A young friend of mine going to school at BYU told me of many female complaints about the impact of the Xbox on social life at BYU and among Mormon singles in general. Allegedly, an embarrassingly high percentage of single LDS men would rather play with the Xbox than have a social life. And some pretend to have a social life by hanging out somewhere and playing Xbox, rather than undertake the rigors of dating and courtship.
I fear there is something to this report. I know a non-LDS student out here in Wisconsin who is heavily into the Xbox, and in fact just won a $9,000 “scholarship” for his Xbox skills. His parents were on his back for all the time he spent playing Xbox Live across the Internet, associating with questionable strangers. His reply was something like, “Hey, there’s no need to worry about a bad influence from all these Xbox buddies – they are all Mormons out in Utah!” Well, I’m not sure if that’s good PR or not.
LDS men, come on! Get a life, socialize, date, and abandon your electronic addictions. Men, think!! Do you know what’s going to happen if most of you drop out of the dating game and become Xbox eunuchs? I’m scared out of my wits just thinking about the implications. As far as I can tell, the only reasonable option will be for the Lord to reinstate polygamy.
Now that ought to make your game controller shake.
The Xbox Eunuch! LOL.
Sorry to break it to you, but this is not a phenomenon limited to LDS. Sigh. Unfortunately many men out there are tuning out instead of turning on, if you know what I mean.
I can’t say that I really blame a lot of them, though. With the type of rabid man-hate that is being inculcated in several academic disciplines (my wife is a nurse, and it is quite a serious problem. I can only infer what is happening in colleges like arts and letters and some of the more commercial disciplines like business and law where a woman seems to need to ‘eliminate’ her gender in order to be perceived as competetive and professional) it’s no wonder to me that young men faced with very dim prospects of purchasing housing and raising a family (see the NPR story last night about 20-somethings and 30-somethings still living with their parents) would bother immersing themselves into the morass of spite, abuse, and humiliation that is currently called ‘old fashioned dating’.
This isn’t the most important problem, but it is noticeable: physical appearance due to weight issues. Applies to both the boys and the girls.
Young people in general have serious weight problems nowadays. And LDS in particular.
That in turn makes people less attractive for dating.
I know I’m not going to marry the hottest babe available. But I want one who at least takes care of her physical tabernacle.
Anon@7:53
I agree that there’s some “rabid man-hate” going on, but I don’t think that’s the main problem. Women (and men) don’t seem to have any trouble finding the desire, means or time for sex. It seems to me that the decline of dating can be mostly explained by two trends:
– The decline of committed relationships in our culture. Formal courtship is major overkill if you’re just looking for a “consenting adult” and a quick fling.
– The increasingly strong economic pressure to turn people into machines with producer/consumer modes. You go to work and produce like a good little machine, then come home and spend your paycheck like a good little consumer. Social life isn’t very useful in this model unless you happen to spend more money together than you would alone, and busy schedules make it harder for people to spend time together.
These problems are both compounded because our economy more or less assumes that households are supported my multiple incomes. If you don’t have a well-paying job it can be really tough to actually live on your own. Try to work harder/longer to overcome that hurdle and you won’t have time for a social life. Besides, without committed relationships there’s little motivation to join economic forces with a spouse, so why look for one? Live at home as long as your parents let you!
Disclaimer: This presents an extremely cynical and secular perspective that I observe signs of in our society but do not agree with at all! It’s just to illustrate trends and pressures — very few people are actually like this.
anon@7:53
Also,
I don’t see how ‘old fashioned dating’ is more of a “morass of spite, abuse, and humiliation” than “free love.” All the statistics I’ve seen show that relationships without commitment (and ‘old-fashioned’ chastity) — whether marriage or just formal courtship — are much worse as far as that goes, especially for the woman.
Sadly, the XBox is affecting all aspects of LDS life…when we have priesthood activities, we often have very low turnout. If we go by a few members homes, the guys are there playing games. Same with church meetings.
Sadly, its not just men that are getting involved. More and more I’m running across sisters that are playing too.
