It's What's Missing -- That's Why

Dear Neighbors:

This evening, I had a conversation with Christine that made me think about my place in this whole world of dating. As usual, I got the "you should be happy just being you," "you need to be happy with yourself before you'll be happy with anyone else," and "the grass isn't always greener", etc.

Why do married people insist on saying these things? Christine is my BFF (are 40 year-olds allowed to have BFF's?), but sometimes I think we live on two different planets. My main question is this: why are relationships and marriage good enough for you, but not for me?

I don't know anyone who was emotionally perfect, stable and settled when they met the significant other. Christine and her husband had so many ups and downs I thought for sure they'd kill each other before they'd ever stay together. I used to sneak out when they were fighting -- I'd get a call an hour later asking, "Where did you go?"

I have so many friends whose relationships have begun with infidelity, one rescuing the other, and working the twelve steps. I still have friends whose relationships have so many ups and downs that they change their Facebook pages from "in a relationship" to "engaged" to "single" to the ubiquitous "it's complicated", all in a single day. Yet all of these people insist on telling me that my life should be stable and free from insecurity before I can find someone. My favorite form of friend abuse is when they tell me that I should be happy being single.

We live in a world where relationships are the norm and singlehood is eternally ostracizing. For example, when the school year began with the usual interminably-long meeting, congratulations were offered to those employees who either married or had children. These are considered accomplishments, while I would consider them "some things people did on their summer vacations". My single friends, I'm sure you can relate to this -- we are expected to contribute and participate in wedding and baby showers, yet unless we get married or pop out a kid, no one will celebrate us. Well, they will, as long as they can do it verbally and not financially. That's what BFF's are for!

So....the only things worth celebrating are marriage and children, but married people insist on discouraging us from pursuing these things. Does that make sense to anyone? I find it fucking confusing. If my life isn't the way I want it to be, it's because there's something missing. And what's missing right now is someone else. It isn't unnatural or unreasonable to hate being alone.

I can't tell you how many news articles I've read lately in which someone died and the most important detail of the death was the victim's impending marriage. Not the job, whether or not they owned a home, liked baking, or took remarkably good care of cats. Nope -- it's always our relationships to other people that make us important.

If the only thing I can do that anyone will consider significant is to attach myself to another person by marriage or birth, then stop telling me it's not important. It is. It's important to you, it's important to everyone else, and it is important to me.

Before you give me the grass isn't fucking greener lecture, maybe you need to see a hypnotherapist so you can remember how your relationship began. Your memory sucks.

D