Flunking out of YSA

I often hear people in the church refer to those who marry in their 20's as "graduating" from the YSA program. Well, if that's the case, I just flunked out. I'm no longer a young single adult in the church. I'm now a single adult.

I kind of have mixed feelings about this, and honestly I didn't expect to be weirded out by it. For all the joking about flunking out of YSA, I honestly dropped out a few years ago. I've never been a part of a singles ward. (I'm opposed to the whole idea because it creates a division in the body of Christ. There isn't a separate church for single people, so the congregations should be integrated.) I stopped going to the activities a while back because the things that appealed to me when I was 19, going to college, and living with my parents weren't really relevant when I was in my mid to late 20's, working, and living on my own. Even the mid-singles activities don't really appeal to me. They tend to be the same as the YSA activities, only with a further skewed ratio of women to men. (At the YSA activities, I found it was about 2:1. In mid-singles, it's more like 4:1 or 5:1.)

It's hard being a single person in a married church. When the primary president announces to all of the teachers that there will be an inservice and to "please ask your husband to substitute teach your class so you can attend" or when the relief society president says "we have an assignment to perform proxy sealings at the temple next week and we need five couples to attend", it can feel like I'm invisible. Those same situations could have been handled like this: "Please find a substitute teacher so that you can attend next week's inservice." and "We need five men and five women to attend a temple trip next week." Just changing a few words can make a world of difference.

My life is great. I'm pretty happy, and I'm making progress in establishing myself in a rewarding career. I have friends, family, and a wonderful cat. But there's a part of me that feels I'm missing something. I want to share this awesome life with someone. I want someone to help share my joys and my burdens and I want to share his joys and burdens. But if that never happens, I think I'll be fine. (Even though church culture says that I shouldn't be fine. The constant battle continues...)