But is this new, or is it just a new culprit? I remember, while at BYU, a training at my tutoring job dealing with being responsive to what the students needed but weren’t saying. It came up that a study (which had to have been 10 years ago or more–way pre-Xbox) of BYU dating showed that about 5% (and remember, it’s been at least 6 years since I heard these numbers, but they’re approximately right) of freshman boys dated on a regular basis (defined as at least once a month), while about 12% of freshman girls did. However, boys perceived that something like 80% of freshman boys were dating once a month.
Xbox may have a draw that dating doesn’t (the only time I ever played I had strep, so I can’t really say), but I don’t think the lack of dating at BYU can be pinned on that; rather, I think there’s a perception that everybody dates and, when a young person gets there and finds out that’s not true, that young person has to find, in his or her experience, what the cause is. In your friend’s case, Xbox is the easiest cause.
samdb
Anon the First here.
The draw of Xbox, and most of the modern entertainments, is that it consistently provides the ‘high’ of ‘winning’. All Xbox games have, by virtue of their being computer programs, a defined way of finishing the task started. You ALWAYS win an Xbox game, if you’re willing to spend the time or find the hack on the internent (very easy). Even when playing on-line, you can find the server that fits your level, where you can win at least more often that you lose, if not fairly consistently.
Contrast this to dating. You gamble real money and time for what has never really been a high probability of ‘success’ (however one defines that, ahem. . .) in a market that is becoming less and less rewarding, or at least harder to ‘win’ in.
For certain people, it’s a no-brainier.
To some degree, the LDS culture promotes this because long-term relationships are punished.
Move-ins, move-outs, ward boundary changes and a culture of meetings means relationships in the church are often fleeting or arbitrary. Try to establish long-term relationships and you risk having them severely impacted the next time the stake needs to reorganize.
We just had our ward dissolved (along with one other) and merged into two other wards because so many people are leaving our area. The result? Several of my friends, my wife’s parents, and all of my HT families are now not in my ward.
Sure I could continue some of those relationships, but certainly not all of them–and realistically I have to spend so much of my time with my newly-assigned “friends” I won’t have time for the old ones.
An XBox (I don’t have one) won’t leave the ward.
Isn’t pre-mission one-on-one dating discouraged in the church?
These problems are both compounded because our economy more or less assumes that households are supported my multiple incomes.
This is fallacious. The economy is what it is. The reason it seems necessary for both spouses to work is that so many households are run that way, and therefore in order to be as financially well-off as others, most households have to be run that way. Few marriages are really forced to be dual-income; it’s just that they’re unwilling to live the consequences if they choose not to be.
My wife doesn’t work, and never will (barring harsh misfortune). We will almost certainly not live well by the world’s standards, but I blame no one for that. Indeed, there is no blame to be had. My family wouldn’t be better-off if everyone else made the same decision. Indeed, all else being equal, the laws of economics show that we would be worse-off on an absolute scale.
Of course, most people see prosperity in relative terms, which generally equates to either pride or envy. This is the cause of the supposed necessity of two-income families.
Oh, and on the main topic — I agree with you, Jeff. I enjoy video games, but I enjoy even more the company of faithful women (well, one woman at this point, to be exact).
Are you familiar with the Fermi paradox? This entry reminds me of a recent hypothesis that suggests that we have not encountered any advanced civilizations because they tend to become immersed in virtual reality and lose interest in reproduction and/or exploration.
Back when I was at BYU there were studies showing the same thing that someone else mentioned: a small number of people do all the dating.
Part of the problem is simply unrealistic expectations at BYU (and in Provo in general). There’s so much focus on marriage that it gives a distorted view of dating. Especially to kids who grew up in low-LDS areas.
Of course most of those “heavily dating” folks either have a girl friend or are just “playing” (i.e. hooking up with dozens of people).
But I think the appeal to the XBox is a bit of a cop-out. It’s just an in general seriously distorted system here. Further the activities are kind of lame. You have the ward activities which are fun for, oh six months. Then you can go to SLC. Or you can get involved in athletics. Or… Well, there’s always the XBox.
I do agree about obeisity. On the other hand Provo has tons of gyms and is one of the healthiest cities in the nation in terms of people being fit. So if you think there are too many fat people here, check out most other places.
Also, I think that’s exaggerated. There are tons of beautiful women around. You just need look. And looking typically involves getting out of the safety zone of ones ward.
