WOMAN ON TOP
Choosing singledom, and tossing out the word spinster
Beth Cooper Howell has cautionary advice for Smug Marrieds
Marriage is a dying institution and we’re just not that into men as much. Hooked you? I once read an article that blew me away.
In brief, writer Kate Bolick is approaching 40 and has realised that she won’t be tying the knot.
This doesn’t mean that she’s sliding the slippery slope to a one-bedroomed apartment and seven cats named after dwarfs, either.
Her point is that society is turning everything we knew and loved upside down: and we, the Smug Marrieds, are finally being knocked off the pedestal we clambered onto when we walked down the aisle.
Honestly, the whole modern marriage thing is one big social and legal experiment that’s turned hair grey, messed with family politics and scored fat bonuses for lawyers, chapels, dress designers and fancy-schmancy venues with twinkly lights and a pricey buffet option.
We’ve gone mad – and the cracks are beginning to show. Look, I like being married and so do most of my friends. But, equally, the mates who’re clocking up me-time in sweet singledom are seriously happy. As are those who’ve committed to coupledom but haven’t actually said “I do” (and don’t plan to, thanks very much).
What I love, nowadays, is that it’s no longer okay to assume that when you hit 25, 35, or heck, even 55, you’ll find “the one” and you’re done. Or to presume that, if you don’t, something is Sadly Wrong with you and that secretly, scarily, you’re a husband thief waiting to happen.
Thank the blazes for people like Kate Bolick, who has done all the dirty work, researched the real stats ad nauseum and come to the conclusion that we’re just not that into what we quaintly call tradition. Studies show that we’re putting marriage off.
Fifty years ago, women got married at around 20 and men 23; today we’re hitting the altar at 28 and 26 respectively.
Also, fewer women in their 30s are now married than at any time since the 1950s at least and the percentage of Millennials (chicks and guys born in the late ’70s to ’90s) who get married has dropped sharply, too.
The point, really, is that the rules have changed and we have to change with them.
I love that it’s fabulous to have a husband and that it’s just as smackingly delicious not to.
That’s good news for every single woman lurching through biological ticking clocks and sympathy stares from octogenarian aunts at the Christmas table. Life’s a smorgasbord of choice nowadays.
I married my best friend and I’m chuffed that I did. But if you don’t fancy your best friend, you’re just as good having coffee with him or her once a week.
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