Beyond the candlelit dinners and engagement posts, many students are navigating ambiguous loss, longing for someone they have long expected but have not yet met.
Spend five minutes on campus and you will overhear at least one conversation about a ring, a reception, or a roommate who just “knows.” For many students at Brigham Young University, the idea of marriage is not distant, it’s all around. The ubiquity of marriage on campus influences how students experience singlehood and the uncertainty that comes with waiting for “the right one.”
Waiting in a World of Weddings
Jeff Jackson, associate professor of the marriage and family therapy graduate program in the School of Family Life, offers language for that experience. He describes prolonged singlehood for those who hope to marry as a form of ambiguous loss.
“Ambiguous loss tends to result in what’s called frozen grief,” Jackson says.
Unlike death or other clearly defined losses, ambiguous loss is marked by the uncertainty.
There is no clear ending, ritual, or resolution. Jackson explains that “it’s the absence of information that makes it so hard.”
In the case of singlehood, the loss is even more abstract. It isn’t the disappearance of someone tangible but the continued absence of someone long expected. Jackson describes it as someone who is “psychologically present” built through hope and anticipation, paired with a physical absence that makes the waiting ache.
A Righteous Kind of Sadness
From childhood fairytales to gospel teachings about eternal marriage, many grow up expecting a spouse to enter their life at a certain stage. When that expectation meets reality, the emotional tension can feel heavy.
The heaviness doesn’t fade, even when you try to ignore it. It can feel like everyone else has moved ahead while you are stuck waiting. Jackson stresses that this longing is natural and meaningful.
“That desire to get married is divine. It’s part of the plan of salvation,” he says.
Because the desire is rooted in doctrine, the sadness attached to it can be reframed as a “righteous sadness.” Rather than something to eliminate, that sadness can coexist with faith. According to Jackson, it reflects a sincere commitment to gospel covenants and connection.
Still, Jackson cautions against allowing marital status to become the primary lens through which someone evaluates their worth. He advises those who are struggling with letting their singlehood define their character to “stay grounded in our primary identity as a child of God.”
“We can keep that in perspective so that it doesn’t become the single most important way that we allow others to define us and that we define ourselves in that way,” he adds.
Preparing the Person, Not Just the Partnership
In a School of Family Life class, SFL 223 Preparation for Marriage, that philosophy of exploring your identity outside of your romantic standing is lived out in classrooms filled largely with single students. Rather than treating marriage preparation as something that begins with a proposal, the course emphasizes growth long before partnership.
Senior Lydia Hahl from Leesburg, Georgia, is majoring in experience and design management, and is a teaching assistant for the class. She has watched that growth firsthand. As part of the course, students are asked to self-reflect periodically in a journal.
“I get to read how they’re recognizing the places that they need to grow and how they’re appreciating the good in them already,” she says.
The emphasis in this course is not about finding the right person as quickly as possible but rather how to become someone capable of a healthy, covenant relationship. Senior Megan Moody, from Kaysville, Utah, and majoring in early childhood education, is another TA. She sees how that principle reshapes how students approach dating.
“If you’re not sure who you are and how to take care of yourself, then how are you going to take care of or be with another person?” she says.
That mindset echoes Jackson’s invitation to live proactively rather than passively.
“Instead of sitting in my apartment twiddling my thumbs, waiting for someone to plop into my life for me to marry, I’m going to instead make my life closest to what I wish it would be if I weren’t married,” Jackson says.
You Do Not Need a Plus One to Belong
In that vision, singlehood is a formative time not suspended time. It is a prime season for strengthening relationships, deepening discipleship, building skills, and becoming emotionally and spiritually grounded. At the same time, Jackson hopes the broader campus culture can better support those in that season.
“Students should be more thoughtful and inclusive in the ways that we talk about marital status and singlehood so that everyone at BYU feels like they belong here,” he says.
Belonging thrives when people support one another and cultivate a shared commitment to something greater than themselves.
For single students navigating another Valentine’s Day or another wedding invitation, the message is not to suppress longing or rush the timeline. It is to name the experience honestly, anchor identity in divine unchangeable truth, and move forward intentionally.
Singlehood, as Jackson frames it, is not a pause in the plan God has for you. It is a part of the becoming that the plan requires.