Some of my friends’ wards at BYU have “X-Box night”, where they all go to somebody’s home and play x-box on a big screen. I guess that counts as socializing.
“hey, if you’re gonna have your cake, you might as well eat it too.”
Not only do I think this isn’t limmited to LDS men, I think the problem isn’t just because of video games.
I don’t play much XBox at all, but I would be a blog/books/tv/doing things by myself eunuch.
I just think that a lot of social and cultural changes have made a whole lot of young men less desirous of agressively seeking a mate.
Being a BYU-er myself, I think this is something, if nothing else in the world, that I know about.
My experience tells me that a small number of X-box boys end up setting the stereotype for the rest of us. That goes for the perception of those who date heavily as well–not all of them have girlfriends, nor do they just toy with girls’ hearts. Some folks actually do (gasp) date to make friends.
I do agree, however, that the distortion rate here is pretty high. Second dates mean more out here than they do elsewhere (though not as much as outsiders would think looking on the inside).
My belief is that we’ve CONVINCED ourselves that we give off a perception. Consequently, we (if unwittingly) live up to that perception. AFter all, we ARE BYU students, and if nothing else, that’s what BYU students are supposed to do–date and get married.
No, while I do agree with Elder Oaks that a lot of hanging out goes on (the illustration in the Ensign is prescient in the extreme) and that men sometimes do falter in their courage, the image of the X-box playing, soda drinking loser wasting away his life is a caricature. Far more accurate is the image of normal human beings who have desires for companionship, but have mitigating fears to accompany them.
I think many things cause and compound this issue.
First, let me say that I don’t even think it’s a “problem”–people shouldn’t get married until their late twenties anyway–at least! Adult brains aren’t even fully formed until the early 20s.
I do think the Church culture and to some extent, practice, makes it hard for young people to date.
I attended a singles ward until my mid-30s, and the bishop was constantly encouraging people to date, even to the point of asking them to be MORE risky and MORE affectionate than they were already. He explained in a joint PH/RS meeting that for so many years some adults in the Church have been afraid of getting physically close to others that they shut that side of themselves off completely.
Another problem he saw was that people who had sinned that way (i.e. petting, fornication, etc.) were scared to start dating again for fear that they would “lose it” again. So they were more hands-off literally and figuratively.
Finally, the Spencer W. Kimball fire-n-brimstone generation (adults in their late 20s to late 30s) were in YW/YM when they were preached to from “The Miracle of Forgiveness.” Bishops sometimes still encourage the wavering or the penitent to read it. I believe that book has done more damage to singles than anything else.
This is ridiculous. I think this post just shows a glaring generational barrier. You just don’t get it. People play Xbox. People play PC games. Playstaion. DS. I cannot WAIT for the Wii. But guess what? They also have a life. This is just a form of entertainment. Everyone I know has a console or plays games on thier PC. Nearly everyone plays online with friends or in groups of people. Sometimes when im bored, I’ll play on my own. Im an introvert. I also like to read.
Guess what? I know people who have met their sig others in the games they play. Basicly, everyone 30 and younger plays video games. Thats just the way it is. Its fun. You should try it, you obviously need some entertainment in your life. I suggest guitar hero, play it with your kids. It also makes great singles activities, and sure beats cheesy games and dances with music most of us consider mildly homosexual. Our generation is different, ok? We do things differently. The world is a different place than when yall were up in Provo being over-socialized. Quit trying to make things you don’t understand a scapegoat for what you perceive as a problem.
By the way, Im a woman. I play ALOT of video games. I have been married 5 years, and my husband and I love playing video games together. And we have since we started dating in high school. My husband also designs video games for a living. And hes pretty dang good at.
I wonder if there would be so much discussion if all the young men were getting together and going on hunting trips all the time? Or if they all kept having sports-nights? It seems that any time a bunch of guys want to get together for some (in my view) healthy ‘bonding’ time the medium in which they meet is attacked. I understand that there are few out there who abuse such a pasttime, but isn’t it good for most of our young men to have a retreat every once in a while?
“I believe that book has done more damage to singles than anything else.”
