still single....
 

To all those singles out there, how do you "deal" with what seems like all your friends and family getting married or having babies?

I ask because for me it's been really tough. Most of my friends are now married. Some have kids, some don't. My younger brother just celebrated 6 years of marriage and has a 1 year old son.

I hide my jealously really, really, really well but on the inside it is eating me apart.

I'm jealous of my friends and family members but anyone else who is younger than me and engaged or married or has a family while I don't have any of those.

When I was 28 I told myself "if I become 34-35 and I'm still not married I'll have a kid on my own because I want to be a mother and I shouldn't put that dream on hold". Yet, I'll be 35 in March and I won't be becoming a mother right now. Not that I don't want to, I just am not "settled" enough in life right now to bring a child into it.

I'm truly scared that I will never find "mr. right", never get married and never have children.

Does anyone else feel this way? How do you deal?

I have a friend who is a relationship counselor/coach. She's in Newport Beach but works over the phone as well. She's expensive in a way only Californians would think normal, but she's very good. If you want information, PM me.

Hugs and positive energy to you. If those things are what you want** then I hope you attain them. If you feel as though you need to seek inner happiness before seeking happiness through a life partner or a child then I recommend talking to someone about your feelings. I hope you do not feel lonely or ashamed.

:) And please remember you DO have a family. You said so yourself. Having your own life partner and/or child will be an addition to your already existent family (including your friends and sorority sisters) who love you very much. :) Please remember this to buffer some of your anxiety, jealousy, and loneliness.

** It probably goes without saying these are things that you want rather than things that you believe are expected of you. Neither marriage nor children are requirements. They also aren't promises for a happy and fulfilled life.

I just wanted to highlight this. Getting married is societally expected of women…not so much of men. Marriage can lead to more misery than you can imagine. If you don't meet the "man of your dreams", work on making yourself happy. Do the things in life that you've always wanted to do. Honestly, when you get married, there are so many things that you have to give up, compromise or change for that other person that now is the time to really splurge and do everything that you possibly want to do before you might be saddled with children. Even if and when you get married, only you can truly make yourself happy. That other person will inevitably let you down even in the most wonderful of relationships. Enjoy your life. If someone comes along that can make it better…grab on to him and don't let go, but please don't marry just for the sake of being married. I fear you'd regret it. My $0.02 after 11 years of marriage and many sacrifices.

Thank you, AOII Angel. I don't want to take attention from the original purpose of this thread but the sadness in ASUADPi's post makes me feel this needs to be said a trillion times. This is also the foundation for my response to the article Munchkin03 posted in the D&R Random thread. We need to know what makes us happy, know what we want and why we want it. Try to stay away from "everyone else is doing it" and "I'm a certain age" types of justifications. I'm not saying ASUADPi is only going with the flow but I feel like such sadness is often a result of a combination of personal goals and aspirations and social pressures to subscribe to the life script.

I agree. There are lots of people, men and women, in this position who feel the same way. This also happens to people with the child issue. There is a great life to be had as a single or a married person with or without children. Those things, inherently don't make you happy. They can add or detract from your life. The secret of life is making yourself happy first.

I feel like any time I spend a lot of time with married friends (which isn't that often, because our lifestyles are so different now), I see the downsides of married life, and even a bit of jealousy on their parts that I am single and free. So, I recommend doing something awesome that married people/parents can't do, like a last-minute trip overseas or eating nachos in bed and then farting for half an hour, then go hang out with your married friends and talk about it, and watch how jealous they get.

Also, I've not read this book, but I heard it reviewed on a podcast and it's very intriguing:

http://www.amazon.com/Going-Solo-Ext.../dp/0143122770

I am sure this kind of thing has gotten worse w Facebook et al. All i can say is it's not always what it seems. One of my sisters was in town this weekend and is in the middle of a nasty divorce. If that isn't bad enough, she said that in 15 years of marriage she was never happy. NEVER. That just stunned me. All I can say is don't be jealous because you never know what the other person's life is like.

Yep and people tend to be challenged and asked to explain why they opt out of the life script. Instead, people need to think seriously and critically about why they opt in. There are people who marry and/or have children only to find marriage and/or children aren't for them. They are absolutely miserable. Marriage is more reversible than children.

We aren't trying to talk people out of marriage and/or children. We just want people to see beyond the rose colored glasses and promises of instant and eternal happiness. Thank God for the spouses and parents who are honest about how their lives are nothing like they had dreamed.

