Is everyone getting married without me?

For everyone not in the Midwest, this may not be as much of an issue right now. But for all of us living in the very exceptionally landlocked part of the country, saying that everyone you know is getting married or having children may actually be true. In fact, I don't have enough fingers to count all the people that are my age (22) or below that are married or engaged that I've been friends with. It's sort of a surreal feeling to imagine people like you spending the rest of their lives with someone when you still feel like you're that awkward girl with the braces and cat eye glasses that was dying to be kissed.

So why does it feel like everyone is getting married? And why is it totally okay if they are and you're still in the single ready to mingle point in your life.

First off, the reason that you seem to feel surrounded by married couples and soon to wed ones is because you have much greater access to acquaintances and not super close friends lives. Before people had Facebook and Instagram to bombard with photos of their ring and dress and flowers and #MCM husband the only way you found out was through word of mouth or the announcement in the newspaper. If you limited everyone you know that's engaged or married to only posting one thing about  it, I bet it will seem like a whole lot less than you felt like before.

But all that being said. There is nothing wrong with people being super excited about the person they are going to spend the rest of their lives with. I mean, I can hardly restrain myself from posting every single picture I take of my beautiful niece because I want to share with the world how incredible she is when she makes one of her 5 different infant faces. Being excited is the completely natural thing to do and wanting to over share is pretty normal also.

The problem becomes when you take their gushing about their love as a challenge or an attack on how your love life is going. I firmly believe that 99.999% of the time it has absolutely nothing to do with you (sorry).

But still, you say, it makes you feel your single hood even more (grabbing the nearest cat and a pint of Ben and Jerry's). The biggest mistake you are making probably lies in that you are ignoring all the totally awesome things you have done too. For myself I went on a super awesome adventure and got a dog and have now realized I have a long way to go before I should ever be responsible for another human being.

Just don't let this happen!

I guess the problem is that we try to turn our lives into one big marathon. We assume that we're all on this same path and that these people are meeting checkpoints ahead of us. When in reality it's like we're running in completely different races or maybe aren't wanting to be in a race at all!

So maybe everyone is getting married (probably not completely true but we can go with it), SO WHAT? Be happy for them but also be happy for yourself. Our accomplishments aren't limited to specific categories like relationships, worldly experience, education... they are open to being anything in the whole world which is pretty awesome.

And if none of that works at least you get to go shopping because you're going to need some outfits to wear to all those weddings.


XOXO
Hayley