Even more than the sins committed? Wow…I guess I’d better not mention the friends I have who read it because they actually WANT to read it–for personal edification (they must be spiritual sadists–as surely no one would ever really desire repentance ;).
For every indictment of sin, Elder Kimball (so he was at the time of writing) offers hope. For every “The plaster must be as wide as the sore,” there is abundant testimony of the power of the atonment, that “such great miracles will never cease so long as there is one person who applies the redeeming power of the Savior and his own good works to bring about his rebirth.”
And my experience says that once you get late twenties, you get stubborn–not exactly conducive to the molding required for marriage. And of course, never mind my many family members who have adjusted with relative ease into married life–despite their early twenties age (my sister-in-law is younger
than and was arguably more prepared for marriage at age 20 than I am at 24). No scientific study to back this up but the study of BYU experience.
And if Elder Kimball’s counsel could have helped one of my friends keep from making their cardinal error they did, I would say that it was worth it, even if the fire n’ brimstone scorched them a bit. Better to have burns now than destroyed homes later.
The idea that people should wait until their late 20’s to marry is ridiculous and goes against the teachings of several (if not all) of the prophets. My wife and I were 18 and 22, respectively, when we married. In Argentina, I knew a husband and wife who married when they were 21 and 14. Anecdotal as it is, in my experience, youthful marriages are often stronger and happier than those undertaken later in life.
I believe that this xbox “problem” is just the latest and greatest fad amongst the hundreds of other distractions we have everyday. Love is where you find it. Whether it’s at an xbox social or on an online dating service when you find the one true love you will know it. My wife and I have been happily married for 6 1/2 years and we met through a church online dating service. Our dates consisted of e-mails, aol chat and phone conversations until we were married. We won’t waste our money on cable, high speed internet, or video games. It’s all a waste of time and money for us when we could be spending time reading scriptures, taking drives, etc. Now if the video game makers could make a mormon themed game and online community for all those single people out there.
…if they want to waste their time in front of a game they might as well do it in a safe and spiritual place.
Well, my experience is completely different than Roy’s (my anecdotal experience can beat up your anecdotal experience?).
Of the late (past-30 year old) first marriages I know (including my own), all the couples are happy, stable, financially secure/well off, multiple-degreed, healthy, and sound.
And ALL of them/us are better off for having waited.
I don’t think it’s ever safe to say everyone should get married at age “X.” People mature at different times.
However, many people seem to have this misconception that some day they will suddenly be “ready” for marriage (ie no major surprises or challenges) and should wait until that magical moment.
A healthy marriage between two mature people requires and produces unbelievable growth, especially once the kids arrive. Nothing will fully prepare you for that except the experience itself.
Seems to me you’re fully ready for marriage about when your first child gets married… or maybe the last.
Umm… the purpose of marriage is not to be multiple-degreed and financially well-off, though those are good things. The purpose of marriage is to create a family.
Marrying late has an unescapable consequence in that area. You don’t have the option of a large family even if you want one, and even if you only want one or two children, you’ll potentially miss out on years of joy with them.
My PhD advisor married at age 30+, and is now expecting her second. It is highly unlikely that she can (safely) have another baby because of her age. I don’t know if they want more, though.
My uncle married at age 30+, and he and his wife tried to have their first baby for years. They are overjoyed to have their daughter, but desperately wish they could have even one more child.
I married at age 22 (wife age 20) and we have two amazing girls. I’m so glad we didn’t wait until we were 30+ to add them to our family!
So what if I’m still in school and will be for a few years yet? Life is a journey, not a destination, and so is our family.
Besides, I don’t want to be 75 when my first grandchild is born. Hard to play with them at that age…
This is ridiculous. I think this post just shows a glaring generational barrier. You just don’t get it. People play Xbox. People play PC games. Playstaion. DS.
I think it is one of the follies and conceits of youth to assume that there is a generational barrier (“old people just don’t understand life!”) whenever someone older expresses concern about what the young are doing. What, older people didn’t have leisure activities when they were young? We didn’t have temptations, ways to waste away our lives and shunt our progress? Look, video and computer games were not invented in the last five years. They been around for a couple decades, though they are much better now, of course. Television and movies have been around for decades. Game playing has been around for centuries. And so have addictions and vices of all kinds.
