A post in the "LDS Mid Singles, Authentic and Imperfect" Facebook group recently cracked open a very old wound. Someone asked the question that has been circulating in midlife LDS singles spaces for years: why are LDS men not choosing LDS women? The thread that followed was long, honest, and at times a little raw. Dozens of people weighed in. Some were frustrated. Some were resigned. A few were genuinely trying to help.
The original poster shared that he had been single for nearly six years, was starting to wonder if his person might only find him in the next life, and felt invisible in a space where he thought he should belong. That quiet exhaustion underneath the question was easy to feel.
The comments ranged widely. One man talked about tattoos, military service, and struggles with the Word of Wisdom, and how those things close doors in the LDS dating world that stay open outside it. A woman said she keeps choosing LDS men and keeps striking out. A product manager offered a surprisingly useful analogy about not understanding your market. A few people quoted John Bytheway. Someone made a joke about cats. Someone else mentioned Moses.
And a few comments went somewhere more uncomfortable: the "nice guy" problem, impossible standards, women who want dangerous men, men who want a muse before they'll get off the couch. The thread had the texture of a lot of singles group conversations. Mostly sincere. A little scattered. Everyone describing a piece of the elephant.
Scott and Laurie read all of it, and they have some things to say.
The Question Behind the Question
Scott
When someone asks "why aren't they choosing me," what they usually mean is "what is wrong with them." That is not a criticism. It is just what pain sounds like when it has been sitting for six years.
But the more useful question is the one the product manager in the thread was pointing toward: what do the people you want actually want? Not as a manipulation strategy. Not so you can perform a version of yourself that gets better results. But because genuine curiosity about another person is one of the most attractive qualities a human being can have, and a lot of people in midlife dating have stopped being curious. They are auditing. They are presenting. They are running a checklist. They are waiting to be seen and chosen. Curiosity is something else entirely.
The guy who wrote about understanding why people pass you over, about treating rejection as data rather than verdict, was onto something real. The shift from "what is wrong with them" to "what am I not understanding yet" is not a small one. It is the whole ballgame.
Nice Guys, Kind Men, and the Difference
Scott
One of the more substantive exchanges in the thread was about the "nice guy" problem, and I want to be careful here because this concept gets weaponized in unhelpful directions pretty fast.
The clinical term is approval-seeking behavior, which in plain language means orienting your entire presentation around getting someone else to validate you. The commenter who wrote about this described it clearly: a nice guy believes that if he checks all the right boxes, he has earned love. That belief is not charming. It is exhausting to be around, because the person you are dating can feel that the relationship is actually about your need for approval rather than genuine connection with them.
The fix is not to become harder or more unavailable or more indifferent to whether anyone wants you. That road leads somewhere worse. The fix is to become someone who is genuinely building a life he finds worth living, who is clear about what he wants and where he is going, and who is looking for a partner to share that rather than a partner to complete it. That man does not need approval because he is not empty. He is not performing kindness to earn something. He is just kind. The difference between those two things is enormous, and people can feel it almost immediately.
Laurie
I want to sit with the women in this thread for a moment, because a few of them said something honest that deserves more than a passing nod.
One woman said she keeps choosing LDS men and keeps striking out. Another said she is stepping back from dating entirely because she keeps attracting men who cross her boundaries, and she wants to figure out why. Those are two very different women describing two very different problems, but they share something: they are both asking the right question. Not "what is wrong with the men" but "what is happening in my pattern."
That second question is harder. It requires looking at what you are drawn to and why, which sometimes means looking at things from your first marriage or your family of origin that you would rather leave alone. But it is the only question that leads somewhere new. Stepping back to examine your own patterns is not giving up on dating. It is the most serious investment you can make in your future relationship.
Standards, Biology, and the Impossible Standard Problem
Scott
One man in the thread wrote something that a lot of LDS men think but rarely say out loud: that LDS women compare men to Christ, that the standards feel designed for someone who does not have a human body with human drives, and that the whole thing feels rigged.
I am not going to dismiss that. There is something real underneath it.
The cultural expectation inside LDS dating communities can sometimes function less like a standard and more like a test designed to produce failure. When "temple worthy and spiritually strong" slides into "perfect in every observable way and also exciting and also ambitious and also emotionally available and also tall," you have left the territory of reasonable hope and entered something else. That is a real thing. It happens. And it discourages people who are genuinely good and genuinely trying.
But here is where I have to be honest with you. The same dynamic runs in every direction. Women in this thread described men who are waiting for a relationship to motivate them to get healthy. Men described women whose standards no human being can meet. Both of those things can be true at the same time. The answer is not to lower your standards. It is to get clear on which of your standards are about genuine compatibility and which are about fear. Those are very different lists.
The "I'll Find Them in the Next Life" Trap
Laurie
The original poster said something quietly devastating near the start of the thread. After six years of being single, he wondered if his person might just be waiting for him on the other side. Several people responded with encouragement, scripture, and reminders that God's timing is not our timing.
I do not want to argue with any of that. But I want to name what I hear underneath it.
There is a particular kind of discouragement that looks like faith. It sounds like surrender to God's plan, but what it actually is, is giving up in a way that feels spiritually acceptable. "Maybe it's just not for this life" is sometimes genuine peace. But it is sometimes a way of not having to try anymore, and not having to risk anymore, wrapped in language that makes it sound noble.
Six years is a long time to be in pain. That is real. And if you are genuinely at peace with the possibility of living the rest of your life single and finding that life full and meaningful, that is a beautiful thing and worth having. But if "the next life" is where you are sending your hope because this life keeps hurting, that deserves more attention than a comment thread can give it. That is grief. That is discouragement that has gone deep. And it is worth treating as such.
Be What You Want to Attract (But Read the Fine Print)
Scott
Several people in the thread offered a version of the "be what you want to attract" idea. Invest in yourself. Work on yourself. Love yourself first. It is good advice, mostly. But it comes with a version that goes sideways.
When self-improvement becomes another performance aimed at becoming attractive enough to finally be chosen, you have just moved the approval-seeking from the relationship into the gym. You are still waiting for someone else's verdict to confirm your worth. The goal of self-investment is not to become a better product for the market. It is to build a life you genuinely want to be living, so that whoever shows up is joining something real rather than something staged.
The man who said he invests in himself because that is the kind of person he wants to date had the right idea. Not "I am doing this so someone will finally pick me." Just: "I am building a life I respect, and I want someone who is doing the same."
That framing matters more than it might seem.
You Are Allowed to Still Want This
Laurie
If you have been sitting in the singles group for six years, or twelve, or more, and you are tired, I want to say something directly to you.
You are not behind. You are not broken. You are not evidence that the system works for everyone but you. Midlife single life in an LDS community comes with a specific kind of loneliness that almost nobody outside it fully understands. You did everything you were supposed to do. Maybe your marriage ended anyway. Maybe you never made it to marriage at all. Either way, you are here, still trying, still showing up, still reading advice columns on the internet on a Tuesday because you have not given up.
That matters.
The work of this season is not just to become dateable. It is to figure out who you actually are right now, in this life, with what you actually know and have survived and believe. The people who find each other in midlife and build something real are not the ones who finally became perfect enough. They are the ones who got honest, got curious, got clear, and stopped waiting for someone else's choice to tell them they were worth something.
You are already worth something. The relationship you want is still worth wanting. And when you are ready to go deeper, we will be here.
- Scott & Laurie
Weighing in from the lowest tier of the Celestial Kingdom, where we stopped waiting to be chosen and started becoming someone we actually wanted to spend time with.