"So . . . are you dating anyone?"

After having graduated from BYU withOUT my MRS. degree, that seems to be a fairly common question. I know people are well-meaning, and they just want to know what's going on in my life, but for myself (and many others like me), questions like that cause great discomfort and other such bad feelings.

Truth be known, I can probably count on two hands the number of dates that I was pleasured to go on in my BYU career. Now, as Provo seems to be the marriage capitol of the world, one might wonder how that could be. I have often lost sleep over the matter myself (a fact that I am not proud of, but it's the truth nonetheless).

Now, I am trying to avoid writing from the bitter perspective one might expect of a woman in my situation. Rather, I am going to attempt as much objectivity as possible, exploring things from all points of view.

Considering the unusual homogeneity of the BYU population, it seems natural that one would, of necessity, create delineations to distinguish segments of the populace one from another. Now, as far as the BYU populace compares to those of other universities, I would argue that BYU's student body is largely quite "eligible." It is composed mostly of intelligent, hard-working, spiritual, kind, service-oriented, and unusually good-looking students. For most BYU students, the above listed qualities are necessities in a potential partner, not simply bonus points. And so, whereas at any other university those criteria might severely limit one's dating pool, at BYU they hardly weed anyone out.

So, how do you decide who to like? It seems that most BYU students place everyone around them on a continuum. At one end of the spectrum you have those people who are "more" the qualities listed than others, and at the opposite end are those who are "less" so. Being that most everyone has much of the same background and so forth (I say that carefully, knowing that it will offend some who proclaim that they are different from everyone else. I realize that everyone is still different, but I am saying that BYU students are much more like one another than most other student populations), many people are attracted to the same types of people. Because of that fact, there is usually a rather small population that is fairly universally recognized as "above average" (keeping in mind, of course, that BYU's average is very highly skewed from the general average).

So, in every ward (or class or major or club or whatever), there are a handful of individuals who are the top picks from that organization. These are the individuals who are exceptional in one aspect or another: either they are incredibly sweet, or incredibly good-looking, or incredibly charismatic. Now, the other 95% of the population of the group will fall in love with those few. So, 5% of the population experiences great interest from the opposite sex. The rest of us are left to compete with the rest of the world, and will inevitably lose out to the top 5 percentile.

Of course, this only stands to explain why so many people don't date. In the girls' cases, the guys are too busy clamoring for the attention of a Top 5% Girl to pay any mind to the rest of us. In the guys' cases, I've often heard of their being rejected simply because the Top 5% Girl is simply "not interested" in him, since she has so many offers for dates that it becomes necessary for her to prescreen her candidates. Thus, they get hurt and are less likely to go out on a limb for the next girl. It's a vicious cycle.

As to long-term relationships, I must admit to being completely clueless as to how these things develop. From observation, I suppose it generally comes from a series of dates which eventually lead to exclusivity, but I always get stuck at the "series of dates" part. It perplexes me the way that people decide they want to be in a relationship. I suppose, never having been put in such a position, that a great deal of the mystery I sense in these matters would be relieved if I were ever to experience them first hand. Still, though, I find myself scratching my head on these things. Never mind proposals and marriages and all of that nonsense!

All in all, I feel like most people's romantic frustrations are rooted in the fact that we are crossing too many wires. We are interested in those who are not interested in us, just as we are not interested in those who are interested in us. I suppose the magic happens when two people are mutually interested in one another, and can then proceed to develop a beautiful relationship from the simple fact that each enjoys the other's company.

I have no idea why we must make it so complicated.