I just ran across a link on Facebook to a Huffington Post article called “I’m 45, Single and Childless: No, There’s Nothing ‘Wrong’ With Me.”
“Here we go,” I thought. “Another older, single woman getting overly defensive.” It all reminds me of when I was in my 20s, and I’d hear older (which at that point meant anything older than 30) single women saying “Yes I’m single. And I love it!” It all struck me as a little Seinfeld-esque. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
But of course I read the article.
The author was talking about a recent date, and how the whole thing devolved into an interview about what was “wrong” with her because she had never been married. Which I admit, sounded a little familiar. I have faced that line of questioning many, many times:
“Were you just too into your career to bother getting married?” (No.)
“Did you ever get close to getting married?” (Depends on what “close” means.)
Or the straightforward classic: “Why aren’t you married?”
Unfortunately, “I never found the right person” is apparently not a satisfactory answer.
Then I would get the comments: “You’re super picky then, right?”
Or “Obviously you intimidate men.”
Or my personal favorite, “Two billion Catholics in the world and you couldn’t find one to marry?” (Yes, because I’ve met every one of them, and they are all single, middle-aged men eligible to marry in the Church. And yet not one of them was good enough for my picky, picky self.)
I’ve never been a divorced person, so I don’t know what they go through on dates. Maybe they get the same grilling about why they couldn’t stay married, and what’s “wrong” with them that they caused their marriages to end.
Either way it’s annoying, and I sympathize with the author and with anyone who is unfairly labeled because of their marital (or non-marital) status. Our lives and circumstances are all individual and unique, and there are probably as many individual reasons why someone isn’t married as there are people who aren’t married.
But where I differ with our Huffington author is on the “there’s nothing wrong with me” part. Not that there is necessarily something wrong with her. I don’t even know her. But somebody who says “there is nothing wrong with me” right there in a headline is someone I am inclined to suspect.
Look, I resent it when people I don’t know go looking to find a “defective” category for me just because I’m not married. I don’t think I fit the stereotype of the picky or scorned or career-obsessed woman that they are trying to pin to me. But that doesn’t mean that nothing is wrong with me. There is plenty wrong with me. I’m human. I’m a sinner. I have flaws I know about, and probably a lot more flaws I don’t know about. I don’t know the extent of how the things that are wrong with me have contributed to my current unmarried state. But whatever they are, I am not about to write an article, or a headline, or even a scribble note that says that nothing is wrong with me.
It reminds me of the great Catholic author, who was asked “What’s wrong with the world.” His response? “I am.”
I get that singles are apt to get defensive in a world that constantly questions how we landed where we are. But I don’t think we do ourselves any favors when we go to the other extreme—announcing to the world how fabulous and perfect and flawless we are.
Because it makes us seem egotistical. And delusional.
And then people say “Ah, so that’s why she’s not married.”
