Somewhere in the ancient, mystic trinity / You get three as a magic number February 6, 2008
Posted by charmingbutsingle in Advice People Give Me, Announcements, Blog, Family, Life, My family is sure I will never marry, Sad but true, Single Girl Cliches, We Get It -- You're Stressed About Getting Old, Weberific!, Weddings.trackback
I missed my three year blogiversary, which was last month on January 19. Damn, has it really been that long?
Three years and here’s all I have to show for it — ridiculously well-documented proof of my failed attempts at dating and my single girl woes, a shameful case of writer’s block and, even worse, a feeling that my silly hobby might mean more to me than I care to admit.
481 posts. 7494 comments. 493,187 visits (or views?) just since I launched over here at WordPress last year.
With all of that writing and all of that free advice, you’d think I would have learned something by now, right?
I started the year worrying about how my younger brother was getting married before I did. Which is pretty funny because that’s the same way I’ve been feeling now, a year later, ever since my young cousins suggested over Sunday dinner I go out with their 30-year-old reading teacher, who is actually 55 and married with five kids.
That tells you something about how kids view the world and the adults who inhabit it.
And when I asked why, they said “Because [Your Brother] is going to beat you and if you don’t hurry up, so is [Your Sister].”
They say the darndest things.
I have to say, your whole family is very focused on the idea that you need to get married! I don’t know if it bothers you, but frankly, I don’t even know them and it’s starting to bother me! Why does it matter when you get married?! Geesh.
Charming, you don’t need to worry about what your family says. You are smart and beautiful and you will find the right person when it is meant to happen. Don’t let them pressure you and don’t worry about what they think!
I agree with Elisse! Don’t let your family cause you to feel badly about yourself. You are going to find your “soul mate” when you are ready and not a moment before!! I used to feel a lot like you, my sister got married and had a baby while I was still dealing with abusive boyfriend(s). Now, I am married to the nicest, most perfect man and my sister has kicked her husband to the curb and is a strugling single mother. She bought a house when she was 23, I am just now getting ready to buy my first house at 31, she has had to file bankrupcy due to her deadbeat husband and I am fairly financially stable. It just goes to show that you should build your own bliss and not worry about others “beating” you to some goal or another!!
Happy Blogaversary! And thanks for keeping it up this long…. it makes other single at 27 girls feel a little bit more normal
I agree! My family picks on me about not being married at every holiday get together. It hurts, so I know how you feel. My younger, more beautiful sister will most likely get married before me, but I could have been engaged by now (I’m 26), to the WRONG man, and I chose to get out of that relationship before I was trapped. Why can they not just be grateful that you are making the right decision for YOU?? You will find your Prince Charming, Charming… just on your own time. Thanks for keeping the blog going. I relate to you in many ways, so it is one of the highlights of my day!
*First comment!*
Seriously, does your whole family have nothing better to do than obsess about your single status? You, Charming, have given me something to aspire to over the next 4-5 years as I become an Awesome Single Career Woman. Witty, successful, with great friends and what sounds like a cute fashion sense, and with just enough pessimism to stay grounded, but enough optimism to stay in the game.
“If they’re too quick about it, they’ll beat me to divorce court, too.”
So I’m not the only one. My mother is constantly telling me about all the nice widowed men that are in our tiny little town.
These men are 65 and 70 years old.
I really think my family sees me as a complete old maid spinster who’s in the AARP range. I’m the youngest of my siblings, but my siblings kids are all college age, so I’m very much afraid my nieces will marry before me. They’re only about 19 now, but in a couple years…
I could have been married probably 5 times by now, but the people who would have proposed were pretty sub standard with two teeth in their head and tobacco stains on their overalls. (small country town full of farmers)
My god, this just SUCKS! What is wrong with me???
My 8-year-old niece was quite alarmed when my younger brother announced his engagement last summer, since I’m not married yet. Kids (or at least this kid) have very strong beliefs that siblings should get married in order.
But since both my younger brothers were in long-term relationships long before I was, I accepted the fact that at least one of them would be married before me.
Happy Blogiversary! I’ve been reading for 2 of the 3 years – you were probably the 2nd blog I started reading on a regular basis, and you’ve been one of my favorites ever since!
One of my younger cousins is getting married (which is really scary, as she is probably 5 years younger than me). My mom told me not to rush (good, because it’ll be awhile), yet not to wait too long because she wants grandkids (wait…what?!). I can’t even imagine being a girl and going through the marriage talk. My friend (28) is talking about her eggs shriveling and the fact she wants to be preggo by 30, whether she is in a real relationship or not. She wants to come and visit, and previous to the ‘by 30′ discussion, I was thinking it’d be a fun weekend…..but now I think I’d be too paranoid!
