23 April, 2008...10:34 am
… under our clothes our bodies are covered in scales.
South of the Mason-Dixon line it’s de rigueur to get hitched before the age of 25. Past that and you have officially crossed into Old Maid territory, from which there is no return but matrimony. Even if you are rescued from Old Maid-hood by your Prince Charming, you still carry the stain of “once having been unmarried at the disgraceful age of 25.”
If you think I’m being overly dramatic, you should have been at the ladies’ benefit luncheon I attended a couple of months ago. I, and several of my girl friends, were sitting around a table with several very sweet ladies. One of my friends was engaged (and now married), but as for the rest of them, they were all past the Cinderella age–some by nearly ten years (shudder). These ladies payed great interest to my betrothed friend, asking how her wedding plans were going, when she met her intended, etc. When she blushingly confessed that she felt a little out of her depth since she was getting married so young (21), one of the ladies immediately protested, “No but that’s a good thing! You don’t want to end up an old maid like I was when I got married.” She leaned across her plate of salad. “Twenty-six,” she whispered.
I felt my girlfriends on either side of me (one 25, the other 34) start shifting in their seats uncomfortably. My engaged girlfriend looked at us with a pained expression. “That doesn’t sound so bad … You had time to have fun as a single girl and then you got married and had a family, right? That sounds nice.” “Oh, but it wasn’t,” the lady argued. “It was miserable. I was never invited to dinner, and I never went out. Thank heavens I met a nice man at church or I might have been like that forever.”
And that’s not just the mindset of the over sixty crowd, either. In fact, I was told last week by an aquaintance (who is in no danger of ever stumbling across this blog entry) that there was something wrong with my relationship because boyfriend hasn’t proposed. I fall in a grey area, because I’m in a committed dating relationship, though I’m perilously close to my expiration date. I can’t be chastised for being an old maid, so apparently, since boyfriend and I have been dating for more than 18 months (this is also a strict deadline) and we’re not engaged something is not right. Perhaps he’s afraid of commitment and I’m not woman enough to get him to commit. Perhaps I’m just subversive and opposed to the martimonial state, God forbid. I’ve heard it all.
Why? I don’t know. But the fact that I like being single-but-committed just doesn’t fly. “Do you think you can have it all?” the aforementioned acquaintance asked. “Because you can’t. It doesn’t work like that. You need to settle down and get married or your going to have a hard, hard marriage. In fact, I think that since you guys have been dating for so long, you probably won’t get married. It’s probably not right and that’s what’s holding you back.”
That criticism cut me deep and made me cry, a lot. And then I got mad. I have plenty of friends who chose to get married young, and I think that’s great. But I’m choosing to wait and I think that’s great too–even if I’m the only one who thinks so. In an episode of Sex and the City, the 30-something Carrie narrates the divide between marrieds and singles in your thirties. Bridget Jones tells a crowd of married friends that unmarried 30-something girls can’t get a man because they have scales underneath their clothes. Being female, 30, and unwed is a common interest point in entertainment. But what about me? Where do I fall? Into a big, dark hole, apparently.
To complicate matters, I’m not living with boyfriend (and we’re not going to pre-nuptially) so he’s not by definition my “partner”–he’s just “boyfriend,” even though that label doesn’t seem to do justice to the seriousness with which we view our relationship. We both have some traditional ideas about marriage, family, and dating, shaped by our upbringings and relationships with God, but we’re not going to get married just because it’s the next thing to do or we can’t share an apartment. Even after years of dating, we’re still excited just to be together.
I wish someone would write a hilarious but insightful memoir-turned-movie about the struggles that younger gals who wait to get married go through, and the criticism we face. That’s assuming I’m not the only person out there that’s going through this (I hope, I hope, I hope). We’re not unromantic, or commitment-phobics, we just want things to be right. Who was this person to tell me I can’t have it all? Because she took the plunge at 22 she’s an authority? Right. As Allison blogged, we get wiser with age. My aquaintance is 22– not really old enough to consider herself an authority on wedded bliss … especially considering how many dishes she’s thrown at her husband. 
2 Comments
23 April, 2008 at 2:29 pm
I’m going to guess that the relationship advice was completely unsolicited, and assert that the relationship advice was absolutely ridiculous.
I think Bridget Jones used the scale tale too
You’re right on both counts, and thanks.
24 April, 2008 at 3:15 am
You’re not alone!!! I’ve been with my “boyfriend” for nearly 3 and a half years. We don’t live together, never have (except if you count sharing hotel rooms for two months while travelling, but it was max 4 nights-in-a-row so it was hardly ’settling down’
and probably won’t until we get married. And we’re ’serious’. We’ve talking about our children’s religion (I’m Buddhist, he’s Catholic), we’re looking into buying investment property together, we holiday with each other’s families.
Do NOT be ashamed and remember that NOBODY can define your relationship except for the two of you. All outside judgments are uninformed and irrelevant.
And I think on account of the dish throwing factor, you-win.
Empowering advice and helpful encouragement–thanks!
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