Good afternoon, gentle readers.
I just got in from the movies, where I watched the new Melissa McCarthy comedy, Spy.
I really wanted to like this movie.
I did.
However, not long after starting, the film just touched one of my trigger buttons. Not a trauma-trigger or anything like that, but my I-Can’t-Believe-They’re-Still-Doing-This-Shit trigger.
After a less than stellar dinner date with a guy, Melissa McCarthy’s character is having drinks with Miranda Hart. McCarthy’s character bemoans her life situation, complaining about her career path and how she’s single and forty and then I just sort of lost track of the movie behind the veil of red rage that descended over my vision.
Why?
Because I’m single and in my forties and I love my fucking life.
Honestly!
Hollywood, buy a goddamn clue already! Hell. Not just Hollywood, but the whole goddamned world needs to buy a clue!
Being a single adult does not automatically make someone miserable. Or even slightly sad.
That dream we’re spoon-feed as children and teenagers, that a marriage and kids with dogs and the white picket fence does not automatically equate happiness. Don’t believe me? Look around you. Take inventory of your friends and family. How many of them are married? How many of them are genuinely happy with their life situation?
It seems to me that I hear married people bemoan their situation all the time. Men in particular. I know too many guys who have said that if they had the option of doing it all over again they would NOT get married.
I worked with a gentleman once who had a string of ex-wives behind him. After the second marriage didn’t work out, I wanted to ask him why he kept going at it? Was he looking for that magic someone? His soul-mate? Was he just a hopeless romantic? Or maybe he just didn’t think it was okay for him to be single.
Because that’s what the world tries to tell us.
That if you’re an adult and you’re single and you’re not making the effort to get married or have children then you have somehow failed. That there is something wrong with you.
It pisses me off.
The other day I was speaking to an acquaintance on the phone. He called me up and we started talking about his brother, who is around my age. My friend, Jason, told me that his brother was working himself into a lather because he was single and unmarried and if he didn’t have children then what sort of legacy would he leave?
Then Jason, who is married with children, just casually said, "You must be feeling the same way."
Ladies and gentlemen, the red veil descended and I kind of exploded.
"Why the hell would I feel like your brother? Your brother is weak. The only reason he wants to get married is to have children to carry on his ‘legacy’ which isn’t a fucking reason to have children in the first place!"
The conversation kind of went downhill from there and I may or may not have accidentally ended a marriage. However, that’s a story for another post.
This post, I guess, is a plea to the world: stop bullying single people. A lot of us are single by choice. We like our solitude. We like not having to come home and deal with irrate spouses or crying children or yappy little rat-dogs that our significant other thinks is wonderful. We genuinely like our lives.
Stop trying to make us like you. What makes you happy, what fulfills you, probably won’t work for everybody else in the world. If you’re in a committed relationship and you’re happy, I’m happy for you. Be happy for us.
Stop trying to fix up your single friends.
Parents, stop saying stuff like, "It would be wonderful if you got married, so your nephews could have some first cousins to play with."
Hollywood, stop telling everyone that singleness equals misery.
It doesn’t.
Really.
And for those single people out there who are not happy being single? Take heart. You’ve got Hollywood on your side.
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