Maintaining Singlehood in a Marriage Obsessed Society

Love is a fleeting thing, but individuality is forever. How do you maintain your independence in a world that demands a group mentality through marriage and forced friendships? "Two shall become one" is really "Say goodbye to your freedom." Look at bachelor and bachelorette parties. Those two are basically bon voyaging your freedom as a single person. Don't kid me wrong marriage is a momentous chapter in life, but the way some people make it out to be trivializes it to the point of madness. You have to spent thousands of dollars for a one day event that is forgotten once the honeymoon afterglow is over.

What makes a marriage worthwhile is the day after the wedding when the newlyweds are alone together for the first time as man and wife. Another thing taken into account is the concept of "man and wife" because as more states allow same sex marriages. That definition becomes a little more lax, which is a good thing. Tradition is what the couple makes of it, not society.

Can the couple love each other forever or until it's inconvenient for them? Married couples tend to bend and compromise to make two halves fit into one whole person. Some parts of yourself get thrown by the wayside such as the opportunity to travel around the world and take up too many new hobbies. You've to take into account that everything you do has to be done in pairs. You can allot some time to yourself but never forget your partner regardless. They made a lifelong commitment to you and you need to keep your end of the marital bargain.

For single people, marriage is a goal they pretend not to aspire to when they secretly ponder it. No one intentionally shun love when it's the one thing people need in their lives. After getting shot by Cupid's arrow, your outlook on life completely changes. Your favorite foods taste different and certain smells are twice as strong. Love makes you fly on cloud nine, until someone takes a romantic baseball to your heart. Placing barbed wire around your heart protects it from getting crushed by other potential storms such as matchmaking friends.

When you're the only single person at a party full of couples, you start to feel like a party leper that people only interact with for science experiments and to fling other single friends in your direction. How do you politely turn someone down when the potential date is about as exciting as a tossed salad? The best way to survive awkward set-ups is to plow through them like a chore. Get it done quickly and painlessly as possible. Act only the very least bit interested.

As a perpetual single girl, I've never experienced the type of love that would make me change anything about myself. The very few guys I've actually dated never even made a dent in my heart. They were fun while they lasted and were easily disposable once they served their universal purpose: a warm body to stand next to when it was too cool. The only guys I seem to attract are losers who can't even shine my shoes without making me ill. The guys I aspire to be with don't even know I exist because they're in their own little world that doesn't include me no matter how hard I try.

The closest I've come to love burned me beyond recognition. I trusted the wrong guy and he let the ground out from under me. I let my guard down and he decided to give me up for someone willing to give away their body more freely than I was. It hurt to watch him move on with someone else and even less so that I wasn't. I learned to accept this and finally moved on with my life on my terms.

A tip I learned from my minimal romantic life through living life without society's rules. Toss the rulebook aside to survive your heartache and rebuild your self confidence from the ground up. Teach yourself how to love yourself without a romantic partner before jumping into another relationship. Rebound relationships only go so far because those relationships rarely last longer than a short trip to the mall. Stay close to your friends during your times of loneliness. Don't sacrifice your true identity in order to snag a potential mate. No one likes a wishy washy person that changes their personality like the seasons. If you have to go to extremes to date someone, remain single until someone worth your time comes along.