Meanwhile, my slow, clumsy extraction from the church was not going well.

I didn’t not believe—but I didn’t not not believe either. Which sounds ridiculous until you’ve lived inside a system designed to make certainty mandatory and doubt punishable.

My trust in the institution was shaky, the rules seemed a little silly, and I was less certain about how answers were handed down. And the doctrine itself still sat in my head, fully furnished, like an apartment I’d moved out of emotionally but hadn’t turned the keys in on yet.

This is a very specific kind of confusion. You don’t feel faithful, but you don’t feel free either. You feel like you’re breaking rules you’re not sure are real—but you’re still pretty sure God is still watching from the corner with a clipboard.

So I kept going to church.

Not eagerly. Not happily. More like someone who keeps showing up to a job after giving notice, unsure when the last paycheck will be issued. Or whether HR is going to mail you your COBRA notice on your eternal benefits. I didn’t bear testimony. I didn’t go to the temple. I didn’t volunteer answers. I sat there nodding politely, thinking, This doesn’t work for me, while also thinking, But what if it’s true and I’m ruining everything.

That’s the trick of it. Mormonism doesn’t require belief to keep you tethered—only fear, habit, and a deeply ingrained sense of cosmic consequences. And I had all three.

I broke rules slowly. Carefully. One at a time.
I stopped praying regularly.
I stopped reading scriptures.

I starting paying tithing on net pay instead of gross.
I did not, however, start working on Sundays, drinking coffee, or cursing in front of my mother.

Because belief was gone—but obedience had roots.

Deep, invasive roots. Like morning glory.

My imaginary therapist would say this was cognitive dissonance mixed with religious conditioning and a dash of existential anxiety.

My brain called it: Let’s not poke God with a stick just yet.

As I was trying to quietly backout of the bishop’s notice, I was called to serve in the Relief Society Presidency of the Singles Ward.

For those unfamiliar, a Singles Ward is basically a church-sponsored matchmaking arena where you have until age 31 to get married or be unceremoniously yeeted back into the Married People Ward like an expired can of cream of chicken soup.

I didn’t know how to say no. I didn’t know how to set boundaries. I knew how to be dutiful.
So I stayed. And I served in my calling.

It was during this time, my dearest Megan reached out. She was married now, living across the country, and she had a request: A boy from our school—TJ—who’d entered the MTC the same time I did, had been sent home early.

This was a scandal.
A disgrace.
The kind of thing that makes all the good Mormon members immediately turn their backs on you.

My friend Megan, who I loved dearly, also had loved him dearly, and asked me to check on him.
Be his friend.
Just so he didn’t spiral into total social oblivion.

I didn’t want to.
I knew him.

I didn’t like him.

He was also a theater kid—specifically the kind who treated everyday life like a performance and the rest of us like a captive audience. He did not just do dumb things; he did them loudly, with confidence, and while waiting for applause.

Once, a group of us accepted a ride from him, which quickly became a near-death experience. He drove far too fast through residential neighborhoods, barely watching the road because he was too busy trying desperately to be impressive. I finally told him to slow down, that it was our necks he was risking.

“I didn’t know your neck was sore,” he said.

Not sarcastically. Not as a joke. Just… proudly incorrect. A shocking lack of comprehension skills.

Moments later, the car sputtered and died.

He had run out of gas.

Now, here’s the important part: we were right next to a gas station. Close enough that you could smell the gasoline and regret. Mere steps away. A normal person would have sighed, put the car in neutral and pushed it up to the pump.

TJ was not a normal person.

Instead, he insisted we push his car—across a wide, busy intersection—to the correct gas station. Because he only used Chevron. With Techron.

So there we were, shoving a dead car through traffic, while TJ supervised and explained fuel additives. That was the moment it became very clear to me that this was a man who valued his own preferences over other people’s safety, comfort, and common sense—and would do so forever, with confidence.

Moron.

But the guilt got me.
The empathy.
The uncomfortable awareness that I had almost come home early, too.

So, I went.

I knocked on his door and made it very clear why I was there:

“Megan asked me to check on you. That’s it. I’m here as a friend. FRIEND. No subtext.”

I may as well have printed it on a t-shirt and brought visual aids.

He was thrilled.
He was lonely.
He needed connection.
And okay, fine—his house was literally across the street from the Singles Ward building, so it was convenient.

We talked, watched movies, hung out with his family.
It was harmless.

Until one day he suddenly lunged at me with his enormous catfish mouth wide open like he was trying to swallow my face whole—eyes open, no warning, full Discovery Channel footage.

I jumped back, wiped off his saliva, and said, “WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?”

He blinked. “I thought you wanted me to kiss you.”

Which was confusing, considering what I had said, with my mouth, was the opposite.

I did not.
I did NOT.

I left.

A couple days later, he showed up at my house to apologize.

He seemed genuinely contrite.
He said he’d misunderstood.
He just wanted a friend.
Please don’t abandon him.

And the guilt—carefully cultivated over a lifetime—did what it had always been trained to do.
I laid down new rules:

• We’re not hanging out alone.
• No more being in his room.
• You behave, or I’m out.

He agreed.

For about five minutes.

Every couple of weeks he’d push the boundary again, and we’d reset the rules. Over and over.