We have an Xbox. I enjoy some of the games on it. We’ve got Super Nintendo and had the original Nintendo and Play Station. We’ve long had computer games and all sorts of games in my family. I have kids who enjoy such games. And we’ve all learned that we need limits and controls. Strict limits to keep such things to a small corner of our lives.
As a former bishop, young men’s president, and friend and associate of many people, I have many years of experience watching people harm their lives in various ways. Games out of control have been a common theme. Smart, cool young men who spent their free time absorbed in video games, Magic the Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, poker, computer games, and Risk (one of my favorites when I was younger) seemed to harm themselves. These games were OK when they were for occasional social activities, but when it became their obsession, they missed out on so much of life. I’ve seen several people with great potential – almost always men – lose so much through their obsessions with games.
In the early 1980s, I saw a Ph.D. candidate become so obsessed with a stupid role playing game on a Vax mainframe computer that he spent his hours ini graduate school playing games rather than do the computational modeling work his advisor thought he was doing. His Ph.D. dissertation was shown to have been doctored to cover up the lack of actual work, and his Ph.D. was taken away from him after he graduated and began a job. He destroyed his career opportunities and wasted his education.
I have seen similar patterns with other young men, dropping out of school, neglecting duties and responsibilities, failing in work, being far less than they could be – and I’ve seen this over and over for years.
The abuses of some does not condemn games in general, just as the destruction caused by immorality does not condemn sex itself. But without controls, when something gets out of control or takes over too much of a persons life, harm follows – and video games seem especially adept at drawing people into spending – no, wasting – vast portions of their lives.
We older people, suffering from our generational blindness, see large portions of the younger generation unable to carry out a meaningful conversation, unable to pursue intelligent goals, unable to socialize and pursue marriage and career responsibilities, in aprt because they have become slaves to addictions that include the self-absorbed and often dark world of video games.
Enjoy them, but with caution and strict limits.
To each his own, I guess. I just know that in and out of the Church, the marriages that I have observed that are the most stable, with fully adult participants, are those where the spouses married later than late-adolescence/early twenties.
Sure, there’s no magic age, but if someone is wasting time playing XBox all day that just indicates he/she is not ready for anything other than games anyway, so what’s the problem?
Marriage is NOT all about kids, and even if it were, some of the older couples I know (faithful LDS marrying for the first time in their 30s or 40s) have the means and compassion enough to adopt or foster,which on the scale of charity is often much higher than someone who just happens to get pregnant and raise their own kids–“accident” or not.
I’ll say Amen to the adopting/fostering idea. That is one way to get a large family fast.
There is a long waiting line to adopt perfect caucasian babies. But if you’re willing to be flexible on any of those three criteria:
1) children with health concerns or special needs, either physical or mental,
2) children who are not caucasian, or not 100% caucasian,
3) children who are older than babies,
you can adopt pretty quickly.
Adoptive and foster parents also can get generous financial allowances from the state to take care of special health needs of adopted or foster children.
I know one couple who have adopted over six children so far, and they are in their early 40’s.
And with divorced women so prevalent in the church, it’s also easy to marry into a ready-made family.
A guy in my ward married a sister with 3 children, one of whom has something like a combination of autism and ADD, but it’s controlled pretty well with medication. You can tell by how the kids hang on him how much they love him and how much they were starved for a male role model to show them proper affection.
“…but if someone is wasting time playing XBox all day that just indicates he/she is not ready for anything other than games anyway, so what’s the problem?
That’s not necessarily true. What Jeff is saying is that excessive game-playing can cause someone, who would otherwise “become ready” to NOT “become ready.”
It’s not just the total dweebs who get sucked into excessive game-playing to a harmful level. Extreme game-playing has taken “normal” kids who would have developed normally, and gotten them off track. In those cases, the best you can hope for is a mere delay in the normal milestones of life. However, certain things become harder to do later, and that extra “degree of difficulty” can cause those delays to turn into a total miss for many people.
For instance, if you don’t go on a mission by age 25 (the current maximum age) you totally miss that boat, and have to then go as a couple later on.
But suppose you only wait 3 or 4 years, and go when you are 22/23 and have graduated college. Your life experience is going to be so much different than the 19 year olds, the degree of difficulty has increased.
