If you are single, never married.. do you feel it was by choice or circumstance?
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Anonymous
He'll come along. |
Anonymous
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Female
Circumstance for sure I always envisioned myself getting married and having kids but it just didn't happen for me. I never met "the one." I've had relationships but most were "meh." Some were toxic. There were a few men I might have married but they were unwilling to commit. I think I just had bad luck with timing. I'm in my 40s now and have given up on kids. Might still get married though, you never know. |
Anonymous
Timing has a lot more to do with it than you think. |
Anonymous
Such a cliched response! Multiple people have posted that the right person did never come along. What is your basis for saying he/she will? Have you watched too many Disney movies? |
Anonymous
34 is really pretty young in a big city |
Anonymous
If you look at the percentage of women who have ever married and subtract out women in: - lesbians who don't want to marry men - women in prison - women in convents - women in motorcycle gangs the odds of a reasonably attractive woman never getting married are extremely low. |
Anonymous
Neither Eternal Lack of suitable candidates |
Anonymous
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Female
46 By choice My very ethical, down-to-earth parents had a hot mess of a divorce when I was 13. My Dad remarried fast to a lady who was a complete nutter, my mom remarried 5 years later to a great guy. Dad remarried a 3rd time and got it right. Everyone's happy. But the emotional wreckage I watched was enough for me to say "no thanks". I finished grad school, worked for 4 years, made some money, and had a baby on my own. It wasn't easy, but I can confidently say my life has been no harder (and in some ways easier) than my married friends. Poster upthread who said this about married women nailed it:
This all day. I don't know if it's the traditional age at which marriage happens that allows this toxic dynamic to take hold, but it's striking. As a single professional mom, I have more free time than many of my married friends. Interestingly enough, last year I met a great guy, and we'll probably get married. The idea seems very different to me now. We both have children (he's been divorced for years) and our own assets, we're both independent. He keeps a clean house, does his own laundry, is a great cook. So am I. Neither of us is looking for a caretaker, but we're both looking for a lifetime connection. Some people would say "then why marry?". Honest answer, I'm ready, and we both want to. But I needed to feel the safety of building my career and being a mom first. Neither of those two things can be taken away from me, no matter what happens. So the idea of entering into a life partnership (yes, even with the financial ramifications) feels safer to me now. My retirement account is set, DD's 529 is set, no one's going to yank the rug out. And if they do? Well, we'll be fine. I think the best thing I ever did was reject the trap of "having" to marry at a certain age (and I could've done this easily), as well as the "well now it'll never happen" doomsday outlook as I got older. It takes a lot of faith in yourself as a woman; society is decidedly not ok with us making up on own minds on this issue. But that's my plan to tell DD: you get to decide. And either way, it can work out. |
Anonymous
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A lot of the never-marrieds are like me: Highly educated women. I am 55, 2 master's degrees, have my own small business. I bought my house at age 30. I adopted my kids at 39 and 42 once it looked like it wasn't going to happen with a partner. It scares the bejesus out of so many men to meet independent women. I can't count the number of men i dated in my 30s who were astounded I had purchased a home on my own at a relatively young age.
I don't *need* a husband but I would have liked to have one. 2 live-on relationships I expected to culminate in marriage did not. When the time came to make the commitment , they were not interested in having children. And the fact, is, I know so many women who have the same experience. Most of us birthed or adopt our children on our own when in our late 30s Mr. Right seemed more elusive than ever. Some settled for Mr. Meh because they desired children so much (my sister being one of them). |
Anonymous
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50
Woman African American Circumstance Single mother by choice Active interracial dater |
Anonymous
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44, female
Both? Certainly not for lack of trying, but the timing just never lined up right and the older I got, the less I saw most marriages as something to envy, especially during the early parenting years. I have a lot of friends who settled or are in very unbalanced relationships where as a PP noted above, the women get all of the added burden and not much benefit. Single mom by choice and happy parenting solo. I do still hope to get married though. I would love to meet someone later in life and spend my retirement years with them. |