What you don’t know is that being single means you’re no one’s number one priority. That means you will be passed over for family night, baseball practice, and dance recitals. Your needs and feelings will be set aside in favor of husbands and wives and girlfriends and boyfriends and little people with large demands. What you don’t know is how isolating that is.
What you don’t know is that sitting down to dinner with your family, being invited to family night, and dance recitals, and baseball practice only amplifies the loneliness. It only highlights what I don’t have. What I’m missing out on. What I don’t have the option to have.
What you don’t know is that when you tell me how hard marriage is, how unrewarding parenting can be, how, “it’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” that I’m lucky to not have to answer to anyone that it makes me hate you just a little bit. You don’t know that you’re undermining my feelings. That by saying those things you’re saying I don’t have the right to feel the way I feel.
What you don’t know is that I love coming to family night, and baseball practice, and dance recitals. You should be putting your family first.
But what you don’t know is that no amount of friendship and companionship and family can make me part of a pair, a unit. It won’t move me up on the priority list. It can’t erase my loneliness.
Just Shireen 
This is so true! And we are ogether in the forever alone part. And sometimes it just hurts.
True story. A true story I can’t write the ending to, even though I desperately wish I could.
I didn’t get married till I was 28. In the world of Mormon child brides, that was incredibly hard and isolating, especially when my younger siblings started getting married and I was still alone. Then I finally got married and it took 5 years to have a baby. I turned 33 right after my first was born. That waiting might have been worse. I know how hard it is when you feel like you’re doing everything you’re supposed to do and yet God isn’t answering your prayers with the one thing – a righteous desire! – that you want most. I will say this: I know you don’t “do the Jesus thing,” but God does have a plan for you. And even though His plan for me didn’t happen on MY timetable, it’s turned out to be worth the pain and the waiting, because it’s better than anything I could have dreamed up for myself. We love you, we ache for your pain and wish we could take it away, but try to be patient and wait upon the Lord. I can confidently promise you, through my own experience, that the waiting and the hurting will be worth it when His plan becomes clear, and you’ll see in hindsight how He is moving all the pieces even now. Wish my arms could reach to Indy…
Shireen, this is such a great post. Thank you for sharing. I totally agree with what you said about comments that undermine your feelings. I totally get it. Hugs from me. You sure are a great person and anyone who is lucky enough to meet you is blessed by your kind spirit and your general awesomeness.
Amen.