Who made *me* the expert?

In recent weeks, people [as in more than one person] have been asking me for relationship advice.

Moi?

A couple of weeks ago at the singles conference, a friend took me aside and asked me how to let the guy she has a crush on, know that she does. She had asked a mutual friend, because he is male and would presumably know how another guy would like to be approached, and he told her to ask me. And later at the singles conference, he took me aside and told me the same thing.

I am stunned.

Although I am a little flattered that either of them would think that I know what I am doing in this department, particularly the guy. He knows what a comedy of errors that which we laughingly call my love life is.

The surest way to know which guy in a roomful of guys is the one I am interested in? He will be the one I am not talking to. Because I don’t want to say something irredeemably idiotic and blight myself forever in his eyes.

Besides which, middle-aged single Mormon males are spookier than a herd of broncs in an alfalfa field. They might, just might, be willing to jump the fence in pursuit of a young mare, but they are wary of anyone approaching with a bucket of sweet oats in one hand and a bridle hidden carefully behind her back in the other.



Roy says it better than I do.

When I was noodling around on Facebook yesterday morning before my trip to the temple, another friend popped up a chat window to ask my advice. She is dating a truly fine man and I think just needed a little reassurance, which is what I hope I gave her.

I called another friend on the drive home one night last week, because we had not spoken in far too long and I thought she might be home. She said that she had gotten some very specific dating counsel [from an unmistakeably righteous Source] that she was to do a particular thing, which she didn’t want to do because she was quite content as a single woman, and she had thought, “I need to talk to Ms. Ravelled about this.” She had already followed the counsel which she had received, because she is one of those obedient souls whom I want to be like when I grow up. She didn’t want to grumble; she just wanted to talk through the whole process.

I really hesitate to give people dating advice, because it has been a long and outwardly fruitless experience for me, for the past 12 years. Except that I am peaceful and happy, and I learn something from each attempt, and maybe that’s the whole point? I also hesitate to give dating advice because that does not fall under my stewardship as a Relief Society president, except when I am giving it to myself. Unfortunately, people sometimes think that because one is inspired in certain aspects of one’s life, one is inspired in all aspects of one’s life and thus fitted to instruct them.

As Marian the Librarian’s mama sang, “When a woman has a husband and you’ve got none, why should she take advice from you?” Besides which, it’s not so much the getting as it is the keeping.

I did have a lovely chat with one of the sisters who works in the temple. We know each other from the singles program. She had reached a point where she was utterly tired of being single. She brought the matter up in her prayers. She was given specific counsel and a specific name, somebody she had known for many years who had been recently widowed. They waited a respectful length of time and married. She is wonderfully happy. You can see it in her eyes. She is not young, but she is cherished, and she knows it, which makes her beautiful in the only Eyes that matter.

I realized when I was dating NintendoMan that I have worked through all of my issues, as they say, and I really am ready to make a lasting commitment. In Heaven’s time [on Heaven’s schedule, and not yours or mine], that will be me with the contented air. In the meantime, there are things I can accomplish as a single woman that might be more difficult if I had to take into account another person’s schedule. Or whims.

I am roughly 2/3 done with the doll skirt, and I have not had to say “just let me get to the end of this row.” Not even once. I have also (I think) figured out the spacing for the loops that will hold the ribbon lacing in the back.

But now I need to put on my RS tiara and print off some stuff to take with me to church in a few hours. And figure out what I want for breakfast. And go scrape some snow/ice off Lorelai’s windshield. Yes, we had a snowstorm, in Texas on the first day of spring. (When did they move it from the 21st? When I was a kid, the equinoxes were always observed on the 21st of March and September; now they seem to have become a movable feast, like Easter.)