Responding to Andrew Joy, who posted a comment. If I read your post right, I believe you are single. You "wish more of His people would stop building fences around the well." Are you speaking of the well of marriage? Making the commitment and saying the vows, whether in the temple or not, does not make marriage perfect. It takes work, and my husband and I were reminded by this article how much we need to partner with the Lord in all aspects of our marriage.
We were both previously married to former spouses in the temple. We did all the right things, we followed the counsel and teachings from Sunday School teachers and youth leaders. Nevertheless, there came a time when divorce was the only option. It was not expected. Many couples cannot weather the storms of severe illness, infidelity, financial stresses, etc. Do members often put on their smiles and attend the temple once a week, once a month, or as often as time permits, then return home to face challenges?
My eternal husband and I have been married for almost four decades. The gospel is our strongest foundation, and we love Jesus Christ. Yet, isn't it interesting that we don't always agree even on spiritual matters? In our Come, Follow Me studies, we may understand a passage of scripture differently, or we may each have a different perspective on something taught in the temple.
The key is daily work in all aspects of our marriage, and sometimes it isn't easy. As singles who haven't yet found an eternal companion, or may question the Lord's timing, or as couples already sealed in the temple, we need to constantly seek to become better disciples and more faithful to the covenants we have made, and recognize why we want to follow that path.
Can you imagine the strength of the Samaritan woman? In all of her weaknesses (or what others perceived about her), she ran to tell about her encounter with the Savior. So too, He will bless us where we are as we reach out to Him and constantly strive to become better disciples.
Marlund HaleMay 6, 2025
My mistake! My comment referred to Sister Joy when I should have referenced Brother Joy (unless Andrew is a sister's name).
Wally GoddardMay 6, 2025
Andrew, what a hard situation! You seem to be giving it your best and not getting the joy you seek. I would love to visit with you directly by email if you are interested in that. Wally Goddard
Joe M.May 6, 2025
Thank you, Andrew, for your refreshing honesty on Church culture. I mourn with you.
As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, "It is hard for a man who is warm to understand a man who is cold."
Or maybe Job said it best. "Miserable comforters are ye all!"
Andrew j joyMay 5, 2025
Every so often, a Latter-day Saint devotional article floats across my screen that’s so drenched in marital assumptions that reading it as a single person feels like pressing your face against the window of a party you weren’t invited to. One such article is “Jesus, the Samaritan Woman, and Your Marriage” from Latter-day Saint Magazine. It’s a lovely piece — assuming, of course, you have a marriage. Or have had one. Or at least have a shot.
The article explores the story in John 4 of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. She’s had five husbands, is now with a man who isn’t her husband, and is drawing water alone at noon — the symbol of isolation. Jesus meets her in that moment, reveals His knowledge of her broken relationships, and offers her living water. It’s a redemptive story, one the article quickly connects to modern marriage: Christ heals our relationships, offers grace to the imperfect, and blesses our homes.
It’s a comforting message. But as a single Latter-day Saint — one who has neither five failed marriages nor even one — the question rises: where exactly is that living water for us?
The article is written, like so many others, with the assumption that marriage is universal. That every Latter-day Saint will eventually step into a sealing room, build an eternal family, and then turn to Christ when things get bumpy. It assumes you’ve been married, are married, or are between marriages. And it leaves unspoken the aching truth that some of us have done everything right — kept the law of chastity, remained faithful, served missions, magnified callings, and still never been chosen.
The woman at the well is often interpreted as a symbol of the broken, the failed, the ashamed. But at least she had stories. Five husbands, one current partner — she had loved, lost, tried, failed. Some of us haven’t even had the chance to fail. We just… don’t get picked. Or we got picked once and discarded. And now we’re expected to read articles like this and pretend the well is for us too, even though we’ve been circling the desert for years with nothing but an empty bucket and a fading hope that the water was ever meant for us in the first place.
Single people in the Church are told, again and again, that their time will come. If not now, then in the next life. If not in mortality, then in eternity. But there’s something uniquely cruel about waiting on promises that everyone else around you is already enjoying. We sit in Sunday School lessons on temple marriage while watching couples giggle over inside jokes about who forgot the milk. We do sealings for the dead while never receiving the ordinances ourselves. We listen to marriage and parenting metaphors over the pulpit, as if every spiritual truth must be filtered through the lens of a domestic unit we don’t belong to.
And then, when we express our pain, we’re told we’re bitter. Or impatient. Or too picky. Or, the classic: “You’ll understand when you’re married.”
Maybe we would understand if we were married. Maybe we’d even be included in articles like these — written not with quiet sadness in mind, but with the comforting assumption that marriage is a given and Christ is merely the therapist-in-residence when it goes south.
But what if you never married? What if you never will?
Does Jesus still wait at the well for you?
I believe He does. But I also believe He’s been obscured by a Church culture that doesn’t quite know what to do with you unless you’re on your way to sealing. There’s no clear space in the narrative for long-term singleness that isn’t a problem to be fixed or a punishment to be endured. We are often either invisible or projects — certainly not full participants in the theology of covenant companionship.
The woman at the well is offered living water despite her marital mess. That’s good news. But for some of us, the water feels farther off — not because Christ has withheld it, but because His people keep redirecting the well to those who wear rings.
I don’t need another promise that it will all work out eventually. I don’t need another marriage lesson with a tacked-on sentence about “those still waiting.” I need to know that Christ sees me now — not in some imagined future where my single status is finally corrected — but in this very moment, where I’ve drawn spiritual water from a well of disappointment, exhaustion, and persistent faith.
Because I do believe He knows my heart. I do believe He walks with the single. I do believe His living water is for everyone.
I just wish more of His people would stop building fences around the well.