Congrats on the three years of blogging–that’s good stuff. And anyone who has been through a divorce can tell you that what you’ve really been keeping track of here are WISE, SMART decisions that have SAVED you from marrying the wrong guy. The right one is coming. Your family will love him. He’ll love you. And all will be well
Seriously, we’ve all felt that way at times. I like to go back and read my own thoughts too, to see what I could possibly learn from this experience, so I turn to this to remind myself what focusing on marriage for the wrong reasons can bring.
You are single and fabulous (no question mark included)
Happy Belated Blogaversary!!!!!! I love coming by and reading what you say, Hell I even have used some of your Blogs in my everyday life when it comes to dating!! Yeah I Still Single and thanks to some of your posts. I am loving every min. of it!!!!!!
Shalom!!
Mad congrats on 3 wonderful years! I am just trying to last 3 weeks!!! Being single and not having to worry about silly weddings is wonderful….
If anything my blog is a good tool for education on single and loving it and how to get a guy like me interested! Of course honestly if you knew the real me I can not see anyone wanting to be with me.
Here’s to your next 3 years, and just like the psychic said this is going to be a big year for you!!!
Unadater.blogspot.com
at thanksgiving this year my 15 year old cousin jenna blatantly said that she was going to get married before me.
i started to cry. ha!
kids don’t understand.
i feel ya sister! : )
Marriage, schmarriage. *I write, weeping, still single*
Congratulations on three years of stellar-quality blog writing – it’s quite a feat in the blogosphere!
Happy 3-year blogiversary! Reaching another year is always a milestone, even if you don’t realize it for a few days.
Marriage? Who needs marriage when there are so many hot, single guys roaming around these days?
Ha, I thought I could say that with a straight face.
This has a tendency to scare me, but quite honestly I think I’ll get married first. But let’s say my sister or brother do get married before me, I think it would bother me.
Don’t worry about it…marriage is overrated. Trust me when I tell you that.
One of my biggest fears is that I’ll be attending my younger brother’s wedding without a date (he’s 20). People love to tell me that 1)”don’t worry that won’t happen” or 2) “that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.” I beg to differ on both. I love reading you postings – it makes me feel less alone in my current sea of married friends!
congratulations on the anniversary.
(and nice use of the schoolhouse rock lyric – that’s one of my favorite ones)
Oh the places we’ve been in such a short time! (As Dr. Suess would say). We’ve covered the deep 18th century economics lesson hidden behind one of the most famous first lines in the English language: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife” from Jane Austen. Possibly worth the price of admission alone. We’ve covered the mathematical difficulties of facial recognition software and described in perhaps painful detail what horrors high ‘false positives’ might bring. We’ve bemoaned the fate of unworthies, both romantic & not, and that fact that patience and forbearance is seldom rewarding, or even blogworthy. And we even.occasionally get a glimpse into family life too. They do sound like more interesting characters than just the one sided presentation that is often their lot here. Of course they need to be developed a bit more. That would be my wish for the next anniversary.
But hey, I’m just a figment of imagination here too. But there’s Good News on marriage. No one knows it yet, just the Economists: [http://www.nber.org/digest/nov07/w12944.html] .
So SHHHH! Don’t let it get out! Cheers & Good Luck! ‘VJ’
Perhaps some women are too picky? (Granted I say that as an overweight guy with uncompromising tastes in women well above my due). But seriously.
I mean, I look around at work and places, and ALL the women have a guy, whereas not nearly as many guys have women. Most women I know (admittedly few) even have back up guys, to replace the guy they currently love if he strays off the ranch. You hear a woman say, “Yea we just broke up” and bang, two seconds later there is someone else. Or, “Yea I got into an argument with my boyfriend, and I was this guy Fred that I met the other week, and Fred was so understanding.” And you are thinking, “Who the hell is Fred and how is he jumping the queue. I’ve been friends with her waiting for this moment”.
I tend to feel like if you are a woman, single, and relatively attractive and not totally annoying, there IS some guy who wants you. He just may not be the exact specimen you are looking for. But he might in fact be a nice guy, or responsible, or capable of actually demonstrating love daily by action (as opposed to verbally and in the bedroom).
That guy who has been your “friend” for years. He wants you. The truth is that guys never have women as friends unless they are secretly attracted to the woman. They hope that eventually a light will go off and the woman will suddenly realize that they are ideal. Perhaps only 10% of the female friends in a guy’s life are women that they don’t want, or see in a sisterly/friend type of way.
Just look around. (Then too, women have boobs, which are awesome, and if you have them, or a pleasant face, or nice smile, or are fun to be around, how can you possibly not attract a man?) Women are delightful, when not being totally annoying.
