Tri­cia St John

Many women are now choos­ing to re­main sin­gle rather than co­ex­ist in a re­la­tion­ship that has ups and downs but may al­so not “last longer than the Red House fire”, to coin a phrase.

Many in­de­pen­dent women pre­fer to have vis­it­ing re­la­tion­ships, but for those of us who don’t, where are the men we should meet and mar­ry? Sin­gle women face many chal­lenges, one be­ing the age-old ques­tion: When are you get­ting mar­ried?

Mar­ry who?

There is of­ten con­stant scruti­ny and judge­ment from fam­i­ly and friends, some­times even strangers. As a sin­gle woman, I know how emo­tion­al­ly dis­tress­ing it is to be sub­ject­ed to ques­tion­ing and or crit­i­cism re­gard­ing our mar­i­tal sta­tus.

Ever lis­tened to how some mar­ried women talk about their mar­riages? Their hus­bands? Who, fre­quent­ly, they de­scribe as big ba­bies they are ob­lig­at­ed to feed and pick up af­ter.

I have mar­ried friends who pro­fess to be hap­py and share hap­py pics, but when you lis­ten to them talk, they are ex­haust­ed from car­ing for men who don’t help around the house, don’t join them in prayer, don’t show a unit­ed front for the sake of the chil­dren and don’t con­sid­er their needs.

I have no de­sire to walk around be­hind any grown man clean­ing up af­ter him. I have no de­sire to come home from an ex­haust­ing day and be ex­pect­ed to start din­ner from scratch even though my hus­band/part­ner got home be­fore I did and plant­ed him­self in front of the tele­vi­sion, phone in hand. I don’t want to ask any­one to help me pre­pare a meal they have to par­take in. I ex­pect they would know what is ex­pect­ed. I used to be­lieve that ro­man­tic re­la­tion­ships were es­sen­tial for hap­pi­ness and well-be­ing but that was then … now, not so much. Af­ter the ex­pe­ri­ences I’ve had it seems safer, cer­tain­ly a more sane choice not to fo­cus en­tire­ly on meet­ing Prince Charm­ing and be­ing swept off my feet.

Prince Charm­ing, as we know him, is a fairy tale fig­ure who comes to the res­cue of a damsel in dis­tress and must en­gage in a quest to lib­er­ate her from an evil spell. Now I’m no damsel, but I’m quite will­ing to ar­gue and prove that my bills are hold­ing me cap­tive, and I need some se­ri­ous lib­er­a­tion. I’ll even agree that I’m un­der a spell where­by I have to shell out a huge per­cent­age of my pen­nies every minute of every month. The is­sue with that is, I’m too in­de­pen­dent to sit and wait to be res­cued. My Prince Charm­ing will un­doubt­ed­ly end up frus­trat­ed with me as I would thwart his sole pur­pose.

Be­ing sin­gle does not have to be a dif­fi­cult time. It may some­times be lone­ly but dif­fi­cult is not a giv­en. One’s mind­set is every­thing. Time can be spent with friends. The re­al­i­ty is that life and com­mit­ted re­la­tion­ships, mar­riage, and the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of those things of­ten keep us ladies away from each oth­er. Away from din­ner dates. Spa dates. Movie nights. Re­tail ther­a­py.

The trick is to be­come com­fort­able enough with your­self so that when you’re alone it doesn’t ap­pear to be a bad thing. First off, date your­self. It’s ac­tu­al­ly more fun than it sounds.

Women seem to shy away from go­ing out alone, but there is ab­solute­ly noth­ing wrong with get­ting dressed and tak­ing your­self out to all the places that you would al­so vis­it with your girl­friends. Prac­tise self-talk. Re­mind your­self that you are good enough, that you can ac­com­plish the goals you set, and that you are phe­nom­e­nal even amid your sin­gle­ness. Pin­point neg­a­tive thoughts that you may be hav­ing about your sin­gle sta­tus, and in­stead, fo­cus on re­plac­ing them with pos­i­tive thoughts about your­self, your goals or your achieve­ments. Pos­i­tive think­ing helps with stress man­age­ment and can im­prove health. The most life-chang­ing ef­fect of pos­i­tive think­ing has to do with the law of at­trac­tion. This is where the idea that what you fo­cus on, you at­tract orig­i­nat­ed.

Af­ter my last re­la­tion­ship end­ed I cried so much I thought my tear ducts would go dry. I kept beat­ing my­self up be­cause af­ter be­ing alone for such an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od, I just felt like I’d wast­ed my time and dis­turbed my own peace for some­one who had no idea what he re­al­ly want­ed from a re­la­tion­ship. The truth is that dat­ing may be chal­leng­ing due to past life ex­pe­ri­ences that shape a per­son’s ex­pec­ta­tions.

Be­ing sin­gle can be tough. It can be lone­ly some­times. If we are fresh out of a failed re­la­tion­ship or mar­riage, we may have de­press­ing thoughts about ‘not be­ing good enough’ and there­fore, be­ing the rea­son the re­la­tion­ship failed. What we ac­tu­al­ly have, while sin­gle, is a chance for deep­er friend­ships, self-re­liance, self-aware­ness, and a chance to de­vel­op hob­bies as well as a more ma­ture un­der­stand­ing of love.

Tri­cia St John is an au­thor, mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­er and do­mes­tic vi­o­lence sur­vivor.