Best Life Ever: Single Jehovah’s Witnesses and Depression

She spent her days grinding away at a tedious desk job. Her mother was on disability and needed her help to support the family. In her spare time, she spearheaded a foreign language group that offered rudimentary Bible studies to a remote indigenous community. She was reliable and loved by many. Then, out of the blue, she texted me: “I think I’m depressed.”

There are books to read, places to travel, foods to explore. There are hobbies waiting to be dabbled in, questions to ponder. The world is full of opportunities to make a positive difference in the lives of others, as my friend proved every day. Don’t forget, others have it worse—at least you have a roof over your head. Most importantly, no matter what you must endure in this world for the sake of His name, you’re storing up spiritual treasures from your loving heavenly Father. And, sometimes, you just need to get laid.

Jehovah’s Witnesses have a loneliness epidemic. They are sexually repressed through guilt and shame, then gaslit into believing their gnawing, inherent craving for intimacy is a result of their own weakness. My overworked and undersexed friend tread lightly in her statements, as if the subtext belying her confession wasn’t glaringly obvious. “The single brothers here…. I’m not really attracted to any of them. I love Jehovah. I don’t know…I guess I’m just tired.” She was tired, alright. Tired of the bullshit.

Single Jehovah’s Witnesses are tired of having to routinely justify and dismiss their natural, biological needs. Tired of being told to distract themselves with more Bible reading, more preaching and prayer. It’s not their fault most of them reach peak maturation in a sexual wasteland. Since premarital sex is prohibited, those who want to do right by God enter ill-advised marriages by the time they graduate high school, and those who can’t find a compatible mate, or simply want to bone without signing papers, are SOL. Sure, my girlfriend could have been depressed for other reasons, but in the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses, not every SSRI prescription is traced to a chemical imbalance. She was thirty, single, and nowhere to mingle.

“He had cool socks,” she giggled. My friend climbed the steps of Machu Picchu. She went whitewater rafting and studied moose tracks in the snow-capped Canadian Rockies. After the Apocalypse, my friend would strangle zombies with her bare hands while Sock Boy shit his pants. She was a beautiful, daring, grown-ass woman reduced to an adolescent who doodles “Mrs. Socks” on her organizer, and for what? A lukewarm love connection who couldn’t make eye contact and was probably gay.

Jehovah’s Witnesses claim they have the “Best Life Ever”. This isn’t some grassroots motto, a genuine testimony circulated among insiders who have experienced the benefits of a set of specific religious tenets. It’s their trademark, like, “Just Do It” or “I’m Lovin’ It”, and this brand of spirituality is presented as indisputable fact. If my friend admitted to me—and herself—that a steady diet of cult rhetoric and busy work wasn’t enough to stave off her hunger for more, her desire for companionship and the freedom to find that companion elsewhere, our tagline wouldn’t have the same ring to it. Single or not, that’s a ring no one should settle for.