Comments | Return to Story
Rochelle HaleMay 6, 2025
Responding to Andrew Joy, who posted a comment. If I read your post right, I believe you are single. You "wish more of His people would stop building fences around the well." Are you speaking of the well of marriage? Making the commitment and saying the vows, whether in the temple or not, does not make marriage perfect. It takes work, and my husband and I were reminded by this article how much we need to partner with the Lord in all aspects of our marriage. We were both previously married to former spouses in the temple. We did all the right things, we followed the counsel and teachings from Sunday School teachers and youth leaders. Nevertheless, there came a time when divorce was the only option. It was not expected. Many couples cannot weather the storms of severe illness, infidelity, financial stresses, etc. Do members often put on their smiles and attend the temple once a week, once a month, or as often as time permits, then return home to face challenges? My eternal husband and I have been married for almost four decades. The gospel is our strongest foundation, and we love Jesus Christ. Yet, isn't it interesting that we don't always agree even on spiritual matters? In our Come, Follow Me studies, we may understand a passage of scripture differently, or we may each have a different perspective on something taught in the temple. The key is daily work in all aspects of our marriage, and sometimes it isn't easy. As singles who haven't yet found an eternal companion, or may question the Lord's timing, or as couples already sealed in the temple, we need to constantly seek to become better disciples and more faithful to the covenants we have made, and recognize why we want to follow that path. Can you imagine the strength of the Samaritan woman? In all of her weaknesses (or what others perceived about her), she ran to tell about her encounter with the Savior. So too, He will bless us where we are as we reach out to Him and constantly strive to become better disciples.
Marlund HaleMay 6, 2025
My mistake! My comment referred to Sister Joy when I should have referenced Brother Joy (unless Andrew is a sister's name).
Wally GoddardMay 6, 2025
Andrew, what a hard situation! You seem to be giving it your best and not getting the joy you seek. I would love to visit with you directly by email if you are interested in that. Wally Goddard
Joe M.May 6, 2025
Thank you, Andrew, for your refreshing honesty on Church culture. I mourn with you. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, "It is hard for a man who is warm to understand a man who is cold." Or maybe Job said it best. "Miserable comforters are ye all!"
Andrew j joyMay 5, 2025
Every so often, a Latter-day Saint devotional article floats across my screen that’s so drenched in marital assumptions that reading it as a single person feels like pressing your face against the window of a party you weren’t invited to. One such article is “Jesus, the Samaritan Woman, and Your Marriage” from Latter-day Saint Magazine. It’s a lovely piece — assuming, of course, you have a marriage. Or have had one. Or at least have a shot. The article explores the story in John 4 of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. She’s had five husbands, is now with a man who isn’t her husband, and is drawing water alone at noon — the symbol of isolation. Jesus meets her in that moment, reveals His knowledge of her broken relationships, and offers her living water. It’s a redemptive story, one the article quickly connects to modern marriage: Christ heals our relationships, offers grace to the imperfect, and blesses our homes. It’s a comforting message. But as a single Latter-day Saint — one who has neither five failed marriages nor even one — the question rises: where exactly is that living water for us? The article is written, like so many others, with the assumption that marriage is universal. That every Latter-day Saint will eventually step into a sealing room, build an eternal family, and then turn to Christ when things get bumpy. It assumes you’ve been married, are married, or are between marriages. And it leaves unspoken the aching truth that some of us have done everything right — kept the law of chastity, remained faithful, served missions, magnified callings, and still never been chosen. The woman at the well is often interpreted as a symbol of the broken, the failed, the ashamed. But at least she had stories. Five husbands, one current partner — she had loved, lost, tried, failed. Some of us haven’t even had the chance to fail. We just… don’t get picked. Or we got picked once and discarded. And now we’re expected to read articles like this and pretend the well is for us too, even though we’ve been circling the desert for years with nothing but an empty bucket and a fading hope that the water was ever meant for us in the first place. Single people in the Church are told, again and again, that their time will come. If not now, then in the next life. If not in mortality, then in eternity. But there’s something uniquely cruel about waiting on promises that everyone else around you is already enjoying. We sit in Sunday School lessons on temple marriage while watching couples giggle over inside jokes about who forgot the milk. We do sealings for the dead while never receiving the ordinances ourselves. We listen to marriage and parenting metaphors over the pulpit, as if every spiritual truth must be filtered through the lens of a domestic unit we don’t belong to. And then, when we express our pain, we’re told we’re bitter. Or impatient. Or too picky. Or, the classic: “You’ll understand when you’re married.” Maybe we would understand if we were married. Maybe we’d even be included in articles like these — written not with quiet sadness in mind, but with the comforting assumption that marriage is a given and Christ is merely the therapist-in-residence when it goes south. But what if you never married? What if you never will? Does Jesus still wait at the well for you? I believe He does. But I also believe He’s been obscured by a Church culture that doesn’t quite know what to do with you unless you’re on your way to sealing. There’s no clear space in the narrative for long-term singleness that isn’t a problem to be fixed or a punishment to be endured. We are often either invisible or projects — certainly not full participants in the theology of covenant companionship. The woman at the well is offered living water despite her marital mess. That’s good news. But for some of us, the water feels farther off — not because Christ has withheld it, but because His people keep redirecting the well to those who wear rings. I don’t need another promise that it will all work out eventually. I don’t need another marriage lesson with a tacked-on sentence about “those still waiting.” I need to know that Christ sees me now — not in some imagined future where my single status is finally corrected — but in this very moment, where I’ve drawn spiritual water from a well of disappointment, exhaustion, and persistent faith. Because I do believe He knows my heart. I do believe He walks with the single. I do believe His living water is for everyone. I just wish more of His people would stop building fences around the well.
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