Maybe it was the guy who grilled me on a first-interview (I mean, a first-date) on my thoughts on abortion and other political hot-topics. I mean, that was less fun than my political science course at UGA. Or, the guy who, within an hour of meeting me started calling me "babe" and holding my waist as if I didn't know how to walk around all my life before meeting him. That was less fun than going to the dentist, and I fear dentist visits. So, that date was less fun than fear... Or, it could be that time when the guy I was dating, on Valentine's day, took a detour to the grocery store to get his mom some chocolates (very sweet) - OH, AND we went to get his 20-year-old beautiful best friend a box of chocolates, too, so we could deliver them. <-- sorry to that guy if he ever reads this. I'm not naming names. He's a really great person, but can we all agree that THAT was weird... and embarrassing. Oh, and there is always that first-date when the nice med student asked me if I'd ever been to New England, and I said, "Oh, no... I've never actually been out of the country." My bad. I was terribly young and not well-traveled (I think that's obvious). OH - AND, the guy on the dating website (yes, I did that) that just wanted to go ahead and let everyone know upfront that....... he's married. WELCOME to dating in the 21st century. Oh yeah --- I almost forgot about the time I was hanging out with a date and staring at his ex-girlfriend's picture the whole time.
So, someone ask me again: "Why don't you like dating?"
Are any of my married-with-children friends still jealous of all of my glorious freedom??
I was actually trying to be silly and funny when I started writing this --- and now, I'm afraid people might be sad for me? :) Truly, I laugh at every one of these things, NOW. I might not have then, but I definitely add them to the list of "reasons I'm single" and "things that make me, me."
I was remembering all of these things because I was thinking about how a lot of people, probably women specifically, seem to think the grass is greener on the other side. I've definitely had a few remarks made in my direction about how nice it must be that I can just drop what I'm doing and grab lunch with a friend. Or, how nice that I can go off for the weekend without any worries. I've even been confronted about how much time I spend with one group of friends vs. another. No one said it in any obvious harsh way to flat-out criticize me, but it definitely made an impression. Now, I'm not talking about my friend Molly, who openly tells me how we need to just trade lives for a day (she and I joke and talk real life - there's no sneaky snake talk there). But, I'm talking about when people say things with something like a backhanded slap. A sneaking-around-the-corner way of trying to, I don't know, make me feel bad for not having a family of my own? For spending my time how I want to spend my time? I used to just think, "I guess they're just jealous," and brush that kind of thing off. But, I'm actually not that strong. It started to annoy me. For a second, I even let someone else's feelings affect mine, and I actually started thinking, "AM I a selfish person just because I'm single?" Once I realized I was actually allowing another person's feelings to affect my own, then I started thinking about what was really happening.
And, here's my theory. So many of us are so insecure and can't allow ourselves to be content with our own lives. It's not just simply that some married-with-children friends are jealous that their single friends have more free time to do with as they choose. I don't think they LIKE to think that we're all selfish people because we're single and because we like having friends and doing fun things. I'm not going to try to defend myself of being selfish, because I do think I'm selfish. I think we are all (married and single) pretty selfish when we look at many of our true motives for the things we do and say. But, I think some married people occasionally want something different for just a minute, or they feel like they are missing out. And, they want a little more freedom in their own lives for just a little while. Who wouldn't? They don't not want their families - they just get bogged down, and they maybe want a small taste of what they think it is that we have. That sounds healthy and normal to me --- until you make someone feel guilty for leading the life they are given. That's where insecurities can get nasty.
Same thing goes for single people. Plenty of single people are jealous of married people. And, it's not just that they're jealous, end of story. It's that they see what someone else has, and they feel like they are missing out. Like they aren't receiving as many blessings as someone else and that it isn't fair. To which I say - you've just gotta get over that thought process. Some single people desperately feel the need to be loved by someone else and would do almost anything to have the kind of love that they imagine other people have. Some single people feel like they are "less than" enough because they don't have a family of their own. Like they are not enough or have no purpose of their own. That kind of thinking makes me so sad. I'm a big believer in YOU ARE ENOUGH. Actually, God is enough for you. I'm sure that sounds so very Christian cliché, but if you believed it - you would know what I mean. YES, desire marriage, desire love, desire a family --- but don't desire it because you think you aren't enough on your own. Lies.
I'm (not) sorry to break it to you, but YOU CAN'T HAVE IT ALL. At least not until you realize that you don't have to have it all, to have it all. Make sense?! It's just a fact of life that no one wants to come to terms with. You can certainly have enough --- but we're never happy with enough. We want MORE. We're always wanting what we don't have.
Would any happily married people who get a twinge of single-freedom jealousy want to leave behind the family they've worked so hard to create to live a single life like me??? NO. I seriously thought about this question from the single-end of things, and thought, "would any single person want to leave behind their single life and be married," and the answer is, I think, yes. You're losing some freedom, yes, but you're not losing anyone - you're gaining. So this question doesn't work as well as I was hoping it would. But, if I tweak the question a bit, the truth is: Would I ever leave behind my life to live the same life that someone else has? NO! I cannot think of one person in my life that I know that I would want to live exactly like. That is the beauty of having your own God-given life. It's your unique life. I would never trade my life in for someone else's. Not that my friends' lives look bad or less-than at all... but it's not mine. It isn't just right for me. It wasn't meant to be mine, and I wouldn't be happy with it. Not even to be someone who was rich, had a perfectly loving family with just the right balance of everything, a job that I love, with no concerns in the world. I wouldn't desire this --- because I know IT DOESN'T EXIST. There is no perfect example out there that we can reach on this earth. Sure, there are families and couples and single people that make it look easy - but no one's life is worth trading your own. Everyone has to do the best with the life they are given. Mainly because, that's just how life is and Freaky Friday and The Change Up are just movies. And we have to find the best parts of the life we're given. I realize that is easy for a girl in my position to say - someone with a loving family, the best friends, enough faith to keep me going, with all of my needs met. It is harder to imagine for the person who is down on their luck - who has lost a job, can't pay their bills, for someone who is living in a battered women's shelter, a child who is shuffled around in foster care.
Do I believe there are bright spots in their lives as well? I honestly do, though I would not judge them for not noticing or caring much about them in their current position. And, this leads me to what I think would help us all with our insecurities and our comparisons and our jealousy: do something for the people I mentioned in the last few sentences. Put a little focus outside of your own family and friends, and on those people who really struggle with the basic necessities of life that we easily take for granted. Those things that most of us have without even thinking about it, whether we are single or married: shelter, food, clothing, love, protection. Stop focusing on what we don't have enough of and what others have more of, and start giving what you DO have to those who have actual, tangible reasons to feel needy. They could probably teach us more than we could give them. And, we may even start to appreciate all the things we already have a little more.
