Things Single People Think About Married People
I so enjoyed reading fellow Giggler Lyndsay Rush’s recent piece “Things Married People Think About Single People.” It was super funny and brutally honest and completely on point. But once I’d finished reading, I was like “Hey, wait a second, there’s all this stuff that single people think about married people that’s also incorrect!” I’ve been married almost a year, which is a long enough time to hear a lot of these misconceptions. So let’s take a couple hundred words here to set the record straight.
1.) Being married means having a date to every wedding/movie/board game night for the rest of your married life.
At social gatherings, people are always asking me “Where’s your husband?” in the same tone of voice they would ask me “Where’s your conjoined twin?” were I to be attached at the hip to another person. I don’t go everywhere with my husband. He’s not my date for everything. We are each other’s dates a LOT, but not all the time. Sometimes my college roommate is my date to a movie, sometimes my mom is my date to a wedding, and a lot of the time I am my own date to things and I’m cool with that. So, everyone else, be cool with that too.
2.) Married ladies are all judging single ladies for being single.
Getting engaged was exciting times infinity. One of the downsides to the ring, though, was that a lot of my friends in relationships started taking me aside and explaining to me why they weren’t engaged to their boyfriends. This made me feel like THE WORST. I never wanted my not-married friends to feel like me getting married was synonymous with me judging them for not being married. There is no scoreboard. I don’t think marriage counts as a win if it means that singledom counts as a loss. Both are great things to be. Wherever you are in life is awesome. If there is a scoreboard, we all have a million points just for being alive.
3.) You don’t have to worry about body image shenanigans anymore.
I only WISH I didn’t have to worry about body image shenanigans anymore. I’m lucky that my husband makes me feel like the prettiest of princesses on a regular basis. That said, I still, sometimes, feel like a gross-faced troll. Finding true love is a beautiful thing, but no other person can make you feel a hundred percent secure in your own skin. That’s work you got to do on your own, fellow pretty princesses.
4.) Once you get married, people stop being all up in your personal business.
Single people, you know how sick you are of people asking “When are you going to SETTLE DOWN?” That’s how I feel when people ask me “You’ve been married almost a year, where’s the stroller, where’s the crib, when are you going to hurry up and JUST GET PREGS?” When you get married, everyone’s up in your procreation business which, last time I checked, was no one else’s business. And if/when people do have kids, then they get judged hard about their parenting choices. Basically we’re always going to get judged about something until we’re dead. So start practicing not caring what anyone else thinks about you NOW.
5.) Once you get married, you’re never lonely, because you’ve got that true love thing locked down.
I get lonely every three hours. I have a lot of love and awesomeness in my life and I still get lonely because I overthink myself into a million existential crises and I’m way too sensitive to live on planet Earth. Being married has been awesome for me. I’m grateful for my husband every day. But having a legally-sanctioned relationship with another human being doesn’t delete-key all your problems. That’s on you.
This is a big-ass subject to tackle and I don’t pretend to have everything sorted away and solved in five points. So, opening up the conversation, anyone else have anything to contribute?
