92. Religious Dating v. The 7 Bridges of a Solid Relationship

What happens when you're told who you're allowed to date before attraction, chemistry, compatibility, and connection ever get a vote?

In this episode, we explore how religious and social conformity can short-circuit healthy partner selection. Through the lens of Mormon dating and the 7 Bridges of a Solid Relationship, we discuss why checkboxes, standards, and expectations often replace genuine attraction, emotional connection, and compatibility—and what happens when people build relationships without crossing the bridges first.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

This is the Cliteral Truth.

SPEAKER_02 0:16

The podcast where we sit around naked and talk about sex, dating, and relationships.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Hey everybody, we want to talk today about something we're calling the Seven Bridges versus Religious Dating. Dating with the Seven Bridges versus how it goes with religion. Did I say that right?

SPEAKER_03 0:40

Yeah, I mean, we grew up in a very orthodox, strict, high demand religion. And so we're we're coming from that place. But more of just like, even if it's not like you didn't grow up in religion per se, but just that kind of mindset.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:03

Right? Because even just in society with people that don't go to church, or just like if you ask them like, hey, did your family go to church? Did you grow up religious? Well, not really, but those people could still be subscribing to a more traditionally religious way of dating and so on.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Because of you know, just a religious impact on society. Yes. It comes out that way. And this is this came up over several conversations, I think, because we started to look at the seven bridges and could see it's not very likely that you could well in in our examples you couldn't cross the seven bridges before you got married, for example.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

And so it came up because there are certain there are specific areas that just kind of preclude that, and we'll talk about that as we get into it.

SPEAKER_03 1:53

Yes. So the seven bridges. Hopefully you're familiar by now. If you're not, if you're new to the podcast, episode three lays out the seven bridges of a solid relationship, and then from there we have subsequent episodes about each of the seven bridges along our list of episodes.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

So check out that back catalog and you'll be able to get fully up to speed on it. But we'll you'll get a the highlight reel sort of here in this episode.

SPEAKER_03 2:28

So bridge one, attraction, has three steps physical, sexual, and personal.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Yes. And this is the first place we found this to be problematic, especially from our religious experience.

SPEAKER_03 2:41

Right off the bat.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:43

Right. I know someone for and the reason is is because there's criteria. At least in our religion, there was so much criteria that you f that you first need to adhere to. There's there's boxes that you have to check.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:03

And so right off the bat, the whole finding a partner process is being manipulated or or what's the word? Construed or constrained. Constrain it's it's being Yeah, it's not gonna happen naturally because there are certain things that you have to check.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Right. So and and this could be so specifically, it could be, you know, you've gotta you've gotta be of the same sort of mind, you've got to have the same values, same standards, that sort of thing. And this could cross over beyond religion, again, like we say to society, because we s I think we talked about this before, where it's like you come from a certain social strata or something like that. And it's like you can't you gotta stay within that for to to really be compatible, or for or to meet the expectations of family or friends or whatever. It's like, well, why would you marry that person? They're so far out of your social circle, you know. That and that those are the things that comes into play here too, but in this in this religious context, it's about do they meet some minimum standards of values? And so your pool from the people that you're gonna be attracted to is like you can be attracted to a lot of them. Right. Not that you're going to like right, that you that you that are even up for grabs.

SPEAKER_03 4:24

Yes, you know are options. Uh uh what you said was basically like, okay, for us, we had okay, the the basic criteria is that you have to be a member of our religion.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Right.

SPEAKER_03 4:39

And our religion, I think it's 0.02% of the population. Okay, so so out of so there's there's that. You you've that's it. But from there, you have to be even more selective because hey, I want someone who has as high uh of standards as me. Right. Who there's certain members who aren't up to my snuff, who aren't doing this, or they're not doing that, they don't do that, they're you know, and so there's different levels of uh commitment, if you will, or activity that you're trying to find a match within this already minuscule pool of people, right, is what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

Yeah, exactly. So you don't have the whole world to choose from, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 5:24

And you kind of have this attitude of the people I can date, I like you the best or I dislike you the least.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Right.

SPEAKER_03 5:33

Is kind of what it gets down to.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Right.

