6 Painful Secrets Single People Know (That Newly Married People Don't)
Everything reminds us that we're alone.
Jacob Lund | Canva Sometimes being single is great. Sometimes I just want to shout, "You don't get it!" to this couples-centric world. Sometimes I love being single. I don't have to answer anyone. I don't have to fight with someone about something that I want to do. I also don't have to worry about whether someone is cheating on me or going through the trouble of going through a divorce.
And yet, I'm still lonely. I don't have anyone to have super annoying pet names with. I don't have anyone to share my life with or to show someone all the things I love about the world. I don't feel real if I'm not being loved.
Here are 6 painful secrets single people know, that newly married people don't:
1. Being single means you're no one's number-one priority
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That means you will be passed over for the family night, baseball practice, and dance recitals. Your needs and feelings will be set aside in favor of husbands and wives and girlfriends and boyfriends and little people with large demands.
What you don't know is how isolating that is. To not be anyone's first choice. Research from The National Library of Medicine shows how loneliness and isolation can happen to people who have been single for a long time.
2. Sometimes 'being included' only amplifies the loneliness
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Sitting down to dinner with your family, being invited to family night and dance recitals and baseball practice only amplifies the loneliness. It only highlights what I don't have. What I'm missing out on? What I don't have the option to have.
3. When you tell single people how hard marriage is, it feels insensitive
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You tell me how unrewarding it can be, how hard parenting can be, how it's not all it's cracked up to be, that I'm lucky to not have to answer to anyone ... it makes me hate you just a little bit. You don't know that you're undermining my feelings. By saying those things you're saying I don't have the right to feel the way I feel.
4. Single people often crave having a family of their own
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You don't know that I love coming to family night, baseball practice, and dance recitals. You should be putting your family first. I don't have a family of my own to put first.
5. Single people are never a 'unit'
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No amount of friendship, companionship, and family can make me part of a pair — a unit. It can't move me up on the priority list. It won't erase my loneliness or isolation. I will never have someone to come home to, to be considered the other half of someone.
6. Single people sometimes feel unlovable
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Yeah, I've had some awful dates that at least turned out to be funny stories to tell at dinners, and none of the guys I've gone out with have been stellar gentlemen, but I don't know how many more cringe-y first dates I have in me.
One study from The Rosie Project found that women will kiss an average of 15 men, have two disastrous relationships, and have their hearts broken before they will find the one. I'm an outlier.
I'm starting to think that being married and starting a family just isn't in the cards for me, even though I want it so badly.
Shireen Dadkhah is a freelance writer, photographer, and blogger who writes about depression and her relationship with it.