[VOA]

I'm single because I spent my teens and 20's in churches that discouraged
dating and marriage.

It's little consolation, but you aren't alone.
I went through a good church-affiliated college in the late 1970s.
The senior class (the year I entered) had a marriage rate of about 75%.
By the time I exited as a senior, that metric was down to about 25%.
It was like a great dividing line.

I guess even within the realm of the church-affiliated school, the
feminist buzz and the sexual revolution convinced plenty to not
make the marriage committment as classes of years past.

Eventually many of my buddies ended up getting wives from Japan and
the Phillipines via church/missionary connections.
(Oh, and that was one wife per guy! And zero divorces in the cases of the
five buddies who went this route.)

[WFTR]

It's little consolation, but you aren't alone.

You're right that it's little consolation, but I appreciate your comments. The fact that I'm not alone is why I bother to respond on these threads. If I were the only guy ever hurt by the way some churches do things, maybe we could just write it off as my bad luck. However, I've known of plenty of worthwhile men and women who end up single because they waste years that they should be using to build relationships or at least build relationship skills. If the church didn't make these mistakes, maybe fewer people would be in this situation.

Thanks,
Bill