A dear friend of mine was in a very similar situation as you about a decade ago. She met a man who she believed to be the one and was married about a year later. Married life for her has gone from disappointment that began two days after her wedding to anger to misery to where she just says she feels dead inside. They had a child within a year of being married, and she has said to me several times that were it not for the child she would have divorced him a long time ago. He's not a bad man; he's not abusive nor does he have a drinking or drug problem. If anything, I'd diagnose him as being pathologically self-centered. So, my vibrant, interesting, funny friend has become someone who thinks she just has to endure life. She is jealous of every single friend she has, and even told me one time that she was jealous of a friend who was getting a divorce.

I tell you her story because I agree with what everyone else has said. Enjoy your life now with what you have. It is hard being the only single one. I got married later also, and I remember being so jealous I couldn't see straight when younger people were getting married and having babies. There are worse things than being single, trust me.

DubaiSis, DrPhil, AOII Angel, DeltaBetaBaby, 33girl and amIblue?, thank you for your comments. Thank you for the support.

DrPhil, thank you for your words. You are very, very right. I was seeing a therapist but when I received my last paycheck from DOD, I also lost my insurance. I just got a job in December. I just can't afford to see her anymore, as much as I would LOVE to! I am on an antidepressant though. It does help.

I am doing what I want to do. I'm going back to school to complete my prerequisite courses to get into nursing school. My family has been super supportive of this goal.

I guess another part of me, when it comes to having a child on my own, is that (kind of embarrassing to admit this online but here goes....) I'm still a virgin. I can't say I want to end up in the Guinness Book of World Records for the "first virgin birth".

No, I'm not waiting for marriage, I grew up in the era of AIDS and mass teen pregnancy and STD's thrown in your face. I am just not one of those people who can have sex on the first date. Plus, I really don't want to get a disease of some kind. With all that being said, I'd really like to have sex before I decide to have myself impregnated.

I guess my fear is that the older I get the harder it will get for me to get pregnant and have kids and even find someone. Yes, I don't need a man to make my dreams come true, but I'm a total romantic at heart. I wear my heart on my sleeve.

Have you talked to her about your situation since you got a new job? Many mental health professionals see patients on a sliding scale if they don't have insurance. Often, it's worth it to them to not have to deal with the third-party, and/or they take on a few lower-paying patients for charitable (or whatever you want to call it) reasons. When I went back to school (i.e. stopped working full-time), my therapist and I worked something out where I pay a fraction of what she'd normally charge.

ASUADPi, thank you for your honesty. If you feel that you know what you want out of life, I just recommend you maintain someone to speak with and you keep checking with yourself every so often to ensure you know what YOU (only you) want and are patient. Today the pastor said something that is a general life lesson regardless of the faith base: we need to work toward what we want to attain and we also need to be patient and stand still when appropriate.

You will accomplish your personal goals and personal happiness. After you are firm in yourself you can consider whether you want to have a child and how to go about it in a manner you consider realistic and non-shaming. I also recommend weighing pros and cons for all of this to make sure you believe the benefit is worth the costs/investment.

Thanks for this thread, good luck to you, and as Public Enemy said "don't believe the hype". :)

Jen, hugs and positive energy to you, as well.

Never having children and/or never getting married doesn't mean you will be old and lonely. The average person in a retirement facility or who dies home alone has children. I strongly recommend not having children based on a promise for what may happen 18+ years down the road. That probability is as low and unfair as forcing a child to be her parent's bestfriend because the parent is friendless and lonely. Children don't sign contracts and promises. While legal spouses technically sign contracts, that doesn't mean the union will last through your elderly years.

Don't worry about being the oldest virgin in the world. I practice in the women's health field so I see women on a fairly reasonable basis that have never had sex. It happens, and your story is not that different than mine regarding reasons for not having sex until later in life. You've made responsible, healthy decisions for you. Sometimes it's hard to stop trying to judge your own life and decisions based on societal standards. Since you are a romantic, I hope the right man for you does come along, but that may be at a time and place that you don't expect and in a package you aren't prepared for. Realizing that the person you meet may be divorced, widowed, older or much younger than you, may be something you have to come to terms with. Be open to new experiences. You never know where you may meet new people who may introduce you to other new people. But whatever you do, don't believe the romance novels.