As We Get Older
- Brandelyn N. Castine

As we enter our twenty’s and thirty’s there seems to be one thing on every woman’s mind, Marriage. We search for the one who will fill our empty days, warm our lonely nights and be on the other end of the phone when we call. It seems like everyone around us is suddenly becoming a couple and soon we have more weddings and bridal showers to attend than concerts and clubs. Each engagement announcement adds fuel to our single fire. The mission and we do choose to accept, is to find a husband and stake our place in that mysterious land at the other end of the rainbow, the land of being a couple. So we buy clothes and shoes we can’t afford, go into overdraft to make sure our hair and nails are on point, grab the last single girlfriend we have and head out to various venues hoping to catch the eye of the one man who could change our lives, or at least marry us. We turn our focus on how terrible it is that we are not married, and how awful it is that we have to spend another Friday night alone and as each couple walks past us hand in hand, we find ourselves sinking more and more into depression.

I myself have suffered from this very scenario, but then something occurred to me. I found myself inwardly becoming bitter as my outside smiled and oohed and ahhed at the opening of gifts at shower after shower. I began to wonder what was wrong with me and when was my turn coming. In my usual fashion, I began to throw myself into my work and began to bury myself in projects. I began to focus on making myself happy and soon, I realized that in taking my focus off of men and not trying to twist and bend myself to fit into what I thought they wanted, I was actually becoming happy. I realized that I was supposed to be working on me. I was supposed to be focusing my attention on the goals that I had set for myself, on the dreams that I needed to see come to fruition. I realized that I didn’t have time to sit around begging some man, any man to acknowledge me, I had work to do.

In today’s society, women are in either one of two categories. One, they are on the marriage track and are focused with that single goal in mind. The other category is the career track, women who are focused on their personal goals, often sacrificing personal relationships to attain that goal. While both of these categories can be beneficial for the woman making these choices, I believe there can be a balance. Instead of going out and spending all kinds of money and altering various aspects of ourselves to make ourselves more attractive, why don’t we turn the focus back onto ourselves? I have said this a million times but any successful relationship is not made of two people completing each other. Rather, a successful relationship is two complete people coming together and complimenting each other. After the wedding photos have been placed in the album and the buzz over the day has fizzled into a happy memory, there needs to be something else to focus on besides solely pleasing your man.

From what I understand if you really want to find a man who is about something, you yourself need to be about something. A man is often looking for his equal, a partner that he can share his life with and can build with. While it is often unsaid, for most men, the novelty of having a woman who only wants to cater to his every need will wear off quickly and then what? In a successful, healthy relationship, each individual needs to have their own agenda. There needs to be time and space together and apart. Your man needs to be your biggest fan as well as you being his and it is important to discover what your passion is, focus on that, build on that and when a relationship comes along, let it enhance what you have already built for yourself.

There are definitely benefits to being single, and the most important benefit is having time to find you. When you understand who you are as woman, your likes, your dislikes, your desires and dreams, then and only then can you be a good wife and partner. end

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