Post-wedding analysis

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 06 November 2006 12:57:21

Now that I've done the comedy side of last Saturday's adventures, comes the serious stuff. There usually comes a point, when I'm at or just back from a wedding, where I get a bit maudlin and woe-is-me about my perpetual singleness. Now, before you all run away, I'll tell you that's NOT what is going to happen here. Because this time, it's different. (But I'll warn you now, this is going to take a while, so either make yourself comfortable, come back when you have ten minutes to spare, or feel free to ignore me.)

Generally speaking, I have two fairly strong groups of mates. One is the people I grew up with in my old village, who I used to be in youth groups with, and the other is the large selection of people I've got to know since I moved to my current stomping ground three years ago. Nearly everyone from the first group is now married, some with kids, and since I moved here most people in the second group have married up, or at least met someone who they look likely to marry at some point in the next few years. It doesn't help, too, that most of my friends here are a couple of years younger than me, which leaves me with a certain on-the-shelf feeling at times.

But (as they say in Friends) here's the thing - recently, I've started to feel a lot more peace about being single. This hasn't been easy for me, having never had a serious relationship, and not having had even an unserious relationship since I was at school. But that whole sense of missing out on something has gone - and I think that's because God's been doing some interesting stuff with me. I still don't know exactly what He's doing (I usually don't work it out 'til much later, and then go, "Aaaah, so THAT'S what that was all about!") but I feel fine with it. And also, three conversations with friends of mine at the wedding on Saturday have helped me to reevaluate it all.

First off, I was speaking to my friend D (of D & S drink voucher fame), who is a whole six years younger than me, and got married in the summer. As he wisely pointed out, one thing I tend to overlook in my woe-is-me routine, is that my friends aren't necessarily an accurate cross-section of society. So D & S are married at 22 - that actually makes them, and not me, the exception to the rule. And while most of my other married friends are a bit more in the mid-20s bracket, that still doesn't mean that the mid-20s is the normal, regular point, at which people get married. So I shouldn't beat myself up over being single at 28, as it would appear that in the rest of the world, I'm normal and my friends are all weirdoes. (I hope that last bit makes a good Google fishing line...)

Next, I was chatting with another friend, A, who has been married to D for just over a year, and has had the additional strain of moving to a different country shortly after the wedding. We were discussing how we cope with problems and stresses in life, and she was saying that she used to find it really helpful writing a journal, but now she hardly ever writes in it anymore because she just finds that by talking to D about her day, she's externally processed it all. As I'm going through quite tough times on that score at the moment, I told A that I thought it was much easier for people to deal with that stuff when they have a Significant Other to help them bear the load. But A was really encouraging, and explained that it wasn't always that easy, and that just because I was single, it didn't mean I was left on my own - look how many friends I had around me who've been so supportive through my tough stuff of late. And you know what? She was quite right.

Finally, in the car on the way back I was discussing all this stuff with my good buddy J, who is getting married next spring. I mentioned the stuff D and A had been saying to me earlier, and how I'd realised that part of my feeling alone was the fact that, while not all the single people I'd known had paired up, quite a few of them had moved away, which left me feeling like the one left behind with no one to talk this stuff through with. But, as I told J, I'd also realised that I still have plenty of time - after all, I'm younger than my dad was when he married my mum. And J's response was something I hadn't realised - yes, lots of people had moved on, but at the moment there seems to be a bit of growth going on at our church, with loads of new people starting to turn up - and maybe in a few months' time, the situation could have swung round so that singletons were outnumbering the married folks, or at least there would be more singles for me to relate to (and as I pointed out with a knowing smirk, some of them might be nice young ladies :D ).

So where does all this leave me now? Well, to be honest, this is the first time for a long time that I've returned from a wedding and not been thinking, "Oh, when's it my turn?" in a slightly sulky tone of voice. Yes, I'll still have those awkward conversations where my mum says, "I wish you'd meet a nice girl and settle down" and I think, "that makes two of us", but it doesn't feel like I'm weird or abnormal for not having done that yet. And above all else, I know that God loves me to bits despite my many faults, that He knows what I need better than I do, and I truly believe that, when the time is right, He's going to give me someone amazing. And I just need to learn to be patient, which I'm not yet (but that's one of the faults in spite of which He still loves me).

Sorry for the mammoth post here, but it's really helped me to have somewhere to articulate all this. You can go and get a drink now; you deserve it for making it to the end.