On Singleness, Part Three

In September, I’m writing about singleness. You can read Part One here, and Part Two here. I feel bold and empowered because this blog is anonymous! It’s nice, natch.

 

Sometimes I wonder if I am single because I am too content. I am incredibly happy, at home. I have overcome all of the angsty behavior of youth when I fretted about responsibility and independence, and these days I am perfectly comfortable as a professional woman who lives with her parents to honor their desire to protect her. I am obedient when I need to be, healthfully willing to respectfully disagree and come to mature compromises on everything else, good friends with all of my family members, and just generally very happy. I work with a group of more than sixty men and I am the only single girl under 40 in my company, I am routinely given attention that far exceeds a normal girl’s usual need for male affirmation. My coworkers are primarily in middle age and although they would’ve never chosen me in youth (and indeed selected one or more wives that are nothing like me) they find now that I seem to represent everything by which they are now enchanted. They adore me, compliment me, and (most importantly for my emotional equilibrium) consult me seriously and routinely about everything from finances to fashion. It ends up that I spend more time with them than any other human being in their world, in most cases including their wives and children and coworkers, and by perfecting techniques that I learned at The Lakes, I am the loveliest secretary I can be: I listen, and laugh with a certain wondering giggle that suggest that I have never heard anything quite so entertaining as what they just said. I love my job, and if you were to ask me on any given day, I have likely satisfied my possible quota of compliments needed in a 24-hour period. (I should note that I conscientiously honor their wives by my demeanor, speech, intentions, and appearances. I am utterly devoid of suggestiveness, create no awkwardness by behaving in a sexually aggressive way, dress carefully to be attractive without being irresistibly sexy, show no cleavage as a rule, and pursue friendships with their wives, who often tell me that they are so thankful to know that when their husbands go to work, they are safe with me.)

It is incredible and flattering, and they make me feel lovely and ladylike and even (when I walk into a room and they all abruptly stop discussing it) sexy. They make it easy to be caught up in the artificial comfort that comes from having all of the luxuries of affection without any of the responsibilities. When I get home this, added to my happiness at home, makes it easy to be apathetic about change.

 

And then, I am also the type of person who always thinks the worst. I am cheerful, happy, funny, and ladylike, but I am far from an optimist, and while everybody goes on becoming progressively more hopeful because they cannot help themselves, I grow more and more settled into the deep conviction that things will turn out however they are destined to (usually poorly) and that I must be joyful despite unavoidable disappointment. I don’t think that this is necessarily a bad thing: I have spent so much time expecting the worst that it feels like I am always genuinely surprised when nice things come along. This may be one of those times, because of course anything can happen, but I truly have both gone so long believing, and have had so great reason to do so, that no one will ever come along for me, that the matter feels settled entirely. I pray boldly – for the specific things that I want (YOU MUST! READ! THIS!), for a good man to come along, but I don’t feel I am entitled to one and I certainly do not feel, as though some girls do, that they are very likely one heartbeat away from the start of some sprawling, gorgeous story that will, in its far-reaching happiness, either explain entirely the past, or else completely eradicate it with overwhelming joy. I am not that sunny girl who believes that a Prince Charming will just come along, and luckily so: if I were that girl, I’d just be a 25-year-old with worn dreams and uninspired promises. I feel like I am the opposite: robust, willing, content, and happy. So very happy.

 

A few months ago, my parents realized that there were no boys left to be considered. The conversation went something like this:

Mom: Jane, what about that nice boy Jake you used to know?

Me: Oh, he’s married now.

Mom: Married? What?

Me: Yes, as married as a boy can possibly be. A ring, too. Titanium, I believe.

Mom: Well, what about Charles?

Me: Girlfriend, long term. Public Displays of Affection in city parks.

Mom: What about Joseph?

Me: Two kids. A mini-van. He knows how to make empenadas now, too.

Mom: And Matthew?

Me: Live-in girlfriend. Curly hair. Road trips.

 

And on this went, down what I realized was my mother’s Y2K-esque list of post-apocalyptic boy options, to be brought out when everybody else had excused themselves from the pool of possibilities for one reason or another. I heard her telling my father, afterwards, that, “Jane wasn’t just BEING JANE when she told us that there was no one left. THERE IS LITERALLY NO ONE LEFT, HONEY.” She was alarmed, and what resulted was an expected flurry of sudden and frantic strategization for getting me to meet somebody. Everyone (LITERALLY EVERYONE, HONEY) had already moved from the “maybe” column to the “no” column for me long ago, but I remembered the overwhelming confusion I had experienced when they did, in realizing that in order to  marry somebody, I have to first meet him. So I gave them time, as I once gave myself, time to grieve. But my parents are (unlike me) perpetual and unconquerable optimists, and their planning and alarm led them to asking me, very quickly, if they thought there was anything I should be doing to make myself more available. I was glad to listen because they were right to interrogate and question me me: my current style of living has no possibility for new introductions. I go to work early; I get off late; I work out; I come home; I go to bed; and I repeat it all. On weekends, I fix up my investment house; and I attend a darling little church with fewer than a hundred members and among them not one possibility for marriage.

 

It’s not that I am against possibilities, because Lord knows I am not, and let me say that in spite of my deep resignation to being unmarryable forever and ever, if I knew what to do I would be doing it. But I don’t want to do the usual things like take a college class or join a dating site, and what is left? The thing is, I’ve worked really hard during my single years. I’ve taken time to be thoughtful, lovely, responsible, diligent, forward-thinking, and I like to think that I can expect someone who has been at least similarly self-motivated. I am twenty five years old, and I have a good job, I own a home, and have $45k in the bank saved from my earnings. I don’t need a college student, however dreamy, who is figuring his life out experimentally. I’m already the possessor of an old and matured soul: I don’t want to marry somebody who needs a mentor or, worse, a benefactor. And the internet dating scene is equally suspicious, because I do not necessarily want someone to be so familiar with the computer real that he is likely to be profoundly comfortable spilling his soul on a screen. I work and live with a father and coworkers who are diligent and strong, and seem to rely on me for all of their primary electronic communications. I like that very much. (Besides, no one on any internet dating site is ever as tall as me, and I do not want to feel like an Amazonian Freak of Nature if I have to bend down to hold someone’s hand or, worse, make out with him. I’ve never heard of anyone on a dating site being taller than my height of 5’8”—have you? Thought so. Just keeping it real here, folks.)

But what else is there?

 

When my parents called a family counsel convened to discuss the issue indirectly, dad said that maybe when fishing we ought to go where the fish were, and dear momma said that perhaps we ought to consult the One who made the fish, and my brother said that maybe we should do that for our literal fish suppers too as long as we were just being resigned to everything, and so on, until the group was talking in allegorical circles without consulting me. I finally interrupted and said, “I am doing the best I know how! If I knew where to fish, I would be fishing, and since I do not, have asked the fish and the fisherman and the one who made the fish and all that, and that is certainly all anybody can ask.”

 

That shut them up, but I still feel as though I do not have the foggiest idea what I am doing.