A few friends and I watched TLC’s Virgin Diaries the other night. The SingleRoots team decided that it was something that we might need to address, and I drew the short straw as the writer. Yay. I had seen enough clips on the show to know that it was a trainwreck that I could not endure alone, so I enlisted the support of friends, hot tea, and warm cookies to get through it. It took a while to gather my thoughts…

Singles love to say, “There are some who are single for a season and some who are single for a reason.”

The Stereotype

Those of us “normal” singles are “seasons” all the way. We know that it’s not due to any problem of our own; it’s because–and we’re quite certain of this–God only has us here for a season. So, in all of our “seasonal” holiness, we sat around my living room and cringed at every awkward moment of the “reasons” last night. In our piety, we shook our heads and mumbled some “Bless their hearts” at the chaos before us. One of my friend’s constant refrain was, “The producers must’ve made them do that.”

We, as a culture, have fallen for the idea that love was meant to be expressed through sexual intimacy, and it doesn’t matter if that is accompanied by marriage. Sure, there’s the underlying idea that monogamy is a good thing, but give monogamy a few more years, and it will be an outdated notion as well. [Read more...]