Single Voices: A Letter Home

View PDF

Dear Mom and Dad, 

Your phone call last night left me feeling strangely orphaned, as if you had placed me on some foreign doorstep. I know you thought that Tom and I would get married, and that you can’t understand why I’ve quit my job. Last year you questioned my going on to graduate school; last night you wanted me to return for more schooling in Utah: is it that you’d rather have me in school there than struggling out here? 

My dear sweet parents, underneath all that you said was one question, “Why aren’t you married?” I’m afraid I just don’t know all the reasons. Somewhere along the way decisions were made and the results of these decisions have led me to where I am. I guess the best reason is that the right man has not come along at the right time. Can you understand that if I married Tom without the love I know I am capable of giving, I would be cheating both of us? 

My “right man” has changed a lot since high school. And the range is narrowing: not just because the number of available men is decreasing, though I have used some foresight in planning where to live and work, but because I find myself gradually becoming less flexible. I am no longer will ing to date just to be going out. I could not say that before I turned 24. I do love to date, but I find an increased longing to have the experiences be meaningful. I also find myself struggling to be patient; patient with the “relationship process” which takes time to enact. The biggest danger I see in breaking up with Tom is hesitancy to start that process all over again with someone new. It takes an incredible amount of energy to begin again. 

There is something I need from you right now: to write me and love me and include me, without the pressure your worry too often instigates. Please be comforted that marriage and a family are still my goals. If I could only know that in say five years I’d be married, then I would have no regrets about my life to this point. My greatest plague is that my previous decisions may have stacked the cards against my getting married. But since there is no way of knowing that, I try not to worry. Even if worst comes to worst, I guess as long as I live worthily of the celestial kingdom, I will still have that final choice between being a second wife or a ministering angel! 

Your loving daughter, 
Mary

---

A composite letter representing the feelings of twelve single sisters, 25 and over, across the country.