If you're a "gentile" (i.e. non-Mormon) in Utah, you sometimes feel like an anthropologist on a field study of an remote tribe. You're regularly trying to figure out strange customs, ceremonies and even underwear.

We get two glimpses into Mormon mating rituals from articles in the Tribune and the Deseret News.

Roxana Orellana at the Trib has a happy story. Brigham Young University — often exhalted as America's "stone-cold sober" university — is nevertheless, the nation's old-fashioned dating capital. BYU students have more dates in a semester than students at other schools have in their entire college careers, a new study has found.

"There is a whole lot of dating going on at BYU," says Bruce Chadwick, a BYU sociologist. Students at the school are "not into the casualness of single bars and Internet linking."

The goal is marriage, not NCMO (noncommittal make-out). "You can't really find a companion if you are always hanging out and hooking up," one student says.

Meanwhile, the DNews' MormonTimes includes an essay that finds things are not so hunky dory for the sisters, dating-wise, after graduation.

"For years, I'd fasted and prayed to the Lord saying, 'Please, I'm tired of doing all the asking. Just once can't someone ask me out on a date for a change? Please?' " writes Michelle Llewellyn. Her prayers were answered, but apparently the Lord, Her mysterious way, sends out a loser:

He was in his 30s, hadn't completed any higher education, saw no problem with a round of golf on Sunday and was still living with his parents.

Llewellyn prepares to spend Valentine's Day alone at home eating Ben & Jerry's out of the carton. Nothing exotic so far, then the essay turns to the promise.

It's not found in any scriptures (except maybe Isaiah 54:1), but the Lord has inspired the brethren of the church to give us single unmarried women some hope and counsel. From President Lorenzo Snow to our dearly departed President Gordon B. Hinckley, they have been quoted saying such things as "a young woman with no opportunity for marriage in this life ... will have every opportunity in the next."

It's a bitter pill to swallow, facing the fact that many of us may have to wait ... and wait ... and wait some more, perhaps until the second coming, or whatever has to come before being granted our heart's desire.

Trust the brethren, it will come.

It appears to be the reverse of the non-Mormon expression, "I'll be mellow when I'm dead."

Instead, the sisters will be rockin' with full dance cards when they're worm food.