During his middle school years, my older brother subscribed to a humorous cartoon periodical called
"So," asks the policeman, "why did you wreck the car?"
"Uh …" replied the driver, "because I thought it would be so much fun to meet a nice police officer like you!"
Sarcasm is no excuse for wit, a twelfth grade English teacher reminded us with a posted notice behind her desk. However, sometimes it can play a very close second. And while "Why aren't you married?" isn't necessarily a stupid question, it sometimes can bamboozle the one asked, leaving that person fumbling for an answer, perhaps even a snappy one.
In the now fifteen-plus years since college, I've gotten the "Why aren't you married?" question or its cousin from a greater variety of folks than one might ever have imagined. Hannah, a third grader at the time, asked with the earnestness of her age, "Why don't you have a husband and kids? Aren't you lonely without a family?" A homeless woman with whom I was eating lunch asked between bites of her pizza, "So why aren't you married? Don't wanna be, eh?" A bighearted, completely sincere member of a board for which I was the note taker declared in wonder during our break time, "I'm amazed! Why hasn't anyone snatched you up yet?!" It's a bit awkward to know how to respond. Most memorable, however, were the words spoken to me at a wedding reception. The mother of the groom (whose bride was four years my senior) took my then twenty-nine-year-old hands in hers, looked directly in my eyes, and implored, "Why isn't a beautiful young woman like you married?"
At that moment, her words felt something like a plea for me to stop doing or being something wrong, or maybe a prayer to God Almighty on my behalf. In truth, I think it was a well-meant compliment flowing out of motherly love. I remember looking her back in the eye with the least vacant look I could conjure up and pleasantly mumbling something about not having met the right person yet. A few hours later, however, as her words still throbbed with their unintended sting, I came up with my own snappy answer: "Well, see, actually, one of my personalities, Jane to be precise, is married. But the other three, well, Mary has too many issues; Sue is a commitment-phobe; and Sally, well, she's just too independent!"
My twelfth grade English teacher was right, however. Sarcasm isn't a wit substitute. And in the end, even the most deliciously crafted, snappy response can't hold at bay a question that seems to nip the heels of many single women as they move into their late twenties or early thirties. Yeah, why, so many of my friends have wondered, am I not married?
It's a question that more women than ever before are bumping up against. In the last forty years, the population of twenty- to thirtysomething, college-educated, single women has exploded. In 1960 this group represented 1.6 percent of all women between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four, or the rough equivalent of the then population of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Today, this percentage has grown to a staggering 28 percent, roughly equivalent to 2.3 million women or four Bostons.i So a lot of those four-Boston residents, scattered throughout the nation, are sitting around with their girlfriends, doing dinner on Friday nights, and drinking cups of coffee on Saturday mornings poking and prodding for answers to this same question about men and marriage.
In one sense, answers are out there. Actually, many people who ask the question already have answers in mind. Mary, my homeless friend, immediately attributed my singleness to a lack of desire. And the board member answered his own question with a rhetorical "No guy has been good enough yet?" I'm not sure if he meant that objectively or was implying something about my subjective judgment. For I have been told by numerous folks that perhaps I'm too something. The blank has been filled in with "picky," "eager," "real," "scared," and "threatening." I suppose all of those things probably have some grain of truth. My very down-to-earth hairstylist, Jackie, once commented, lowering and pointing her shears like a therapist with reading glasses, "Look. You're really into the God thing. If you're gonna find a man, he's gotta be into the God thing too. Cuz no guy is gonna want to compete with God."