Granted, some men are not capable of being ready by the time they are 19, and end up taking until they are 22/23 to be ready. But if you’re capable of getting ready by age 19, then by all means you should.
Unnecessary delays mean lost opportunities.
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Wow. Quite a lot of discussion based on a single anecdotal observation by Jeff’s friend. I wonder, what are the girls that *are* getting dates saying? Any girl who learns how to play Halo well can pretty much pick who she wants to marry. 🙂
Anyway, my room mate nearly flunked out of BYU because he read fantasy books all day. (Now he’s a school teacher!) Kids waste their time on all sorts of limited-worth activities, be it video games, dungeons and dragons, poetry clubs, etc. I think the issue runs deeper than the XBox.
“Kids waste their time on all sorts of limited-worth activities, be it video games, dungeons and dragons, poetry clubs, etc.”
And let’s not forget blogging. I’m not the only one guilty of that here.
Ohhhhhhhhhhh…trouble…right here in River City!
First it was playing cards, then video games, now XBox…
Or actually, pool! Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble…
Actually, the post was about polygamy.
Jeff,
This may warrant it’s own separate thread.
Although it may be less of a problem, I see the flip-side in the singles program of the church. Many people who divorced because they married too early and were unprepared for marriage due to emotional problems or emotional under-development.
The “game plan” that the church lays out for children, youth, and young adults that leads to marriage is not, and should not, be a “one size fits all” proposition.
The “game plan” of being a Molly-Mormon or Peter-Priesthood doesn’t fit everyone. I’ve seen people go through all the “steps” and because they did everything the church asked them to do, they thought they were ready and prepared merely because they got their ticket punched.
But the outward steps for which the church punches your ticket and pats you on the head, do not always have the advertised inner effect.
Getting your Eagle award and going on a mission can do a lot to prepare someone. Those are two exceedingly good things, and worthy goals. But those aren’t guarantees. Too many young men go through the motions of those things, but their internal problems sometimes don’t allow them to actually get the benefits. They end up getting their ticket punched, but nothing really happened on the inside.
I’ve read too many stories of people who married right after their mission due to what their mission president told them. They thought they “had to.” And because they had honorably finished a mission, they thought they were “ready.”
I’ve read and seen cases where people with unresolved issues concerning their victimization by child-abuse brought all those psychological and emotional wounds into their marriage.
There’s truth in several sides of the discussion here. And I still think your points have more truth in them than the nay-sayers. Excess games (or whatever) can side-track, derail, or delay young people who would otherwise have successfully worked through the church’s “game plan” for them.
But there always has been, and always will be a certain percentage of children born in the church (and converts) who are just plain dysfunctional. And are dysfunctional to the point that if they try to force themselves to outwardly comply with the church’s stated “track” or “game plan”, it ends up making things worse.
I’ve watched a few CES firesides in the last 4 years. The GA’s seem to realize that in the past they have put so much pressure on people to get married, that they gave the impression that being prepared for marriage was secondary. “Just get married at all costs” was the message.
One GA at a CES fireside a couple years ago, was very honest and tactful about it. He even went so far as to be explicit, and he said something like “I’m not pressuring you to get married, I’m encouraging you to be prepared and be on the lookout for a suitable partner, so that when the time, the circumstances, and your potential-mate all line up, that you’ll be ready for the opportunity and recognize it.”
Book:
I agree.
I think this goes to show that while the principle of marriage has been and will always be the same (being–“marriage is an essential ordiance for exaltation), perceptions of that truth and implementation of it change and not always for the better.
Also, my guess is that this “get married” chant was directed more at single young men than women, since men initiate relationships, do the asking, etc. Unfortunately, the male-directed rhetoric spills over into the female mindset, causing all kinds of self-esteem issues for women (and men too, though in fewer quantities).
Notice men are NEVER told, “you may never find a partner in this life,” nor are they told “even as a single, you can make tremendous contributions to Zion.” Rather, it’s “get married or be a bum–your choice.”
My bishop in the BYU ward, a tremendous man, has taken a very different approach, however, similar to the one mentioned by the GA you heard.
