My Single Status

So this post, I've actually submitted for SMH's The Heckler. I got the idea from my writing class. For all of those unknown to the daily column (from the Sydney Morning Herald), its an unpaid gig but basically you write a 450-word piece on something that really gets under your skin and me, well I decided to submit the following:

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The other night I went out to dinner with a few girlfriends for our regular catch-ups. We were still deciding on where to go when one announces that she has a boyfriend, then another pipes up and says, ‘Chau, tell us you have a boyfriend too so that all four of us can now say we are no longer single’.

I, by the way, am not attached at the moment but the comment made me wonder, ‘What is wrong with being an independent single woman? Is finding our ‘soul mate’ the main thing on individuals’ minds these days? Is having a man attached on our arm the new black?’

Something similar happened this past weekend when I attended a family wedding and saw relatives whom I hadn’t seen in a while and understandably, I suppose ‘love’ is often on the minds of all those present at such ceremonies, but is it on our minds so much, that we start our conversations surrounding the topic?

Whatever happened to ‘Hi, how have you been?’ Is being in a relationship so important nowadays that our conversations have to start with, ‘Hi, do you have a boyfriend yet?’

At the risk of sounding like Pauline Hanson: please explain.

Don’t get me wrong, I do want to have a guy in my life, but I don’t need a guy in my life. Those are two completely different things, but I guess my friends (and family) just don’t understand that part about it.

And even if the time came, I wouldn’t want someone now – maybe later in life. As my workmates tell me every other day, I’m still young, being only twenty two. I, myself, don’t want to be tied down, nor do I want to be committed to the wrong person.

But that doesn’t seem to stop my friends going out and trying to find me a guy to ‘hook up’ with on a night out or to set me up with on a date. Even when I hesitate to go through with the ‘arranged’ date, they tell me the same thing again and again – ‘If it doesn’t work out, at least you would have made a new friend’.

Sometimes I wonder, based on that comment, how many new ‘friends’ I would have made in the past year had I not refused their suggestions?

I am single by choice. I enjoy being single. I like not having to worry or stress about what someone else is thinking when I’m enjoying a night out with the girls.

Let me ask you, is being single such a bad thing?

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No idea if it'll get posted but fingers crossed. Either way, I had fun writing it and that's the kind of stuff I wanna be posting on this blog. My other ones are all specific based. I want this one to be open to all topics and categories.

Peace..

x

..chauie..