Dear Therapist: It’s Hard to Accept Being Single by L. Gottlieb
Oh yes, I’ve been through this (what this advice columnists discusses below).
I’m the single lady who has had to sit and endure listening to women friends in relationships either bitch, moan, and gripe about their husbands or boyfriends every time they phone me or meet me in person, or they forever gush about how great and romantic their husband or boyfriend is. And both scenarios are horrible.
Either way you look at it, it’s unbearable as a single woman who wants to be married to have to sit and listen to some married cow (or cow with a boyfriend) either brag about how great her man is, or complain about how thoughtless, stupid, mean, or selfish he is. Neither scenario is a win for the single woman who wants to have a boyfriend or husband but can’t get one.
In the last few years, I’ve personally come to terms more with being single in spite of having wanted to be married, but I remember the long years of what it felt like to listen to married women friends (or friends with boyfriends) complain incessantly about their significant other. It felt terrible.
With a few of them, I did speak up and remind them I’d like to be married, that I wish I had a husband to complain about like they did (or conversely, I’d drop hints that me listening to them gush excitedly about their upcoming wedding was hard for me to listen to, since I was single, lonely, and I had no wedding in my future).
The only thing I ever got out of these women was a “deer in the headlight” look – it didn’t compute with these insensitive, self absorbed dolts that they should neither excessively or frequently complain nor excessively or frequently gush about their husbands to a woman friend of theirs who was single and didn’t like being single. Didn’t compute with these self obsessed idiots.
They’d just stare at me oddly as though they didn’t understand what I was conveying, and they would then prattle on more, complaining (or praising) their husband or boyfriend.
A message here to married women and women with boyfriends: your single women friends who are single and who hate being single do NOT want to listen to you go on and on about your man, your relationship, your wedding, your anniversary, etc, whether it is positive or negative. Please keep it to yourself – at the least, keep it brief and infrequent.
(Now that I’ve been on better terms with my single status, no, I still don’t like listening to women friends endlessly go on and on about their boyfriends and husbands. I get bored, and I find these women to be very self absorbed, they seldom take an interest in me or my life.)
Also, message here for the married ladies (or women with boyfriends): stop USING your single lady friends.
You married women (or women with boyfriends) only phone or want to hang out with us single ladies when your husband (or boyfriend) is out of town for his job, or you’re in a nasty fight with him, so you call us up, you call up your Single Lady Friends, to talk to us, or to hang out with us.
But the minute your man gets back in town, or you patch things up, you drop us single lady friends like hot potatoes. You are using your single women friends, which is not okay, you shallow, selfish cow. Stop it.
(Link): Dear Therapist: It’s Hard to Accept Being Single
Listening to my friends talk about their relationship problems is getting really tough.
LORI GOTTLIEB
JUN 3, 2019
Dear Therapist,
How do I tell my friends I really don’t want to hear about the problems they are having in their relationships? It is really hard for me to listen to them complain about their spouses or significant others when I am fighting hard to accept being single.
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