Finn — I’m not sure where you work where all of the woman have boyfriends, but in the time it took for me to read your comment, I made a list of 10 women I know who are single. They’re in my age range, they are all very smart, they all have good jobs and their physical body types and heights range. And yes, you’re right, maybe some women are too picky. At the same time, I don’t think anyone should have to compromise on everything. You say “he may not be the exact specimen you are looking for.” And that is true. But just because a man likes a woman doesn’t mean she has to like him back and just because she doesn’t like him back doesn’t make her TERRIBLY PICKY and difficult. Some people you just aren’t attracted to. And I’m sorry, but I get a wee bit annoyed when I listen to guys complain that women are too picky while also sitting around judging every inch of our bodies. I’ll feel sorry about being picky about men if men agree to stop going to Hooters and strip clubs and to watching porn and then comparing us normal women to the highly sexualized, perfectly primped, surgically alerted women you seek out to gawk at, okay? (I know that’s a generalization, I know every man doesn’t do these things.)
I think it boils down to the fact that some men don’t like that women CAN be picky now. Because we can have success, make money and support ourselves better than women could years ago. We would like to have men around, we want you around and yes, we may even need you around, but it isn’t as if we can’t meet our own basic needs, which affords us more of an opportunity to be picky.
Also, and I’ve written about this before here: http://charmingbutsingle.com/2006/11/24/on-nice-guys/
… but I get really annoyed by the whole “nice guy waiting in the wings” thing. A woman doesn’t pick another guy over you because she’s evil and doesn’t see the nice guy staring her in the face or because she hates good guys and only wants to date jerks.
She picks the other guy because she KNOWS he likes her, probably because he made a move. Because he has enough self confidence to go for it. You can sit in the wings all you want and pine for a woman, but if you’re not willing to stand up and be a grown up and tell her, don’t get all annoyed with her when she goes for another guy. I find that a lot of men use the “women don’t like nice guys” reasoning as an excuse for why they can’t get a woman, when in reality the reason they never get the woman is because they never try. We’re not mind readers. TELL US. (And yes, I know it is very hard. I was in love with my best guy friend for years. But you know what? It only took me a few weeks to tell him. And yes, rejection sucked and I spent a long time pining away after him from the sidelines, but at least I’m not sitting here today thinking, “I wonder if he would have dated me?”
Wow. You put a lot of words and actions in the mouths and minds of men. (Women being evil for choosing nitwits, men being distracted by porn, men being worried about women having a choice in men).
The general critique is that 1) men feel that some women make the WRONG choices, not the fact that they choose and 2) there are by far more unattached single men than women.
So what would the explanation be if women are not in fact being too picky? Because, usually when these issues come up, the women doing the complaining usually say 1) we are smart 2) we are nice in terms of personality 3) we represent the average real woman, varying in size and attractiveness, but real and 4) we are not desperate, unusually ugly or fat (or that way without other compensating factors).
And I’ve no doubt what you say is true, though I would also offer that if you can pick 10 women with nobody, you can probably also pick about 20 men with nobody.
So what is the answer? Is it in fact that porn or unrealistic expectations by men leave a certain population of women without adequate choices? And given that you cannot actually replace a real woman with a porn star or a hooters girl, do we extend the logic to assume that all these distracted men are content to have nobody?
Then, if there is this population of single men with nobody, and single women with nobody, why are they not connecting?
What is the actual reason? Any realistic theories?
This comment will probably get lost in all of the others, but what the hell.
I’ve been married 15 years, I’m 46 years old with two kids. I love my wife.
But let me tell you something that no one really likes to talk about, and that is the fact that the act of making an ostensibly lifelong commitment to someone by becoming their spouse will inevitably alter the relationship you thought you had in profound ways.
In my experience, this phenomenon occurs primarily in women, although it isn’t confined to them alone. One of the unspoken understandings in a marriage is that a man gives up his naturally promiscuous nature and grants his wife sexual exclusivity in exchange for sexual commitment and access to his wife. And you know what? Women really don’t want to be sexually accessible. They want to be competed for and pursued. That simply doesn’t happen any more when you share the same bed night after night after night with the same man.
Now, mind you, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t get married. What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t look at it as some sort of natural evolution, or final stable condition or goal to be so fixated on. Marriage is JUST AS FULL of anxiety, frustration, chaos and uncertainty as any other aspect of life. In my opinion, you give up a lot of freedom for an uncertain and unpredictable level of companionship. Because for a lot of people, when a relationship is committed, there is a natural sense that you don’t have to work as hard at maintaining it anymore.
My advice: stop staring and squinting into your married future. Live now, in the moment that you have.
That’s pretty cute, kids do say the darndest things! Maybe it will help us to realize that things aren’t such a big deal? Or maybe we’ll just realize they’re dumb…