Your Single Friends Need Love, Too!

 (From the Single Girl Perspective)

By Dana DeMercurio

It all starts with that infamous line: “I met someone.” Your best friend has captured the eye of some well-to-do insurance broker and slowly exits your life stage right.  You quickly find yourself without your partner in crime, not to mention single, unattached and childless.  You’re happy for her of course, but worried that you may have just lost a friend.

Days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, and before you know it, you’re the MOH (Maid of Honor) at your bestie’s wedding.  This is surely the death of your friendship, you’re thinking.  And sadly, you might be right.

Is any of this sounding familiar? Because it’s kinda the story of many single girls’ lives.  Including mine.

Granted, I still talk to most of my married girlfriends, but things are…different.  Conversations inevitably turn to their children’s potty-training exploits or worse – how things are not so great in the bedroom since little Jack decided he was going to sleep between his parents every night. And all I can help but think is wow, is this really the same person that I would get party with on the weekends and flash truckers with during long-haul road trips?

Ahh, I miss those days.

Sure, the topics of discussion often make me cringe on the inside, but while I quietly relish in being single, I also know that I’m probably being judged for it as well.

“So, when are you getting married?” “You want kids, don’t you?” “30 is going to be here before you know it!”

Yeah, ladies… I get it. My biological clock is ticking.  I don’t need the reminder.  My uterus reminds me on the monthly.

Instead of shaming your single friends into fitting into societal norms, why not encourage them to embrace their single life and enjoy it while they have the chance?  It’s important for married women to remember that single women may not have the same domestic ambitions, or perhaps simply lack motherly instincts and child-bearing aspirations.  FYI – none of that is wrong. It’s okay that we are owning our convictions and not being peer-pressured into marriage or motherhood.

So what am I getting at? It’s enough that many single girls are often inadvertently cold-shouldered from their own friends once a man and children come into the picture, but this is a gentle reminder that single girls still need the love of their married friends, without the guilt trips and single-lifestyle-shaming.  Trust me when I say we get it enough from our own mothers.

People change, people grow older, people mature.  Just because your single friends aren’t on the same life path as you doesn’t mean they are going about life in the wrong way.  Be mindful and sensitive to the fact that being single is not always a choice, and life is not a race (especially to the altar).

Embrace each other’s choices, spend time rebuilding your friendship, invest in the future of your friendship, reminiscence about your youth and always remember that a friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.