Avoiding Awkwardness

With LDS dating, where do you usually meet the people you date? For most of us it’s either at school or at our ward. Dating people from your ward can be a good thing, and at the same time, it can be a bad thing. The good points would include being able to go to church meetings and ward activities with them. Plus, you’ll probably know them before you start dating them. It’s actually pretty nice.

But, as I said, there are some bad points to dating a wardie. What happens if the relationship with this person goes sour and you break up? You can always try the “let’s be friends” route, but that’s not always the healthiest for recently broken up people. When you break up with someone, it tends to make things awkward when you’re around that person. It’s generally easy to avoid those kinds of confrontations when you’re not a church or activities, but what do you do when both of you are still going to all the same meetings? How do you avoid those awkward encounters with each other? You could always try going to a different ward, but if you’re like me and you like your ward, that’s not going to really seem like an appealing option.

Then there’s the problem with all the other people in the ward asking you all those probing questions. “How are you and so-and-so?” “I haven’t seen you with each other for a while, what happened?” You’ll have to tell them that the relationship is over and no matter how you do it, people are going to do 1 of 2 things: They’ll either feel sorry for you, or feel sorry for the other person. Which one they feel sorry for will most likely depend on who did the breaking up. Either way, things are going to just be even more awkward for you at church. Every week, people will ask you “How are you holding up?” or something similar to it. I’m not saying that I don’t appreciate people’s concern for me, but it’s hard to let someone who was important in your life go when people keep bringing them up around you.

Once again, I’d really like some input from any of you who read this. Leave me a comment telling me how you’ve handled ward relationships and break ups.