Girls, I know a lot of you are not ready to quit the Catholic Singles' Social Scene. You're signed onto Don't-Be-Alone-With-Baby-Jesus-This-Christmas-Dot-Com. You go to Theology on Tap hoping for new cute boys this time. Heck, you might even belong to a Theology of the Body reading group, and that's fine. You want to be out there, and you're out there.
But some of you are tired of it all. And that is okay.
You do not have a duty to get yourself married. If you fall in love with someone and get married, that is great, but the fate of society is not resting on whether or not you go to that party on Saturday night.
The Blessed Virgin Mary was born. The Incarnation has happened. Technically, sex can stop now. We'd be fine if it just all ground to a halt. Modern marriage is for the weak brethren in danger of burning. In the Kingdom, we'll all sort of be nuns.
Of course, if you're shacked up with someone who ought to be honestly married to someone else, or living a Sex & the City lifestyle, then you are getting in the way of God's plan, and that's bad. But if you are living a chaste and honourable life, well, you're a sign of the Kingdom yourself.
Honestly, it's okay to be Single. If B.A. buys the farm, I'm going to be Single again, too. The world has lots of Single women. Some are never-married. Some were wrongly-married. Some are widows. God loves them all and each one has a life that should be worth living.
Throwing in the towel on the Singles' Social Scene does not mean becoming a hermit. Sometimes it just means seeing men in a fresh new way: as friends, maybe as brothers, maybe (if they're way younger) as spiritual sons, and not as potential husbands.
It means letting go and letting God.
Now, this is easier said than done, unless you want to do it. As I was saying to my pal yesterday, when it comes to social relationships, men generally do what they want to do, unlike women who often do a lot of stuff we don't want to do because we think we should, or we don't do stuff we want to do because we think we shouldn't. And I'm not talking about rational stuff, like not calling a man when you want to because you know in your heart of hearts there's no point. No, I'm talking about listening to irrational voices that tell you that you have to go to this party and you have to sign up with this website and you have to go on that blind date because um uh um what if?
If you want to quit searching, quit searching. It's okay. For all you know, that might be the only way you'll find your path. If you've been chasing this guy and that, or obsessing about the weak signals of interest this guy and that have been putting out, you might discover that it is incredibly freeing just not to care anymore.
And you might change your mind next week. And that's okay, too.
If God wants you to get married, you'll get married. It's not all up to you. Possibly not much of it is up to you. I met my husband because a Scottish doctoral candidate read a science fiction/fantasy serial I posted on my blog after I fled BC. I was a tad loopy at the time, and definitely not relationship material, especially as I was still in that stage where I was telling my pals that BC might be the antichrist. But God can work with anything, believe me.
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