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No doubt about it, Amy Poulson is a catch. She's beautiful, smart, successful, kind and witty.
At 34, the one thing that's eluded Poulson is the guy. She knows she'd make a great wife and mother and hopes someday to fill those roles. The only question is, where is he?
Her story is the kind that's fueled countless romantic comedies and TV series. But as a faithful member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, especially in Utah, the weight of being single seems heavier, more "in your face" and profound. Going to church, a place that used to bring Poulson "peace and comfort," now often envelops her with "dread," she said recently.
"In so many areas of my life, I feel like I've been able to set goals, achieve them and obtain some measurable success," explained the Salt Lake City corporate attorney. "When I go to church, I increasingly feel like a failure."
By some estimates, single women account for one in three women in the LDS Church. They're women like Poulson who are still holding out for the right one, or they're divorced, widowed or abandoned. In a church where marriage and motherhood are theological imperatives - a woman needs a man to get priestly blessings and reach her highest potential in the Celestial Kingdom - where does that leave the unattached?
Even for Poulson, who focuses on the here-and-now, not the hereafter, the division between those with families and those without is palpable.
"You get the sense like they don't know what to do with you," said Poulson, who explained that singles wards generally phase out people at age 32, leaving members such as her in family wards where differences may be highlighted. She's lucky, in her ward, to be surrounded by "tons of friends just like me," but because that ward assigns only single women as visiting teachers to single women, it's a community unnecessarily divided, she said. "I need to be patient with an institution that needs to change."
Melissa Proctor, who teaches Mormon studies at Harvard Divinity School, is also single in the church and hoping for changes. She said figuring out how to make the best use of single women may be one of President Thomas S. Monson's most pressing challenges.
"The Brethren do a good job of telling the single women . . . that they love them and pray for them," Proctor wrote in an e-mail. "With all due respect, however, these college-educated, extremely capable members of the church don't want sympathy. They want to be recognized for the accomplished women they are by being given the opportunity to make significant contributions."
Central to the "plan of salvation" is a woman's "divine mission to be a wife and a mother," said Elaine Dalton, the Young Women general president. But she agreed that when it comes to single women, the church isn't "fully utilizing their talents." She offered this advice to all women out there: "We must be willing to give up the life we have planned in order to have the life that is waiting for us. . . . That takes faith."
Faith sustains many of the single women who attended Brigham Young University's Women's Conference earlier this month. It doesn't completely get rid of the heartache or the stresses of taking on life's challenges single-handed. But trusting in the Savior has made her family whole, said Lynan Buie, whose divorce left her a single parent with a toddler. Understanding that Jesus often walked alone makes entering social situations by herself easier, said Kaye Hanson, divorced now for 25 years. Believing in her relationship with the Lord gives Martha Johnson, 39 and not yet married, peace.
"First and last - and through all the in-betweens - we are [God's] children," Johnson told a packed conference session. "Categories, like being single, divorced, widowed, married, may give description of our general experience in life, but they do not determine our identity. Our true identity comes from our relationship with God."
Johnson joined Hanson and Laurie Swim, a widow, in leading a session about being single in the church.
It "may or may not be our choice, but how we respond to that singleness is a choice," said Swim, whose husband of 32 years died within months after learning he had a brain tumor. She, in a move that felt crazy at the time, accepted a call from her bishop to serve as Relief Society president within weeks of her husband's death.
"From a human point of view, it didn't make much sense," she said. "With faith I accepted, and know now this service was part of the healing balm a loving Heavenly Father knew I needed."
Added Hanson: "We are here on this telestial world to be tested, to be tried. Do I wish my divorce hadn't happened? Oh, yes. But it did. And I have learned many things."
Having faith isn't really a problem for Poulson, the 34-year-old attorney.
"I don't have any testimony issues at all," she said. "It's just hard going to church."
She doesn't have answers on how to make it better; if she did, "I'd be very popular," she said with a smile. But she does know that members of the church, all churches in fact, can't be afraid to discuss their struggles. Only then, she added, can "people know they're not alone."
The thought of women not feeling welcome or part of the church alarms Dalton, the Young Women general president. She said she and Julie Beck, the Relief Society general president, met a couple of weeks ago to begin discussions about this very issue. They spoke for five hours.
"We're so aware of this," Dalton promised. "It's not something that's going to be put on the back burner."
* PEGGY FLETCHER STACK contributed to this story.