Why is it that married couples think they are the only ones who have their life together whereas single people are all screwed up and new "improvement?" Why does it seem like their probing eyes have you all sized up.........reducing you to a failure that needs correction? Why does it seem that they freely bestow their unsolicited opinions about your life even though they never call you to ask how you are doing. Why is it that they make frequent erroneous assumptions about you because they haven't even bothered to gather the facts? Why is it that they feel it is their mission in life to fix all single people by pointing out their flaws? And doesn't it seem that married people are given more social respect than single people?
Tell me now, is it one in four marriages that end in divorce or one in two? I believe it is one in two. Wow! Those are pretty grim statistics. It seems to me that we have a classic case of hypocrisy. All people, whether married or single, are skilled in the art of chicanery by glossing over their own gross flaws all the while magnifying another person's flaws. I believe married people think they are above reproach because, well, they are "selfless" and "sacrificial" whereas single people are not, meanwhile I have met many selfish and might I add, arrogant, married people all the while seeing many selfless acts of single people.
I have noticed this through the years as I have seen my single friends get married one by one and how quickly their attitude has changed towards me. In fact I can recollect quite vividly one friend of mine named Eric. I met Eric when I was about twenty five and he and I were both single and we became friends. I loved spending time with Eric as he and I were both Christians and shared the same beliefs. As our relationship progressed Eric desired the relationship to go further.......in other words, he asked me to marry him. Now at that time marriage was the furthest thing from my mind so I wasn't even thinking about it but he was and I had to respectfully decline because in all sincerity, I was not in love with Eric. I loved him as a brother, but I was not in love with him and I did not think it was fair to
either one of us to make a decision that was not right. Eric deserved a woman who would adore him.....he was a good man, unlike a lot of other men I have met through the years......but I could not be that woman for him.
Now that was one of the wisest decision I had ever made because what I discovered shortly after that was that Eric got married to a girl from Singapore. Eric was looking for "any" wife, not someone special. This is what I believe most people do.......they feel the pressure of singleness, the cultural stigma, especially in the church. They feel the pressure of loneliness. The feel the pressure of age and especially for woman, biological clocks. All this internal and external pressure compels them to make a "convenient" decision that they think is right only to find that their marriage ends in divorce. How sad. When I visited Eric and his new wife in Florida, I noticed how his attitude towards me changed. I now needed their "expert" advice and reasonable opinions otherwise I would be lost and hopeless without them. In other words, I needed to get my life together as if somehow it was all screwed up and marriage would solve that.
Wisdom would tell you to make a decision that is prudent, not one based on convenience or
external/internal pressures. When I think about my life and my singleness even at forty two, I am glad that I had enough sense to make a lucid choice which demonstrated maturity. I could have accepted Eric's proposal to please everyone or to look more "proper" but my singleness has now come with a stigma of subversion as though I were submitting to some subversive ideology. How sad.
Married people also tend to assume they are more "mature" than their single counterparts. This is why they need to constantly share their unsolicited opinions about you and what needs corrected in your life. They love to put the spotlight on areas of improvement in your life all the while they fail to see their own arrogance in the mirror as they look in it every morning. I have seen many immature married people. This is why their marriage ended in divorce......typically due to selfishness and immaturity. And yet I have seen single people act more mature and give more and are less arrogant than married people.
It is amazing how a divorce personally can suddenly make you more approving of divorce in others. Is it because you have been humbled by life's circumstances and so now, you are less judgmental? Unfortunately, I have seen in churches divorced people treated differently and yet if the pastor is divorced, now suddenly it is acceptable? Why is that? Are certain people given a pass whereas others are not? As they say....."what's good for the goose, is good for the gander". Hypocrisy is evidenced
by ones' behavior towards another.
When and if I marry, I will only marry for love and not convenience or pressure. And you do not have to be a genius to know when someone loves you. By golly, even a child knows when they are genuinely loved.
Elizabeth Bennet is my favorite heroine. She looked at Mr. Darcy and said, "I can not marry you. Your selfish disdain for the feelings of others forbid me to marry you." She refused to marry a man who looked down on her and did not treat her as his equal. She would have died a spinster (a tragic social faux pas) before she married a man who did not genuinely love her. Very smart woman indeed and reasonably opinionated I might add!