SPEAKER_03 5:37

Okay, so I think that you know, we look at physical, sexual, personal attraction, and some of this is already getting cloudy, it's already getting fudged, it's already being manipulated. You may, my experience, find someone physically attractive that you're excited to have. You've got some sexual tension or chemistry, you're excited for that. But before you're even over the bridge of attraction, a lot of times you are already so deeply invested in meeting this criteria that some of this may get fudged over for the sake of churchy boxes.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:19

Does he do that? You know, could he be a bishop someday? Did he go on a mission? Uh, you know, the these kinds of will my family approve of, you know, are we going to be on the same page teaching our kids the gospel? Blah blah blah.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Right.

SPEAKER_03 6:35

Right. So you're already checking churchy boxes, and I think that can skew how personally attracted am I to this person? Right. Like, okay, that churchy box criteria starts looking really good and can cloud over and eclipse, it could just eclipse this personal attraction.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Well, it could. And I guess an exception to this would be if the church is your or the religion is your whole life. And so that those are all your interests. But you're what you're not doing to to the point I think we're trying to make here is you're not you're not looking at all those personal things, like what are your interests beyond religion, you know. And I think sometimes if you're in a real is important, it's it can't be.

SPEAKER_03 7:23

So the church tells you it you this has to be your whole life.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

Right. And that's how a lot of people go into it. And so if we were to look at this from the perspective of somebody who's in a very high demand religion, they they may say, Well, that's all there is. And so I don't all all that hobby stuff and all of those outside interests don't really matter. Not only that, I'm gonna be kept so busy with religious and family stuff. I don't those things become they fade to the background. And this is what I experienced. Yeah, most of by the time I got married, most of the hobbies I'd had growing up didn't matter. I didn't do them anymore. I kind of lost interest, and I lost interest because I didn't have time.

SPEAKER_03 8:04

You didn't have time because the church overworks you with free labor.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

I have a job uh every day, and then I have a job in the church.

SPEAKER_03 8:12

Ten percent of your income, so you ought to work even harder.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Yeah, yeah. So so in a way, the personal attraction as we define it doesn't really matter except it does on a human level.

SPEAKER_03 8:27

Well, right.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

On a relationship level, it it matters like and sometimes people muddle through forever and they do okay with just the checking the church boxes, but then sometimes they wake up and say this there's a ought to be more to life.

SPEAKER_03 8:42

They're they're usually with someone that works, yeah, but doesn't light them up inside. Right. You know? I I know someone who comes from our religion who had the opposite experience of me on the attraction bridge, who didn't really have the physical or sexual attraction. And that's come up in their relationship as of late, but they did have that personal attraction. She felt like she married her best friend, but didn't really want to be sexual with that person because she was didn't have the physical or sexual attraction. So that can happen too. But either way, if things are being manipulated by these churchy criteria, it can really fuck up the bridge of attraction before you even get on to any of the other bridges.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:38

So I think that people, you know, dating from this religious standpoint are leading more with the criteria and the boxes to check, and maybe are gonna take some steps of attraction, the bridge of attraction. If they're really lucky, they're gonna take all three, but I just think that's a rarity.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:02

And attraction may not be a huge priority for people in that space.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Well, and that's true. And I mean I've talked to people through this whole coaching process that we do, and I've talked to friends, and and when I first kicked off the seven bridges just for myself, and I told other people about it, some people would say to me, Well, I don't think attraction is bridge one for me. And when it was new to me, I was like, Well, this is just what I'm doing, you might be able to set it up any way you want. But as I got further into coaching people on it and really looking at it, it's like, no, attraction is bridge one, but to your point, it's being downplayed and it's being pushed off of the front burner, basically. It's it's being pushed out of position one because it's like it's not such a big deal because I have all these other boxes I've got to check.

SPEAKER_03 10:50

Right, right. And I can't even see about the seven bridges until those boxes are checked anyway. It just doesn't matter if they're not.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Yeah, I I can relegate attraction down a few steps.

SPEAKER_03 11:03

The other problem is that people, at least in our religion, because well, there's there's a lot of reasons. People are in a hurry. People are in a hurry to marry because of scarcity mode, of if everybody's in a hurry to marry and your pool is that small to choose from, the pool gets smaller and smaller and smaller the less you hurry.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

Like you know, all the people are already the pool is shrinking every day.

SPEAKER_03 11:33

The pool is shrinking every day because everybody's in a hurry to marry.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:37

Right? So scarcity mode. The religious doom if you're not married, because this is a prerequisite in our religion for getting into heaven. Exaltation, for getting into heaven, for yes, for being rewarded for you know, you have to be married, which I'm gonna get to some codependence after this.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 11:58

So that religious pressure, you have family pressure.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Right.

