Courtship

Of all my experiences, probably the one I'm least able to shed light on is courtship.  I have no idea how a gay oriented Latter-day Saint should court someone of the opposite gender.  While I dated all the time, I never dated seriously, or at least I never intended to.

While on my mission, I had a companion predict that I'd be married within a few months of returning home.  I, of course, had great reason to doubt.  In fact, I really didn't see myself getting married for years, maybe decades after I came home.  I wasn't attracted to girls.  Also there was a youth leader who once counseled me that I should marry someone smarter than myself, and I was arrogant enough to think that my courtship pool would be very limited by that constraint.  But, still, I always figured that someday it would happen -- I'd find that someone who I would marry and we'd raise a family.

Two weeks after coming home, I had returned to BYU.  I met this girl on my second day there.  Then I met her again on the third day in a different context.  Then on the sixth day, I met her a third time in a completely unexpected setting.  Then I was called to see the bishop and he extended a call that had me working with this girl.  We had tons of the same interests, majored in related fields, and she was smart -- definitely smarter than me.  As I got to know her a little, I started to notice how cute she was.  That, more than anything, was stunning.  I had never really looked at girls that way before.  At that point, I knew that I wanted to marry her.  But I had no idea what to do.  I'd never dated a girl seriously before.

Thankfully, she was also extremely patient with me.  We dated some, but we hung out together a whole lot.  I know she wondered what was up with me.  I didn't treat her as other guys treated girls they were dating.  Was I just trying to be friends and nothing more?  I'm sure it all made more sense to her when I finally came out to her.  And her reaction was wonderful.  She was totally accepting, and it didn't change our relationship at all.  (Actually, it probably made our relationship even stronger.)

So my advice for courtship is basically find the perfect person and hope they are patient with you.  No, I don't mean that.

My real advice is to not sweat over it.  Keep developing friendships and meeting people.  You never know when the right person will come into your life.  Don't lose hope, but don't stress about it either.  Keep on developing yourself as an individual and do good in the world around you.  You may be surprised how it all works out in the end.