How & Why I Am Happily Unmarried
“You aren’t married?” People ask this with no effort to look at my bare ring finger discreetly. Quick to assure me The Right One will come along, they confirm that I’m too pretty/smart/sweet to be alone forever. Any man would be lucky to have me.
Presumably well-intended but always unsolicited, I resent that my life feels open to unrestricted scrutiny. I must remind myself often: unmarried thirty-somethings fascinate people. I know I have nothing to justify, but I also know the power of sharing our stories; listening to, and learning from, others helps us better understand, and ultimately accept, one another.
So here is (most of) my story as it pertains to dating, relationships, and marriage. It explains how it is possible to remain unwed despite seeming like whatever marriage-material is — and, what’s more, why it could even be preferable that way.
1999, age 15, Perry Hall, MD
During the internet era of adolescents inexplicably circulating surveys, my friends and I would devote hours to reading and answering each one we opened. Certain sections asked that we disclose our preferences: peanut butter or jelly? Thanksgiving or Christmas? Crest or Colgate? Others asked us to make predictions: which friend is most likely to become famous? Move away and never look back? Get married and have kids?
I never understood why, but friend after friend (female and male, close and casual) identified me as the first to find a spouse and start a family. This both mystified and pleased me; certainly, I expected to achieve both of these milestones one day, but not necessarily before anyone else. My friends’ prediction felt like high praise. Instantly, I started yearning to prove them right.
2003, age 19, St. Mary’s City, MD
At the beginning of my sophomore year of college, My First True Love ended our 14-month relationship. With the standard naiveté of an enamored young adult, I had believed he would be my first, last, and only, love. It took someone pointing out, “The term ‘first love’ exists for a reason,” before I reluctantly began to hope I would one day find love again.
Mercifully, several months after this heartbreak, single life actually became fun. I enjoyed not feeling betrothed to a long-distance boyfriend, and, with my best friend, enthusiastically speculated about our futures. We both expected to be married, and possibly even starting our own families, by 25. It no longer pained me that I wouldn’t co-create this life with My First True Love; I just cared that it happened. Assuming everything went according to plan, it would only be a handful of years before I could make my high school friends’ conjecture come true.
2006, age 23, London, England
On the morning of my 23rd birthday, I woke up next to International Boyfriend, a man who, the day before, had flown across the ocean for me. For the three years prior to this moment, he had been the Dawson to my Joey; in addition to our seemingly intense, rare connection, we also had abysmal timing. We were never simultaneously willing, or available, to date each other. By the time our hearts finally aligned, we had only three more weeks together on the same continent; I was about to move to the UK for graduate school, and he, a few months later, to southeast Asia for the Peace Corps. For the next three years, half of the planet would separate us, which made this birthday visit particularly special.
Of course the odds were against us, but our love was fierce, and our commitment steadfast. Dating across cultures and time zones would feel impossible at times, and would delay my plans of being married by 25, but International Boyfriend was worth it.
2008, age 24, Enugu, Nigeria
Only half a year after my 23rd birthday, and a mere few months into his Peace Corps assignment, International Boyfriend realized he couldn’t handle our outrageously-long-distance relationship. Almost a year afterwards, I moved to Nigeria, where I served as a full-time volunteer myself. By this point, I had mostly worked through the devastation of our break-up. We both believed in the vitality of our connection, and felt confident that once we finally lived on the same continent again, we would re-couple.
Meanwhile, I allowed myself casual relationships; in the UK, I had dated The British Rebound, and in the Giant of Africa, An Artisan’s Son. Both times, our union had a pre-determined expiration date: my departure from that country. Enjoying these partnerships while they lasted, I made clear that we would have no future. That, and the marriage I hadn’t ceased imagining, was reserved for International Boyfriend.
2012, age 28, London, England, and Enugu, Nigeria
I called the trip My Great Return; for the first time since living in either, I wandered around England and Nigeria for a month. Upon reuniting with friends, they’d ask, “Whatever happened with International Boyfriend?”
I’d tell them about Attracted Opposite, the man I’d started seeing shortly after returning from Nigeria in 2008. As with my global flings, I explained my love for International Boyfriend, with whom I’d reunite when he came home in six months. If Attracted Opposite and I dated in the meantime was his call — then I accidentally fell in love with him, and we’d dated seriously since.
Despite our seemingly incompatible differences, Attracted Opposite and I were intentionally building a future. Our individual triumphs and trials became joint. We created a home together, and eased into each other’s families. For years, it felt as though a marriage was gestating.
But My Great Return reminded me of who I once was, and made me question what I truly wanted. The life Attracted Opposite and I had been assembling no longer felt like it fit. I longed to be married, but not to the wrong person.
2014, age 31, Baltimore, MD
Shortly following my 30th birthday, Attracted Opposite and I broke up — inevitably, but also painstakingly. My life became what I never expected it to be: not only was I the sole single one among my high school (or college, or almost any) friends, I’d moved in with strangers, and started online dating. Even worse than falling behind, I was going backward.
But, similarly to the aftermath of my break-up with My First True Love, I gradually found satisfaction in being single. I had forgotten the thrill of making all of my decisions for myself; although daunting at times, each choice was also empowering. Finally, I realized how much I had been limiting my own options by insisting I become someone’s wife, especially by a certain age. For the first time in my life, marriage downgraded from An Absolute Must to An Appealing Possibility.
2019, age 35, Baltimore, MD
Attracted Opposite and I have now spent almost as much time apart as we did together. As the years have passed, I have seen with increasingly clarity how much I defined my worth by our relationship. For so long, I felt unworthy of time, attention, or accolades from anyone — acquaintances and loved ones alike — if I wasn’t in a serious partnership. Marriage was an indicator of successful adulthood; a single status, therefore, broadcasted a litany of insurmountable failings.
But things are different now. Over the last few years, I have both resented and relished in my lifestyle, though increasingly do much more of the latter. I recognize, at last, that marriage has no bearing on my personal significance. Now, rather than seeing marriage as an achievement, I understand it to be a decision — based on, at best, speculation. It’s a commitment couples make hoping for the best, and vowing to put in effort to sustain their union. I know now that people who make this decision are not any more honorable than those who don’t. Being married does not imply a superior series of choices, or more alluring attributes, over people who are unmarried.
I wish I had known this at 19, or 24, or 30. I can only imagine how different my story would be if I had allowed myself to focus on my own experiences as they unfolded, rather than incessantly hope to yoke my life to someone else’s. However, I’d rather understand this belatedly than never. Now that I have stopped perceiving marriage as an accomplishment, it’s easier to steel myself against the concern, or even pity, people express when they discover I’m no one’s wife. It helps me remain confident in my choices to remain true to what I want for myself, not what the multi-billion-dollar wedding industry does.
One of these choices, for instance, is that I no longer indiscriminately divulge my relationship status to people. If I want someone to know, I tell them; otherwise, I frame my existence by my passions and pursuits, which do not fluctuate with the presence or absence of a relationship. This insistence on privacy, coupled with my indifference toward marriage, startle people, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. On the contrary, I hope that makes my story memorable. Then, maybe the next time they meet someone else who is unmarried, they won’t automatically assume that unmarried means unhappy.
In fact, it could mean just the opposite.
