Land of (No) Opportunity

I have to admit that I never really struggled. Sure, we grew up dick poor but for the most part, I was surrounded by other lower-middle-class white kids who were in the same boat as me. But being part of a small rural town, I was always part of the majority. A few months back, I moved to the state of Idaho for the following reasons:

1) It has been close to four years since I had graduated college and despite a few close calls, I had no teaching jobs to show for it. So when Idaho offered me a job, I went.

(End of reasons)

So I packed up my meager belongings, left everything I had ever known, and moved to a state I knew nothing about. Chief among the things I didn't fully understand was that my new hometown was chock-full of Mormons (80% per capita). Being the good atheist that I am, I can honestly say that I didn't give a single fuck about that. People are people, beliefs are beliefs, and let's all just move on with our shit.

How wrong I was.

See, no one is impolite. Ever. Friendly to a fault but at a distance. General help throughout the workday? Absolutely. Invite you over for dinner? Fuck to the no. From what I have gathered, once they decide you aren't in the tribe...you are over there. So for the first time in my life, I am the outsider...the guy who isn't the "norm". Again, I have my non-LDS friends but we are the outliers. I have my 10,000 hours of non-Mormon believing down cold (Thanks, Malcolm).

So...how does this apply to dating? (See above).

I feel like an ass for previously complaining about a lack of opportunities in the dating pool. They do not exist where I live. When I mentioned 80% of the population is Mormon above, this was not a plea for sympathy...that is a stat from the U.S. Census. Yes, this was my own doing and necessary for where I want to go in my career. But it did something else for me that I never truly appreciated: loneliness. I have been alone for the better part of a decade since my divorce, so I get being alone. And apart from a handful of relationships, I am comfortable being by myself. But being here has made me understand what it is to be without the opportunity to meet someone. It feels as if I am advancing a year of my professional life while placing a year of my personal life on hold.

The problem is that a decade of being alone is starting to feel like a habit and another year in an environment that only fosters that...scares the fuck out of me.