What’s a girl to do? The career demands long hours and work into the night. The husband just wants a cooked meal on the table. Daily reporter Amy Remeikis takes a light-hearted look at finding the right balance between work and family as a young wife. Miserable in marriage or sadly single?
| Amy Remeikis
Is it better to be single and miserable or attached and miserable?
I suppose it is one of those “the grass is always greener” sort of questions, but still one worth asking.
It’s one that has had me thinking since talking recently with two girlfriends.
One, let’s call her T, is unhappily married.
The other, M, is unhappily single.
T was in love with the idea of love and sort of rushed into marriage with a head full of pretty dresses, flowers and diamonds.
She and her partner had been having problems long before R popped the question in what I privately thought was a last-ditch attempt to save their relationship.
They had been together practically forever and it was either break up or get married.
They chose matrimony and while they had the wedding plans to speak of, they were as happy as pigs in mud.
It didn’t matter that he wanted kids and she didn’t, that she wanted to move overseas and he wanted to build a house. or that prior to getting down on bended knee he had been getting down and dirty with a blonde who definitely wasn’t T.
Because as T had pointed out in a drunken state two weeks before her wedding, it was better than being alone, wasn’t it?
Turns out that no, it wasn’t.
But T is so desperately afraid of being alone that she is doing the relationship equivalent of holding her hands over her ears and squeezing her eyes closed while singing “la la la la” at the top of her lungs to drown out the doubts.
Oh, and she is also trying for a baby, because that will be SURRREEE to fix it.
M, on the other hand, has been single for the last two years and is sick of it.
She has a great job, great friends, great life but is sick and tired of going home alone to her great unit after a great night out with her great clients/friends/colleagues.
M is beautiful, but like so many of us, flawed, and for most of her 20s refused to accept anything that she saw as less than perfection in a partner.
She travelled and built up her business. She had whirlwind, doomed-to-fail but wonderfully dramatic love affairs, and loved proclaiming loud and clear how much she enjoyed her singleness.
Now in her mid-30s, the same age as T, she has decided she is ready to settle down and build her family.
Which would be great, except for the fact that according to her, there are no single men in the greater Sydney area.
Possibly Australia.
Maybe even the world.
So unless NASA discovers a planet full of eligible single men (with a good income – she is not a charity, after all), she is now doomed to grow old all alone except for her 20 cats which she swears will probably feast on her dead body because she won’t have anyone to check on her when she finally departs this miserable single existence.
Looking at their lives on paper, M wishes she had what T desperately wishes she had – the courage to leave and vice versa.
So which is better?
Each of these girls has her own cross to bear and, of course, their situations are a lot more complicated then what I’ve explained here.
But it’s like they are looking at each other from their own patch of grass across a river, thinking that the other holds the secret to happiness.
The truth is there is no proper answer.
But hearing the desperation in T’s voice is heartbreaking.
The girl hasn’t been single since she was 13 and has no idea who she is away from her train-wreck relationship.
She might be miserable, but according to her, she is R’s wife and that makes her somebody.
But according to me, she is an idiot.
Seriously.
M might be regretting choices she has made along the way, but at least she knows who she is.
She might have been too picky in the past, but she has her whole future ahead of her and is walking into it with her emotional baggage checked at the door.
T is gripping on to hers like a lifeline.
Who has it better is a question for the ages, so I guess it comes down to what is best for you.
And that question is one only you hold the answer to.
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Recent Comments
Imaging defining yourself because you are someone's wife.
Well, the way I see it is that I was put in this world to look after myself.
So, in effect, my definition of people I want to be relationally involved with (be it anything, including friendships) are those who enhance my happiness.
People who don't, aren't worth knowing. Some might say thats selfish but I don't think so.
It's not hard. To that regard, being single is better. I think the reason there's a lot of single women around is because they all want kids or their baggage is so much that men don't see a reason to want them. Single women who are un-married over 30 always have me wondering why...
It is ironic that some women spend years in solitude avoiding men or taking advantage of men etc etc and then decide to put on the halo of nice girl when they want to settle down ( interpretation: have kids or do something that benefits them ).
You can't help but feel sorry for the guys who ever had any involvement with people like that. I'm a man and I'd never turn on my own kind. Loyalty is very important and anyone's loyal when they want something. It's when they don't and you've got a kid you never wanted when its too late. Not that its happened to me... :)
I dunno. I've met some nice girls but lets face it, there's always a catch or a burden. Six months of being with most woman and you have to ask yourself, what price did you pay?
Especially these days. Whatever love is, most woman I've met just end up being a job and cost you everything. I see marriage for people who have nothing else in their life and need someone else to justify themselves. To be like that just means you don't have any goals in life.
I'm single and occasionally I get guilty about it myself but then I think of the problems and forget all about it. It only lasts for a second. I guess really, I'm yet to work out how relations with a woman would do anything other than exploit me. I don't like drinking poison either, so I don't do it.
But I think the point of the blog is that people always think their opposite has it better without scratching beneath the surface.
And I don't know what sort of girls you are meeting, but if there is always a catch or a burden like you say, then you are either hanging out with the wrong type of girls or aren't quite a great catch yourself.
But then you probably just think that is my bitterness coming through because I am a poor married woman with nothing else in her life.
I think having a baby to save a relationship is the most selfish act.
That poor kid is going to enter into a screwed up relationship - and that's before the lack of sleep, crying, vomiting and all the joys of kids.
I really think you should have a licence to breed... I mean we have to have one to have a pet.
Oh and T needs to seek help and realise that life is better being alone than in an unhealthy relationship with a cheating partner.