We ended up in the Fourth of July parade together, walking the route and handing out candy, and the entire time he would not stop trying to convince me we should date. It was the longest parade in the recorded history of mankind—which is saying something, because parades are literally the worst.

I had been in parades before. Once in tap shoes that were too small, tap-dancing my way through actual pain.

This was worse.

Another time I walked behind a group of horses with a wheelbarrow and a shovel, cleaning up as we went.

This was also worse.

It wasn’t attraction.
It was attrition.

It was not my Independence Day.

There were no fireworks that day.

Our first “real date” should have been a dealbreaker. He wanted to take me out to dinner.

Now, you have to understand: TJ is a Taco Bell, McDonald’s, or KFC kind of guy. While I consider myself a foodie. I believe in exploring quirky hole-in-the-wall restaurants and saving up for the occasional truly good meal. So, when TJ told me he wanted to take me somewhere “nice,” I must have given him a look—one eyebrow politely arching its doubts.

“It’s a real restaurant,” he insisted. “A nice sit-down place. In Salt Lake.”

He drove me all the way up there—and finally pulled into the parking lot of… Dee’s.

If you don’t know Dee’s: imagine Denny’s. Now give it slightly cleaner floors and absolutely none of Denny’s self-esteem.

Honestly, I should have pushed him down and run.
I should have sprinted into the night like a frightened asthmatic gazelle.

Instead, I sat politely in that booth, stirring my ranch dressing, thinking, Well… maybe he’s trying.

No.
NO.
The man took me on a 45-minute drive to eat an iceberg lettuce salad and a dry-ass scone, and I still thought, “Yeah, this is fine.” Because at that point, my internal bar for acceptable male behavior was somewhere below “actively on fire.”

That is not “trying.”
That is Stockholm Syndrome seasoned with Relief Society guilt. Served with a side of ranch.

And that—right there—is how I let it get that far.

I gave up my standards.

So,one day he invited me into his home and took me to the kitchen, where his mother was “about to be home any minute.”

She was not home. That was against the rules – we weren’t supposed to be alone.

Before I could leave, he leaned in.
He kissed me.
He pushed me backward onto the couch.
His hands were suddenly everywhere.
Then one was down the front of my pants.

I had not said yes. I had not invited this. My body froze.

I don’t know if he made it under or over my sacred Jesus Jammies.
But I do know my eyes flew open in terror.

And that is the exact moment his mother walked in.

There we were, in a compromised position, exactly in front of door, right in the moment she opened it. (Is it cynical if I wonder if this was planned?)

I fled home, horrified, shaking, spiraling.
This wasn’t the accidental brush of an old temple worker’s hand.
This was intentional.

David O. McKay’s voice echoed in my head:
“Your virtue is worth more than your life.”

And if you’re wondering, “Who’s that?”
He was a Mormon prophet—one of the Big Celestial Kahunas. Which I believe is the official theological term.
Imagine a sweet, grandfatherly old man who earnestly believed death was a better fate for a woman than sexual assault.
Thanks, Dave.

I couldn’t tell my parents.
I was too ashamed.
Too terrified.
Too indoctrinated.

Then TJ showed up at my house again.

I was never boy-crazy, but I wasn’t made of stone either. I’d gone a long time without any kind of physical affection—unless you count the surprise ambush hugs from enthusiastic abuelas on my mission—so yes, I’ll admit it: sometimes I kissed him back. Not because I wanted him, or a future with him—but because I was human, touch-starved, and raised in a culture that treated male attention as both currency and obligation. And I was broke.

And that only made everything so much more confusing. Every time I told him, clearly and repeatedly, that I didn’t want anything like that, there was this little traitorous part of me whispering, Well…he’s moving away soon, what’s the harm of a little kissing? It fed the guilt. It fed his delusions. And it fed a system that had taught me my discomfort mattered less than his desire.

I kept saying no. I said it kindly, then firmly, then in all caps. He just heard what he wanted to hear.

He told me I had led him on.
He said I kissed him back.
He said I touched him.
He said he was confused.
He told me I should talk to the bishop.

Because of course he knew how the system worked.
He knew exactly what would happen next.

I went to the bishop.
I sobbed.
The words barely came out.

The bishop listened and then told me, very clearly:

• I had committed a serious sin.
• I was now a tainted woman.
• No good man would ever want me.
• And I must repent.

And to truly repent, I needed to marry the boy I had “lost my virtue” with.

His unwanted hand down my pants for less than a minute had the power to destroy my life.

This was not advice. This was instruction.
That was the doctrine.
That was the trap snapping shut.

I went to tell TJ what the bishop had said.
His mother was there.

She told me if I didn’t want to marry him, I should have stayed away. I had wasted her son’s time.

She said that the Air Force would be assigning him to a base soon, who knows where. Now, since I had taken up all the time when he should have spent looking for a wife, he might move away, still single, and fall in love with a non-Mormon woman and lose his soul.

And that would be my fault.

So now the weight of both our eternal destinies was on me.

And what could I do?
At 23 years old?
Conditioned for obedience?
Drowning in shame? I agreed to marry him.
I pasted on a happy face.
And I never told my family the real reason I was getting married—because I had been taught that repentance required silence—and that shame was a solo project.