HT to my mother, who was eavesdropping on the bus:
“Here you are with three kids, while I’m scrounging around for dates.”
Personally, I don’t see the connection. You can have three kids and still be scrounging around for dates (via divorce) or have no kids and not be dating (married, childless), or various other imaginative combinations. Moreover, while children are loads of fun, they’re also a massive pain, so while they’re something I would love to have, I’m not kvetching about not having them yet. And scrounging for dates? Well, when I remember how miserable I feel after a string of bad dates, I think I’d rather have none than lousy ones.
My verdict: this woman needs to get over herself.
Bad for Shidduchim 
🙂
most people need to get over themselves to some degree most of the time, regardless of any factor at all.
I concur. Saying/thinking stuff like this only wrecks your own feelings and drags down the other person who was perhaps trying to be supportive by listening.
This girl is totally justified. She might be a bit bitter and resentful but she has every right to be. Maybe this girl doesn’t think children are “a massive pain” and she wishes she was already a mother of a nice family like her friend. She doesn’t need to get over herself.
She does need to get over herself. Everyone needs to get over themselves. There’s too much self-pity in this world. But it goes both ways. Just the other day my friend told me, “It’s not fair. I daven every day for parnassah and I’m struggling. You make a fortune and only have to support yourself.” My response, “You’re married with three kids, wanna trade spots?”
Now obviously I would never had said this before he complained. I only said this to make him feel better about his financial state. But I also said it as a point; no one wants to trade spots with anyone else. Just lead your life and deal with it.
Read a great article in the WSJ today that had this quote;
“Sometimes you just have to play in pain.”
-Gary Carter, Met’s catcher
I was not eavesdropping. I was merely sitting right adjacent to this young lady and couldn’t help but hear her conversation. Warning to all cell phone users: if you don’t want your conversation to heard by a bus load of people, wait until you reach the quiet of your home.
“If problems fell as packages from the sky, you’d run to get yours.”
I hate that expression: “she needs to get over herself”. This is a person in pain. Feel her pain and daven for her. And get over yourself.
“the grass always looks greener on the other side.”
Sometimes you hear about your friends serious boyfriends/engagements/weddings and wish that could be you. Other times you’ll be a road trip with friends or going someplace different every week for shabbos and be really happy your single.
it’s never productive to want to be someone else, because you never will. and i’m learning that at every stage in life there exists at least one reason to daven. if you’re euphoric and can’t think of one, daven for someone else. then reassess, because something’s up. when you change stages, it’s time to restructure and figure out what you need. it’s best to be happy at exactly the stage you’re at, because it’s not always up to you when it’s over.
I think it’s a matter of personality, rather than stage of life. Plenty of my friends who spent time complaining about being single and were mired in self pity, now complain about housekeeping, husbands, and kids (no correlation to the age they married, either, some married fairly young and others were older).
But there are plenty of people who keep their pain to themselves. You just don’t notice them, because they are quietly going about their lives.
Alice: I agree that one should be sympathetic to someone in pain. However, the term “get over oneself” is used when a person cannot see beyond themselves to consider others. In this case, Miss is making Mrs. feel guilty for having children. This can only lead to the kind of stupid sensitivity that I hate, like hiding one’s children at home when singles are around, not mentioning them even in passing, and basically tip-toeing around this Miss’s huge sense of victimization.
from one eavesdropped phone call you decide she has a huge sense of victimization? you need to get over yourself and your judgmental attitude. sounds like a massive projection on your part.
True, like LK said you really don’t know the context of the conversation–maybe it was her married friend doing most of the complaining and she was just responding to that.
Come to think of it, I’ve heard way more complaining and self-pity from married friends than single ones. (Like the friend who was complaining to me how hard it was to keep her house clean when she had two kids under the age of two and finished off with “so I never want to hear that people have it harder than me!” to which I responded, “What about somebody w/ four or five kids?” at which point I think she realized how laughable she sounded.) Maybe this girl was just trying to provide her married friend with a similar perspective, you really can’t tell from a short snippet of a one-sided conversation.
Is it considered misbehaving to post identifying information on this blog?
Probably, Anon. Why?