in the fridge getting snacks. People loved it because it's funny. But I want to look at it more carefully.
"I'm on commercial break" can mean two completely different things. The first is: I'm resting, recharging, and I'll be back when I'm ready. That is a healthy, self-aware response to years of dating that haven't resolved. The second is: I've stopped expecting the show to get better, and the fridge is easier than caring. Those two things sound the same from the outside. They feel completely different from the inside. And the distinction matters, because the path forward is different depending on which one is true for you.
I'm not saying anyone in that thread is in the wrong kind of commercial break. Most of them probably know exactly which one they're in. What I'm saying is: it's worth being honest with yourself about the answer. Not as a judgment. As information. The humor in that thread is real and good. And underneath it, there is also real data about where each of those people actually is. Both things are worth holding.
Most People Have the Audition Process Backwards
Scott
One comment in the thread stood apart from the rest. A man wrote that he doesn't get down on dating because he believes it isn't a numbers game. It's a "God knows two people are ready" game. He said he knows he's in the ten percent minority with that view.
I'm not here to argue with his faith. But I want to talk about the pattern underneath it, because most people in this community have the logic running in the wrong direction. The belief goes something like this: if I become the right person, the right person will find me. If I improve enough, heal enough, prepare enough, I will eventually become castable. So the strategy is self-improvement until readiness.
Here's the problem with that strategy. Readiness doesn't arrive before the relationship. It arrives inside of it. Most people are waiting to be ready enough to show up. But showing up is actually what makes you ready. The audition does not prepare you for the role. The role prepares you for the role. If you are waiting to feel finished before you try again, you are waiting for something that does not arrive in the order you're expecting. The goal is not to become the best version of yourself and then invite someone in. The goal is to invite someone in and become the best version of yourself in the process. Those are not the same thing. And they lead to completely different lives.
What Seventy-Five Seasons Actually Tells You
Scott
One commenter said he was in his post-season, episode 75, hanging with the cleaning crew on the lifetime set. It's a great line. But post-season is also worth a direct conversation, not just a laugh.
Post-season means the show isn't running anymore. It means you've stopped expecting it to. That is a real place to be. It is not the same as being between seasons, or being on commercial break, or even being a cancelled pilot. Post-season is where you go when hope has gotten too expensive to maintain. Nobody arrives there because they're lazy or giving up. They arrive there because they've invested, repeatedly, and the returns kept not coming. That's not failure. That's what happens when a strategy stops working and your whole self finally says enough.
But here's what I want to say: post-season is a place you can rest. It is not a final destination. And the way out is not through another season of dating. Laurie is going to say it better than I can.
Laurie
Here's the thing nobody says to the person in their post-season: you don't have to go back on the air to be in a story worth watching.
Several people in that thread described some version of this — not just tired of dating, but tired of being the main character in a narrative that keeps not resolving. One commenter said her show was canceled and she's not really auditioning anymore. Life, she said. It happens. I want to honor that. And I also want to push back gently on one piece of it. When the story doesn't go the way we planned, most of us do one of two things. We either keep forcing the same plot, or we close the script entirely. But there is a third option, and it's the one almost nobody considers: you write a different show. Not a consolation prize. Not a lesser version of the original. An actually different show, built around who you are right now and not who you were supposed to be.
The shift isn't from "when will I find someone" to "I give up." It's from "when will I find someone" to "what kind of life am I building, and who fits into that?" That is not a small reframe. That is the whole thing. And if you're not there yet, that is completely okay. Most people aren't. It takes time, and it takes something that looks a lot like sitting with real loss, and nobody gets there on a schedule.
You Are Not a Failed Pilot
Laurie
One commenter said something I keep returning to. He said he's a failed pilot who never aired.
I want to say something to that person, and to everyone who felt that one land: a pilot that doesn't get picked up is not evidence that the story wasn't worth telling. It is evidence that the timing was wrong, or the network was wrong, or the people making decisions didn't know what they had. Some of the most beloved shows in history were passed over, cancelled early, or took years to find their audience. The number of seasons you've been at this is not a grade on your worth as a person or as a partner.
You are not behind. You are not past your best work. You are not too complicated or too much or too far past the point where any of this is worth trying. You are a person who came into midlife with a script that didn't survive contact with reality, and you are still showing up. The people who wrote in that thread, even the ones who said they were in post-season, even the ones who said they were hanging with the cleaning crew — they showed up. They read the post. They responded. They are still in the room. That matters more than the season number ever could.
And when you are ready to go deeper into what a different kind of story could look like, we will be here.
— Scott & Laurie
Weighing in from the lowest tier of the Celestial Kingdom, where we finally figured out that the best shows are not the ones that ended on schedule — they are the ones that had the nerve to find a different network and start over.