Last week I shared with you the results of an unscientific, online survey of 600+ Mormons regarding dating and relationships (“Survey of LDS Singles Reveals Surprising Results“). I expected feedback, but my gracious! I could not have expected so much feedback!
All I can say is- don’t shoot the messenger!
As usual, much of the feedback was mostly from “apples” complaining that the article was about “oranges.” (In my humble opinion, “apples” complaining about “oranges” constitute about 75% of comments left on any article online.) In this case, there was men complaining that their voices were not well-represented within the survey. (Apparently the finding that there is a significant shortage of LDS men was overlooked.) The survey did not ask for gender identification, and was actually meant to highlight the differences in how singles and marrieds view the challenges of being single.
But thank you for your feedback. It was fun to read and see so many points of view!
And who doesn’t love to see how men and women view the world differently? There is an entire genre of self-help books and field of psychology devoted to trying to make sense of just how different the sexes can be! Personally, I am somewhat convinced that the differences between the sexes is not proof that God has a sense of humor, but instead, proof that there must be “opposition in all things.” If men and women weren’t so different, we wouldn’t have opposition. It would all be too easy if we could actually understand what the opposite sex was thinking!
So I went through the comments left on this site, and (the colorful) comments left in a Facebook group about the survey results, and created a whole new survey. The questions in the survey were asked around the feedback. For instance, many men complained in the comments that women have a warped sense of romance and expectations of men because of the books that they read, and compared it to porn. I’ve posed the question to the women- do you read these books? Let’s find out if the way the men perceive it (that all women want a bare-chest Fabio with a rose clenched between his teeth, rescuing her from a burning house, his thick, blond locks flowing in the wind), is accurate! Or is the consumption rate of this literature negligible?
I invite the single men and women to take the survey (sorry, married folks, but this survey is for the singletons only). And next week I will return and report the findings of the survey! Please feel free to share the links to the surveys far and wide!
Men- www.surveymonkey.com/s/LDSSingleMen
Women- www.surveymonkey.com/s/LDSSingleWomen
Erin Ann McBride is a writer, dreamer, and single woman. By day she is a freelance stock market writer for the Motley Fool, and marketing professional. By night, she is the author of the romantic novels, “You Heard It Here First,” and the sequel “This Just In!” And somewhere in the middle, she runs the website www.MormonBooksandAuthors.com!
MichaelJuly 1, 2013
Re: 1 week to complete singles survey. You might want to ask Meridian to have an advertising-style link on their home page to attract attention as (with summer holidays), people might miss it. A good survey sample of 1,500 to 2,200 respondents would be better than 380-460 people.
PeteJune 26, 2013
I think that the problem comes from looking at our parents and the other 'married people' in the ward and wonder if it is all true. Regardless of what the church teaches the reality is much different. life is not simple and not easy. Children remember what theior parent said and did regardless of what was being taught.