Bottom line: I’m a fan of preaching the gospel of dating and marriage. However, it’s important to keep in mind, as Pres. Hinckley said, that we are all individuals with individual needs. Branding singles with the label, “singles,” has at best a caricaturizing effect to where the only thing people think about you is that you’re single. Get married, and then we’ll talk about how you can contribute.
(Here’s my great finale/rant) This gospel is one of love, and not just for single women over the age of 30. It applies to every young person–it acknowledges that every young person can do tremendous good no matter their lot in life. Hopefully, we can all do a better job of treating individuals as they are and not as their labels seem to portray them
ok… about the past posts on marriage:
One is that, the thing I have always heard about men and marriage is, yes, they may never find a mate. But they should always be actively looking, and if they are honestly doing their best and die single… well, it’ll all work out.
Two is, I don’t think there is an ideal time for marriage for everybody or even the majority of people. I think as soon as the time comes (post-mission, out of high school, whatever) one should undertake an honest, consistent, active search and then PRAY about it. I think praying about the choice in spouse (after careful introspective consideration, of course) is the most important precursor to a happy marriage- how can you go wrong if you are humble enough to ask the Lord’s help?
Some people get married early, and they are happy. Some people don’t find the right person until they are 38, and they are happy. Heck, some people divorce and remarry at 40, and THEY are happy. You can’t use statistics as a guide in that case. To me that means, you don’t wait until you’re 30 because you’ve heard its better. You don’t marry early just because you heard it’s better. You maintain an active search and rely on the guidance of God.
As for me, I got married at 19. My husband was 22. I was sure about him at 17. I’ve been married for almost two years, and we are ridiculously happy, with well-founded hope of more the same for years to come. But I’m not going to say the reason is that we didn’t wait. I’m going to say it’s because we both had our eyes wide open, and we were humble enough to recognize the opportunity when it came, and ask for guidance.
I am so glad to hear of this, with my husband being LDS and all… (which I believe has nothing to do with these xbox addictions.
I am to my witts end and don’t know what to do anymore, I am tired of the fight over how much time he spends on xbox. His lates thing that he came to me with… and he was serious…. Get this: He figured out how to make money while playing xbox so that he could play xbox all day long… As if that justifies playing all day. He spends so much time on it that I feel it is having SERIOUS consequences on our marriage. My little girl just wants to play with him (she is two) and doesn’t understand why her Daddy is pushing her away when all she wants is to snuggle with him.
Hw won’t listen AT ALL… he says I am being overly dramatic and he gets defensive IMMEDIATELY if I try to talk about it with him. All I want is a balance, and I want my husband back. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.
I know I am prolly way late to this one, but I needed to put in my input on this one. I agree with most that it is not just the xbox which causes this. It can be many things.
1. The pressure of school, this is a really hard thing to do and as you get more into it it just gets worse.
2. The lack of funds because you are a school student. Cheap all the while can be awesome. They can also lead to boredom which can lead to other things which do not nurture a mature relationship.
3. Women. Some want thier cake and eat it too. They want not only the guy that has comrodory but doesnt have to work an ounce to get it. This does not come from alot of ways. Some of us are not the star athlete, nor are we the socialite, so we fit in the other group.. the nerds if that is what you want to call it. And in some forums we beleive in more than just a big social life. So although games are becoming more social I beleive that for us they challenge our mind or are there for us when we need them. We can turn them on and they are there and we can turn them off when we want to. Also they bring us to a world of imagination which it seems like in this world of failing economies and negativity is lacking.
Now I have seen people so strung up in them and wow being one that is prolly way easy to have happen with just because of the design of the game. It is all about your priorities. Set aside a certain time to do it. And time to put it away. It is all about time management and not letting something become your life but become your hobby.
However I am also not saying that games are ever bad by anymeans. There are alot of careers out there that need alot of positive people in games. And the I get paid to play thing is such a rarity that it really is not even a point to be brought up. So honestly if you love games that much then work in them so you can play all day then come home to your wife at night. It just requires some dedication maybe you will be the one to get the blood out of this game or add some ideology from the scriptures into that game. The games that are the best are the ones with the best story and the scriptures are amazing and should be shared.. Why not add another medium to it..