I'm Not Jealous Of My Engaged Friends

All My Friends Are Getting Married, And I’m, Well, Not Even Close

Posted by: Catherine Strawn Filed in: relationships
12:30PM, Monday June 8th 2009

In the last month or so, three of my close friends have gotten engaged. Meanwhile, I haven’t had a serious relationship for three years. For some reason, whenever I tell people that another one of my pals has a ring on her finger, they get a sad, sympathetic look on their face, like they’re afraid I might start crying or go into a deep depression. They shouldn’t be concerned, though, because I’m not the least bit jealous.

It’s not because I’m against marriage or men or love that I don’t care that my friends are engaged and I’m not. In fact, I couldn’t be happier that things have worked out for them. I’m close with all of their fiances, and the couples have been together so long that it was only a matter of time before they tied the knot.

In all three cases, my friends had always said they would get married “someday” and talked about it amorphously. They might have moved in with their boyfriends and gotten a dog together, but they never felt they’d get engaged any time soon. It never seemed to be a priority for them, something they needed to check off their to-do list in order to be happy. They were just going about their lives until one day, things fell into place.

And that’s the way it is with me, why I’m unbothered and completely psyched about their upcoming weddings, where I will whoop it up—possibly alone, but maybe not. My friends have set a good example about love and life. When you focus too much on what you don’t have, whether it’s a diamond ring, a boyfriend, or a Barbie Dream House, you don’t get to enjoy the other stuff you have, like a cute apartment, an interesting job, and friends who don’t judge you when you drink way too much bubbly at their engagement party. So, if things fall into place for me at some point, great! But if not, I won’t feel like a failure. My friends think a promotion at work or a new crush is just-as-big news, and they ooh and ahh appropriately.

comments

RachelSmiles
wrote on June 8 2009 @ 01:01 pm: [report]

this is my exact opinion!

Wendy Atterberry
wrote on June 8 2009 @ 01:18 pm: [report]

I was the same way when I was single, too—not the least bit phased by or jealous of happy couples. If anything, they gave me some hope. I think the universe rewards you for a positive attitude.

Cherubina
wrote on June 8 2009 @ 01:43 pm: [report]

That’s a good attitude to have!

“They might have moved in with their boyfriends and gotten a dog together, but they never felt they’d get engaged any time soon. ... They were just going about their lives until one day, things fell into place.”

In this one paragraph, you put into words what I’ve been thinking and trying to explain to my parents, who often ask when I and my boyfriend will get engaged—they’ve even started recruiting my brother to call up and ask!

juliePS
wrote on June 8 2009 @ 01:48 pm: [report]

exactly!

that to me sounds like people who are getting married for the right reasons, too.

I love having friends who are in long-term relationships; we live vicariously through each other.

sarahprotzman
wrote on June 8 2009 @ 04:08 pm: [report]

Agreed. In my experience, it’s been easier to be happy for those who go before me when I’m still just as close with them as I was before they entered this relationship, or once it got serious. If we’re squeezed out of someone’s life once that happens, it can be harder to feel the joy we should. Something we should all remember when it’s our turn!

tattooed_redhead
wrote on June 8 2009 @ 05:43 pm: [report]

Oh, it’s not when they all get married that’s the trouble - it’s when they all start popping out kids at the same time and can no longer carry on decent conversations, or tell you constantly that ‘you don’t understand, because you don’t have kids’. ICK!!

B Khuu
wrote on June 9 2009 @ 01:21 pm: [report]

A-Freakin’-men, girl! That’s exactly how I feel. I’m more than happy for my friends in their happy marriages. But I don’t need a man to be happy. I have love—it’s called friends and family.

Multiverse
wrote on September 23 2009 @ 01:47 pm: [report]

That’s a great way of thinking and it sounds like you have great friends too! I know so many people who seem to believe that you need a partner to be happy, or that you need to do the things you are “expected to do” at the “expected age” that they have forgotten that happiness comes from the inside, not from the outside, and that nobody besides yourself can make yourself happy.

BlueVibe
wrote on October 8 2009 @ 08:23 am: [report]

AAAAA-men.

Ironically, I met my current boyfriend (not sure if he’s The One, but he definitely has potential) shortly after I realized I no longer felt so desperate and insecure about having been single for so long. If I’d met him 6 months earlier, I would have been a clinging, babbling, nutcase and would have completely blown it.

He told me the other day how different I am from his previous girlfriends, and how much he loves that I want to be with him but am not needy and grasping. Whew.

My mother is worried that my new peace of mind is just a phase, but I sure hope not, because it WAY beats feeling unwanted, passed-over, and hair-triggered every time one of my friends goes off the market.

butrfly
wrote on October 17 2009 @ 06:08 pm: [report]

Blue Vibe.

Im a little late reading this article but the article and your comments were well said. How about All my friends are married and have children and I’m not even close!

I TOTALLY get the clingy nutcase thing! I’m more relieved to not be in a relationship right now because of everything said in a lot of the articles on Frisky. I’m relaxed and carefree.

sarahprotzman
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 12:55 pm: [report]

@butrfly

The Frisky—a blog where bitterness is masquerading as independence—happily contributes to women feeling anti-relationship, as if every woman who’s in one has lost her identity and is secretly miserable, trapped or whipped. As if, as you stated, being “relaxed and carefree” is the opposite of being in a couple.

I think it’s a shame, frankly, that The Frisky has such a poverty of progressive thought in regards to women.