SPEAKER_03 12:04

They're adding to this hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

And it's for all those same reasons. There's scarcity and there's doom. So it's like that's reinforcing those.

SPEAKER_03 12:13

We want to secure that you, yeah, how soon can you get married? And then on top of that, there's the sexual suppression. In our religion, it's against the commandments, it's against the law to have any kind of sex before marriage. So we're gonna get to, I mean, you look at bridge five down the down the road in the seven bridges, you can't even you you you can't know about that. You can't know about that. You are just throwing your sexual compatible compatibility to the wind and hoping that it's not bad.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Right. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 12:50

So sad. And more than I mean, I've talked to a lot of people. I've read a lot of very sad Facebook posts of people just lamenting about their sexual incompatibility after the fact of now I'm in this, we're not sexually compatible at all.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

And they had no way to test for it before, and so now they're stuck.

SPEAKER_03 13:18

Now they're stuck. So they're in a hurry because they've got the attitude if I wait and don't secure now, the pool will be diminished even more, my chances go down, I must act now.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Right.

SPEAKER_03 13:31

Alright, on top of all of that, that creates a codependence.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_03 13:37

So you need each other in our religion, and probably in many, in order to religiously progress, in order to spiritually progress, in order to be prepared for the next life. Be religiously accepted by God, right, etc. At least in our religion. And I think there's other religions where that's not the case, and that is Right. I can't even wrap my mind around what that would be like, you know, to be like, no, I'm a full-fledged human by myself. I could be single my whole life long and and still be at the highest level of heaven. Like that is completely foreign to us coming from Mormonism. You cannot. It creates this codependency. That's that's part of this scarcity mode, hurry, hurry, hurry.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

You can't make it on your own.

SPEAKER_03 14:24

I can't make it on my own. And what if there's no one left? What if I'm dating this person and like if I break up with them, like, oh my god, I gotta start all over again. Yeah. And what if there's what if that's my chance? What if there's no one else that works for me? Maybe this is good enough. And so you find so many people settling.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

Yeah, a lot of people do that. It's like this is this is okay. This will work, we'll make it work over time.

SPEAKER_03 14:47

Right. We'll make this work because I gotta just get married.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

And and that's may sound crazy if that's not your world, but that's that's Mormonism. It is, and it's it's it doesn't seem so crazy when you're in it, because it's like, well, that's what everybody's doing, so it must be okay.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

Right. But it creates this codependence of you really can't be your own person. You can't be acceptable just by yourself.

unknown 15:14

No.

SPEAKER_03 15:15

You have to be co-creators with a spouse.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:20

You know, uh, it's all about family and having kids and how many kids and however many you can, and you know. And honestly, there was something you said to me weeks ago that this is how a lot of religious men get women.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Right.

SPEAKER_03 15:37

Because a lot of them aren't great. They're perpetuating an inequitable program situation, etc.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

So they make sure they the bar is so low. Yeah, they make sure they can check those boxes, and if they check those boxes, then then that's what they need to do, as opposed to have being emotionally available or being safe or having a bias for communication. I'll check these other boxes, yeah, and that's how they get by. And it's it's got its parallels in the rest of society now, because we see so many of like the younger generation men, the red pill group or whatever taking that conservative religious kind of mindset.

SPEAKER_03 16:15

Right. Uh very gender-normy patriarchal shit.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Yeah, and I I get I get a good job and I get an education, I get the right car or whatever, then I'm entitled to good provider, that's enough. Yeah, I'm entitled to a wife.

SPEAKER_03 16:29

Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

And so there it's it's not new and it's not just in religion, that is, but but it's men get by doing the minimum. And it's not that those things aren't easy, but they're not the important things that are not.

SPEAKER_03 16:45

They're not the important things.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

They're not the things that are going to build a solid relationship.

SPEAKER_03 16:48

No, they're not the things that really matter in terms of a relationship working.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

So it's It's more of a resume.

SPEAKER_03 16:54

I think that a lot of men, religiously or otherwise, in that kind of mindset, get a lot get women, but this is how they get women.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

Yeah, it is. It basically this is Well, it's how they get the women who are programmed to accept that.

SPEAKER_03 17:08

It's really convenient to have a religion that says that a patriarchal religion that says, okay, now in order to make it to heaven, everybody has to be married.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Right.

