Marriage Over 30

I’m home again in Macomb, where dreams do to come true (please note the sarcasm) and I ended up on the WIU campus today as I waited for my mom to get done with a meeting. The meeting and the circumstances behind it are funny stories by themselves, but they aren’t mine to tell so I’ll stay quiet.

As I’m sitting on the couch in the lounge, however, I hear one of the student workers behind the desk, a young sorority girl by the sound of her, say, “If I weren’t married by, like, 30, I don’t know what I’d do! I mean, like, all my friends would be married and that would be so weird. I would feel like my life was over!”

You wish I was making this up. I wish I was making this up. Unfortunately, I wrote down what she said because I knew I was going to want to repeat it.

The really sad thing is I don’t not understand why she was saying this. When I was 21 the idea that I might be unmarried by 30 seemed foreign and impossible to me. I don’t think I was ever stupid enough to think my life would be over without it, but marriage was so inevitable I never envisioned my life without it. That’s what little girls do. As I sit on the porch of 30 however, some of my friends are inside the house, I have a much different outlook on things. Honestly I don’t know if I will ever get married and that idea both thrills and disappoints me.

On the one hand I really, really, REALLY like being single. It’s almost ridiculous how much I like being single. I like moving where I want to move when I want to move there. I like going on trips and staying out without anyone to worry about me. I like being as selfish or not as my mood moves me. I don’t like to cuddle (particularly) I don’t like to talk about my feelings and I hate being emotionally genuine. I’m also, on occasion, slightly curmudgeonly.

But when I look at my new nephew I think about how nice it would be to have kids. When I go to family reunions and funerals I become acutely aware of how nice it would be not to be alone. When I do feel like cuddling (approximately 3 times a year) I become incredibly sad for the empty spot on the couch next to me.

But what gets me about the young lady today, and most everyone’s thoughts about marriage in general, is the belief--sometimes verbalized, sometimes silent--that a person’s life is incomplete without marriage. The belief that if, especially as a woman, you don’t get married it’s because you’ve done something wrong. If you aren’t married by 30 then obviously you aren’t pretty enough, feminine enough, or family oriented enough. Some people consciously believe this, but everyone--at least that I’ve ever talked to--subconsciously purports this if they don’t obviously believe it. That--that pressure, disappointment, and judgment--makes me want to get married more sometimes then any actual urges towards marriage I have.

The truly humorous part about all of this is that I rarely feel this pressure from my happily married friends. Perhaps when we’re older things will change, or perhaps none of them actually believe I won’t get married, but there seems to be a bit of “the grass is greener” going on when we hang out. I’m ambivalent towards marriage in general and they are realistic about it’s wonders and stresses. That means they sometimes wish they were single, and I sometimes wish I was married, but our interactions are based on the wisdom that no path is by default more fulfilling or happy-making than another.

And there is that point again. The idea that by default marriage makes you happy. You are automatically happier if you’re married. You’re automatically validated as a human, as an adult, as a human being. If you aren’t married by 30 then you’re an old maid, unwanted, used goods. I get irritated just thinking about it. My mom was appalled when I told her what the young girl had said. “That anyone in this day and age could believe that,” were her words. But it isn’t shocking to me because I once thought those words even if I never said them. And, as I approach 30 while I’m not in any particular hurry to get married, I feel a very real weight judging me for not doing so.

That young girl probably will get married before 30, but I’d still rather be me than her. She’s going to get married because she can’t imagine any other option. Let’s hope she doesn’t settle for just anyone. And let’s hope for all the little girls growing up today, that someone explains that, single or in a couple, no one can make you happy but yourself.

And that’s a good thing.