On Being 30 and Single

I'm almost mid-way through my 30th year on this planet and recently I was remembering how difficult it is to be over 27, single and living in the Midwest. Thankfully I don't live there anymore and don't have the worries I did before moving away. There was quite a bit of media coverage given to the most recent census on US households. It turns out more of us are single than married!


I've wondered why that may be. Personally I'd trade in my singles card for the married sort given the right man in the right circumstances (I seem to have a history of finding potential "right men" at very, very wrong times...I'll let you decide if you think they may not have been "right" at all given that fact). But it seems I am in the minority - or the rest of America is still waiting for their "Mr/Ms Right at the Right Time".


So why do so many of us want to stay single? A good number of us live together but haven't (or don't want to get) married. Is it because of our ridiculously high divorce rate? Did too many of us grow up in blended families with more stepmoms and stepdads then we could count? Or is it simply that women don't need men for financial support like we used to (even though we still make roughly 30 cents less on the dollar than men...but that's for another post)? Or perhaps it's some quirky combination of all of them.


I wish I had an answer but I don't. Since moving to Colorado, I've garnered a group of friends both male and female. And the great majority of us are single or at least not living with our significant other. And all of us want to be married and committed...and all of us are over 30. Some of my friends are in their late 30s or even 40s. But not one of us would trade in being single for being married to just anyone. Could that be a key component of these findings? Are we looking for that perfect match? Is there a perfect match? And if there is a perfect match, how do we know when we find them? Does that perfect match change as we grow older? And if it does, how can we ever be certain we have found our perfect match?


A few of my friends here are divorced but all are hopeful of finding that lifelong partner. I've never married and have never lived with a significant other. In all honesty, I felt like a failure in that regard when I was living in the Midwest. I have cousin upon cousin who married, had children, settled down...the whole lot. And they are all younger than me. There's nothing quite like family gatherings and holidays surrounded by dozens of cousins and their spouses and their babies and toddlers. And every year that number of married couples and babies just increases..almost exponentially it would seem. It's one of the most isolating and truly lonely experiences I've had to endure. It was painful enough to force me to make the biggest change in my life ever: uproot my entire existence and move to a different part of the country, some 800 miles away from my close-knit family.


Whenever my mother gets upset that I don't live close to home, I remind her of that simple fact. I tell her I left to find a husband and to give her grandchildren one day. So hang in there Mom, I'm trying. Perhaps the rest of America is too and that's why so many of us are single today.