SPEAKER_03 17:17

And then they're able to, if it's, you know, this is patriarchal, if it it they're able to take the bar so down low for men, because the women have to get married.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

Right.

SPEAKER_03 17:28

For the religion. Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

So you see how that is so somebody who checks the boxes.

SPEAKER_03 17:33

Convenient.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

Yeah. You know? So you don't have to worry about a lot of things that you ought to be worried about.

SPEAKER_03 17:38

Right. Checking churchy boxes doesn't make you a good person. Right. It's just a bunch of superfluous shit, actually.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:46

Okay, so going through the seven bridges, you've got the bridge of attraction, physical, sexual, personal. A lot of this, you don't even get past attraction.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Right.

SPEAKER_03 17:56

No, you've got you don't even get to bias for communication, emotional availability, safe haven. You can't test for sexual compatibility if you're in a abstinence-only no-tolerance religion like ours. Right. Or family or whatever. You can't test for sexual compatibility. And then there's intimacy and secure base. So we don't even have to like mention sexual compatibility, but we don't even have to mention these other like down the road, because we're not even get fucking getting past attraction, really.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

So it all sort of falls apart on bridge one, and then the rest kind of don't matter. But even if you were to say, like, I was just thinking of bias for communication, you don't truly have that bias for communication. Like, this is the person I want to talk to about everything, because there are certain things you just can't talk about. I mean, or you don't talk about, or don't that don't matter because here's the prescribed path we're supposed to be on. So there's no debating it, there's no talking about how I really feel about this. These values were painted onto me.

SPEAKER_03 19:00

There can't be a lot of nuance or questioning or anything like that, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:04

And so and so, you know, you might or might not have emotional availability. That's that's could could be in there, it might not be, but that full safe haven, there are people I know that have these inner thoughts that are like might be conflicted about this, but you're not really safe to bring that up in that environment. And that's uh I I had those experiences.

SPEAKER_03 19:24

That's because it gets back to we did an episode on the seven bridges of a personal relationship. Yeah, you don't have safe haven with yourself, you didn't have safe haven with yourself. You couldn't say, you know, do I really believe this? Or why am I doing this though? You weren't safe to have those conversations with yourself. You're sure as hell not safe having them with your partner. Right. I mean, I'm also in that, you know, rel hey, this is our understanding. This was our agreement. This yeah, this is what we're doing, right? You change it now. You're not safe to have that with her.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

Well, and as evidence of that, I'm I mean, I'm a big journal writer. I've been writing in a journal since I was 10 years old, and I can go through page after page after page where I'm like, I'm not happy, but I just need to try harder. I need to do more religiously.

SPEAKER_03 20:09

If God will be able to do that, well, that's the message that you know the prophets and apostles gave us. It's always your fault. That's you're not happy, it's you.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

It's it's not it's not the program, it's not so that's evidence that I didn't have safe haven with myself, because even in my journal where my innermost thoughts were supposed to come out, I was still performative in that.

SPEAKER_03 20:30

And probably gaslighting yourself.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Right, exactly. So, yeah, to your point of you gotta have safe haven with yourself. I didn't have safe haven with myself, so I definitely couldn't have it with anybody else.

SPEAKER_03 20:40

Yeah, I I think what this comes down to after everything we've said is that there's the seven bridges and with that religiously mind that religious mindset dating or process, I think there's the seven bridges, and then there's criteria of that religion or of that mindset or your family or your society or whatever. If you have to meet that criteria, it just doesn't work with the seven bridges.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

It explodes all the seven bridges, blows them up. It supersedes those criteria supersede the seven bridges.

SPEAKER_03 21:18

That's exactly right. The seven bridges is the criteria to us of having a solid successful relationship. If you have other criteria, that is your seven bridges, that becomes your seven bridges.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Yeah. And it might be 20 bridges or whatever, but that that's your criteria experience.

SPEAKER_03 21:36

It doesn't work. Right. It doesn't make a solid, successful relationship.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

No, it doesn't.

SPEAKER_03 21:50

In this podcast, we often use the terms women and men when discussing relationships and sexual dynamics. However, we want to acknowledge that not all women have vulvas and not all vulva owners identify as women. Similarly, not all men have penises, and not all penis owners identify as men. Our podcast welcomes individuals and couples of all orientations and identities. We aim for inclusivity, but fully acknowledge that our attempts will never be perfect. We are learning and adopting new language as humankind and our world evolve.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

Hey, just a heads up.