You’re Never Too Old

Lots of singles worry about getting too old to marry. But their panic is unwarranted. It’s never too late to get married, as this Kentucky couple demonstrates. Thanks Relarela for the good laugh.

 

Reality Check

Thank you Ezzie for sending me this reality check on yesterday’s link. Emasculated, video-game-playing men who do housework and termagant crones with cats and PhDs, do not celebrate yet. It seems yesterday’s writer may have manipulated some data.

Link to Hope (or Just Another Study)

HT to MF#7 (& Ezzie) who sent me this article reassuring educated women that they still have a shot at getting married, as long as they don’t insist on a guy more educated than themselves.  According to this chart, men want love, education, and good looks more than ever before. The article emphasizes the education part, of course.

Today I am a (Wo)Man

Everyone chuckles at the bar mitzvah boy’s announcement. Not just because he’s so short that he has to stand on tip-toes to see out of his hat. But because we all know that, bar mitzvah or not, there’s no big black line that you step across to become a mature adult. It happens gradually, and not always at a regular pace.

That was what I was thinking about while reading some of the comments to last Monday’s post (“Are People Pitying Me?“). Far be it from me to say that people who get married at 19 are miserable and stuck in foreclosed identities (though I know there are some). The post was about me, and how I believe the extra time has made me more than ever ready for marriage. However, I know there are many women who didn’t need that extra time, and I don’t begrudge them their marriages.

Some of us are just late bloomers.

I’ve always known I was slow.

In 5th grade we learned about Helen Keller and our teacher asked us to write a composition about what we’d do if we had three days left to see. I didn’t have to think too hard about that one. I was in 5th grade, and had hardly seen a world that I’d read about extensively. I picked some of the sights I thought I shouldn’t die without seeing and wrote a little itinerary for my three days (allowing that my parents would have to  escort me).

The teacher asked who wanted to read theirs aloud, and of course the class goody-two-shoes (G2S) raised her hand. Then she recited an essay all about how she would spend the three days memorizing the facial features of her family. As she read, a smattering of students around the classroom surreptitiously picked their pens back up and oh-so-nonchalantly added another paragraph to their paper.

I was among them.

It would be fair to say that I resented her and her dumb composition (and who needs three days to remember what their parents look like anyway?). She had the right answer – always had the right answer. A right answer that showed me up – not for having the wrong answer, but for lacking… lacking something, some instinct that led her to the right answer. What exactly, I couldn’t say. But it wasn’t something you could learn from a book, or look up in an encyclopedia, or even understand by being told about it. Either you got it or you didn’t. And I didn’t. And that bothered me.

My best friend (BF), on the other hand, didn’t understand why I was so bothered. She’d written about going skiing and hadn’t felt the slightest compulsion to amend her story.

G2S was about a decade ahead of me in emotional development. I should mention that she was in the first wave of engagements and marriages. BF also got married, but a few years later. I wonder when she finally understood G2S’s composition, and if it had been sudden or gradual, early or late, if she’d even noticed at all. I wonder about all the other surreptitious paragraph-adders in the class.

But most of all, I wonder about what else there is that I might be missing. And when I’ll finally learn what they are.

Thought Question: If You Could, Would You?

Yesterday, someone linked to this Atlantic article by a single woman with an IVF baby. These women have their kid, but… something is missing. Indeed, they kinda miss having a guy around the house.

Just goes to show – some people are never satisfied.

But seriously. The message of the article is “Don’t be like us!” (Because, you know, ever since we first started playing with our Barbies we threw out the Ken as unnecessary and played ‘single mom with IVF baby’) “Settle for Mr. Not-so-perfect!”

Which I find kinda offensive. Because she’s insinuating that most women have guys lined up and proposing every night but we turn them away for offenses like wearing pale yellow button downs or enjoying football. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been at risk for a single proposal. Ever. Not like those heroines in romances like North and South who get a proposal every chapter and you’re supposed to weep for their isolation and loneliness. As far as I know, there isn’t a single guy in the universe at this moment who wants to marry me (I know, I know, who can blame ’em?). I bet most of you can say that too.

But following this article, by the time women are willing to settle nobody wants to marry them. She doesn’t address guys, but I imagine it’s similar, except that if the guy is old enough and rich enough, some bimbo will be willing to take the dive.

So here’s the question: At what age would you consider yourself beyond hope? And, if you reached that age, would you be willing to ‘settle’ for many of the things you’re hanging out for right now? If, at that age, you met someone else who was willing to settle and who basically fits this description from the article:

I would say even if he’s not the love of your life, make sure he’s someone you respect intellectually, makes you laugh, appreciates you … there are plenty of these men in the older, overweight, and bald category (which they all eventually become anyway).

would you be willing to enter an amicable but dispassionate marriage with them?