Singlehood

Being single has its perks and I can list them down to prove it but I will only sound defensive. Of course it has its disadvantages and sometimes it’s really annoying. My single friends have complained how sick and tired they've become hearing married people talked about their lives. I could definitely relate to this sentiment. We single people always hear stories of such kind from our married friends. We become affected and could only wish for some sensitivity on the part of the married.

This is how i feel before. But somehow, I have managed to turn something distressing into something productive. This is an article I read from Karenina Yaptinchay and it inspires me to make the most out of my single life.....

When my friends share with me their pains and joys, I share with them back my own pains and joys. If I hear them complain about marriage, I also complain about singlehood. When they tell me about their happy marriage, I also tell them about my happy single life. Tit for tat. I’m not about to sit there and be passive about my life experiences. After all, I do have a life, albeit a single one. It just so happens that their lives are different than mine. It doesn’t necessarily mean that theirs is better, just different.

By doing this, I play my part in educating other people about my own life. And the benefits are two-fold.

By telling them about my heartbreaks and occasional loneliness, they have begun to understand the challenges and the difficulty I face in my life as a single person. They have come to know that being single could just be as tremendous a feat as being married, with or without children.

By telling them about how I cope and occasionally succeed in overcoming those challenges, they learn how to recognize that there could also be light at the end of a single person’s tunnel. Contrary to popular perception, single people could have lives that could be just as fulfilling as married life.

I admit that many of my friends are amazed at how I am sometimes able to get over the singlehood issues and continually try my best to turn depressing moments into fruitful experiences.

It could be depressing not having a permanent partner to go see the world with. But instead of sulking and stressing over as to why this partner is still missing, I travel by myself. I get to see new interesting places and meet new friends. Sure it could be scary and sometimes plainly sad to always be on my own.

Many single friends still find it difficult to travel on their own. Quite understandable. It’s sad to not being able to share experiences with someone special, but then if we let this get in the way, we would never get to see or do anything anymore. What if your singlehood is more permanent than temporary? Then you just might regret putting off for later what you could have done yesterday.

As much as possible, I try hard to climb out of the rut because if I don’t, this beautiful life just might pass me by. What I do is just take a lot of pictures and write about my experiences, so I could share them with all my family and friends. Not only am I able to meet my need to share, I also provide the people around me with sufficient information about the life outside their own.

As a result, many of my married friends appreciate that I make each moment count. In fact, many of them tell me I am so fortunate to have remained single and spare from the difficulty of being married with children. It is, however, not to say that they hate their lives. It just means they wouldn’t mind switching place with me given the opportunities that single people could enjoy nowadays. The thing is I really don’t know if I want to switch with them.

One married friend confessed that if her husband did not propose marriage, she would probably still be single and wouldn’t mind at all. Another friend, after giving birth to three children, warned me not to get married. She said it means giving up everything you have. Although it could be a good thing, it is undoubtedly very difficult to do.

I am not here to say that getting married or staying single is better than the other. I just want to advise those single people who have just had it up to here hearing about marriage stories to share your dilemmas and celebrations.

Rather than resent what you hear, start sharing what you feel about your singlehood. Not everyone gets to be single for as long as you have, so tell the story. Tell people what goes on in your life. Your life is just as interesting as anybody else’s. In some cases, even more interesting.

It’s not about competing as to who has the better life. It’s all about making the married understand an alternative life, one that they can only hear about and not experience, at least not while they are married. I believe everyone could earn the right to be happily single. Hey, if people could be happily married, we could also be happily unmarried.

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