A Treatise on Why Singlehood Will Trump Being in a Relationship FOREVER

Original Posting: January 2012

Disclaimer: I am aware that 1 Corinthians 7 states neither singlehood nor marriage is superior/inferior to the other. This is opinion. (Note that all further cited verses are from 1 Corinthians 7 in The Message.) More accurately, this is me being extremely biased/narrow-minded. I can have a day like this now and then if I want to.

And away we go!

1 – When you're unmarried, you're free to concentrate on simply pleasing the Master.

No hesitation in asserting that Jesus is the #1 priority. Which, there shouldn't be any hesitation anyway, regardless of your situation. But I put my ex-boyfriend first far too much (um, all the time), which is why he was my boyfriend for so long in the first place. I should have turned and run the instant he said he would have preferred that we had sex even though he said he could deal with being celibate.

Girls: If a guy says he can be celibate for you – he's lying. Boys, I can't tell you if it's similar for girls in the inverse situation because that's not an issue I've ever had to deal with personally. Sorry. Find a girl with looser morals than me and ask her instead.

2 – You take priority. Well, let me clarify that, because serving God does mean serving Him and others before you, but I need to serve myself, too! I can't serve others if I don't stop to make sure I'm okay! What I mean by this is, you dress for yourself; your makeup is for yourself. You're not fretting in front of mirrors for an extra however long before you leave wondering if this skirt is too revealing or if that eyeshadow is too bright.

3 – Sometimes I wish everyone were single like me – a simpler life in many ways!

Relationships are complicated and messy and horrible, and you're only going to end up with your feelings hurt. So really, you're better off keeping single.

4 – Marriage involves you in all the nuts and bolts of domestic life and in wanting to please your spouse, leading to so many more demands on your attention. The time and energy that married people spend in caring for and nurturing each other, the unmarried can spend in becoming whole and holy instruments of God.

Even if it does appear to be "working out," you kind of have to dedicate time to someone else who's fickle and fallible that you really should be devoting to Someone who is constant.

5 – You can't fantasize about encounters with Benedict Cumberbatch, Matt Smith, or Sean Maher (or any combination of the three, or someone else of your fancy) when you're in a relationship with someone. Well, you can, but if they find out about it, it threatens their self-esteem. Because if it comes down to run-of-the-mill local boys versus Benedict Cumberbatch, there's no question at all which one you would choose.

6 – No pressure to stay as thin as you were when you two first met. This isn't permission to let yourself go; just sayin', it's nice to be able to randomly swing up a couple pounds on week X of your cycle and know you don't have a ball-and-chain to nitpick at you for it.

7 – That said, you have more time and energy to spend on keeping yourself in shape, if you are so inclined. Instead of helping yourself look and feel better for someone else, you're helping yourself look and feel better for yourself. It's called self-improvement for a reason, right? It's not gonna stick if you're only doing it to make others like you more and not because you really want it. Like with plastic surgery.

I want you to live as free of complications as possible.

8 – No hours-long conversations with your girlfriends asking what he meant when he said "Hello" instead of "Hi."

9 – No lying awake agonizing over how he interpreted your goodnight text.

10 – No worries about Christmas/Valentines/birthday/anniversary candy he'll buy you that you know will go straight to your thighs even if he did mean well.

11 – No worries about buying Christmas/Valentines/birthday/anniversary gifts for him. This means you can put that money toward more important things. Like nail polish.

12 – You don't have to choose between a ball-and-chain and your friends (or staying in to work on a crochet project or curling up with your Bible) when deciding what to do with your Friday night.

13 – There's a certain satisfaction in knowing you have your pick of guys, and they're sitting there hoping you'll choose them, but you never will, and then you get to watch them squirm. Or you can just imagine all that if it makes you feel better about being single when all of your friends are asking why you don't have a boyfriend like something's wrong with you. I don't have many opportunities for power trips...

14 – No pressure to plan a date on a regular basis. If you decide you don't want to go out somewhere after all, you don't have to disappoint someone else. Also, no one to flake out on you.

15 – You don't have to wonder if your ball-and-chain is lying about actually having something else to do that can't be skipped just so he can get out of going to such-and-such a thing (in other words, you don't have to worry that you're the ball-and-chain).

16 – All I want is for you to be able to develop a way of life in which you can spend plenty of time together with the Master without a lot of distractions.

Relationships are a big, fat, waste of your vital life time. Period.

–

No, I'm not a feminist. Well, equal pay, please; but I don't think men should be shipped off to an island somewhere and only used for organ harvest.

It's good for a man to have a wife, and for a woman to have a husband.

…

[And] celibacy is not for everyone any more than marriage is. God gives the gift of the single life to some, the gift of the married life to others.

Seriously, though, I can't see why a boyfriend would be of any practical use to me (hello, arm candy). I suppose a boyfriend can eventually evolve into a husband if it receives enough training and a lot of experience points, but I can adopt if I want kids that badly. Though I would still want for them to have an earthly father in addition to the Father, so there's just no way to remove that monkey wrench, is there...

Oh, duh; I'm already married to Jesus! And if it's God's will for me to have children, then I'll spontaneously conceive – it happened to Mary! And He's the best Daddy ever, so no worries there!

That said...

Fellas; keep trying. Just because I'm totally in love with singlehood doesn't mean I'm Ice Queen.

~Sarah