There seems to be a real misconception that it is only singles who are envious of their married friends. Those married friends have it real easy now. The craziness is all about finding a spouse and that is over for those married friends. Really? It might just surprise you how many of your married friends envy you your being single.
Envy me? Are they nuts! What's to envy? I'm single! Yes, you are. And for many you live at home, your parents' homes. And the mortgage gets paid by your parents. And it is your parents that have to deal with the plumber and the gas man and the electric company when something goes wrong. And food somehow magically appears in the refridgerator and on the table. And holidays are a given--you are at your own parents' table. And you have no in-laws, people who are suddenly your second set of parents and you are perfectly happy with your first set thank you. And you might have to stay up late because of something you want to do, but you can sleep in late if you want to as well. And your money, the money you may earn, goes towards things that you have decided to buy, in the colors and styles and amounts you want and when you want. And you aren't intimately acquainted with a toilet bowl and morning sickness, a morning sickness that lasts all day. You still get to use the bathroom all by yourself without someone's wandering in and asking "Mommy/Daddy, what are you doing?" And when you have an exam in school your mother says "Go study, I'll take care of doing______." And you get to decide where you will go and when you will go there and with whom you will go. Singles talk about trips to Italy: married people talk about trips to Walmart.
Even if you are sharing an apartment with others you are still your own boss. If you don't like your roommates either they or you can move. No one looks at a bunch of roommates and comments on their housekeeping skills. No one blames a roommate if the other roommate doesn't look put together right. No roommate comes home and tells another roommate "Geesh, couldn't you at least be dressed when I come home and have on some makeup?" And no roommate tells another roommate " I'm hungry. What's for dinner." No one feels like cooking? There's always Dougies and a zillion other restaurants. Don't feel like cleaning up your room? So what?
Married people don't like to talk about "single envy" but it is there nonetheless. You envy your married friends and they envy you as well. There are some advantages to being single--singles never seem to see those advantages, but their married friends do.
Yes indeed, the grass is always greener on the other side.
4 comments:
At first I wanted to deny that any of this was true but yeah, it is true. I wouldn't trade being married for being single but there are times I really do envy my single friends. I look at their have to do lists and I look at mine and theirs is shorter or sometimes more interesting then mine is. Maybe that is why the first year or so married girls sort of lose track of their single friends and then try to reconnect after that. They want to be around some of the things they don't have any more and it takes a little while before you get to that point.
Funny but when a few friends and me were planning a trip to Europe our parents were hysterical and tried to keep us from going because what would people say. One of my married friends was the one who told us to go. And when I came back she was the one who wanted to hear about every minute of the trip. For her a vacation is spending a shabbos with her sister in Lakewood. I guess I never thought about what she can't do and just about the things that she can.
You mean there is someone who believes that the envy doesn't go both ways?
You kidding? I so love being single. I don't half take advantage of it, but at least I enjoy its essence. Whenever I want to hang out with married friends we end up going out for groceries together. When I hang out with single friends we enjoy a day on the town. It's very telling.
Post a Comment