A Letter to the Married People

Dear Well-Meaning Married Friends,

I’m writing a letter today on behalf of all single people everywhere, past and present. The board of directors for the Singles Association of the World (SAW) got together and asked me to be the voice of the entire community to articulate an important message to you today.

First, we want to say that we love you. But there are some things we really need to bring to your attention. Because you don’t seem to realize what you’re doing. And sometimes what you’re doing is obnoxious. And we know that you don’t want to be obnoxious so we’re ready to be open with you and help you stop the behavior. So below, we discuss some of things that you could start working on.

We would like for you to please stop pitying us. We are all single for different reasons. Some of us are insanely more happy than some of you. Some of us are insanely more miserable than some of you.  Some of our happiness and some of our misery may be related to our relationship status, and some of it may be wholly separate from it. The point is, your life is not automatically better than ours simply because you’re married and we’re not. And we find it offensive when you act like you believe otherwise.

Some of you have started having children. We’re so happy for you! Unless they’re brats. In which case, we’re so sorry for your situation. And if you need an extra hand to slap one of them across the face at the grocery store, we’re seriously available to help. NOT THAT WE BELIEVE IN CHILD ABUSE OR ANYTHING. But, you know what we mean. We’re available. Call us.

What we’re trying to say is, we would still like to be a part of your lives, even though you have kids. We can like kids, even though many of us don’t have any. You can ask us to babysit. We won’t kill your children OR beat them, most likely. Some of us are probably crazy, so you shouldn't ask all of us to babysit. But just please make your reason for not asking us to babysit be something other than our lack of parenting experience. We can be a good presence in your children’s lives even though many of us are not parents. It’s ok to invite us to things and not limit your social circle to other people who have kids but are otherwise significantly less amazing than us. 

And even if you don’t have kids, we take it personally when you stop putting forth an effort to maintain the friendship as soon as you tie the knot. And don’t give us that, “ we've just been so busy!” business because we KNOW you haven’t been too busy to make new married friends. We've been watching what’s going on. We are getting so tired of having to emotionally prepare ourselves for the death of our friendships with you as soon as we find out that you are engaged. Why doesn't your relationship add a new friend to our social circle? Why must it only take away?

And please don’t give us that business about “it would be so much easier to hang out if you would just get married too!” That’s so insulting to us. We don’t like hearing that we alone are not great enough to motivate you to make our friendship a priority. And you will never hear us say that we could be better friends with you if you would just get divorced. Unless you’re married to some truly wretched, like Warren Jeffs, or Nancy Pelosi, or anyone from the cast of Glee, in which case, yes, we could be better friends with you if you would just get divorced.

And while we’re on the topic, you don’t need to feel the need to be responsible for our path to marriage. If you really really have someone that you want to set us up with and you have good reason to think we will be a match, then fine. Set us up. Some of us are feeling desperate some days. But your sole reason for setting us up better NOT be because we’re both tall. Or we both practice the same profession. Or the worst one: we’re both single. If this kind of match-making is indicative of the match-making process you went through for yourself, then we have much less respect for your relationship.

The last person you set us up with seriously made us wonder whether we have been over-valuing ourselves for all of these years. “THIS PERSON?!” we thought when we were halfway through dinner. “You thought we would be a good match for THIS PERSON?!” as we watched our date, whom we could smell from any area of the room, spit food out of their mouth while they talked relentlessly about their cats. Your belief that we could be happier with that person than on our own shows us that you have a serious misconception about our satisfaction level with life. Either that, or you seriously think less of us than we think of ourselves. Either way, there’s a big problem here.

We know that we do some annoying things, too. We know that sometimes we are inconsiderate of your need to get home at a decent hour. And sometimes we plan activities that we don’t realize are basically impossible for you to do with kids.

We are seriously so sorry. And we promise that we will stop doing those things if you will let us be a part of your lives. Because, and we’re not saying that it’s all your fault, unless you let us be a part of your lives, it’s kind of hard for us to understand what your needs are. So, yeah. We guess that we are basically saying it’s all your fault.

Please write back soon.

Love,

All of the single people who have ever lived in the entire world since the beginning of time

~It Just Gets Stranger