Men Getting Engaged All Around Me

I often joke with my friends that almost every guy I am interested in becomes engaged to someone else within 6 months. TRUTH!

I once even thought to myself ‘he has nice arms’ about an acquaintance…and BAM, next week he announced his engagement. I wanted to look around and hi 5 someone because of my awesome powers.  Essentially, every single time I have been interested in a guy…they have chosen someone else.

And it hurts.

A lot.

There has been a mixture of guys who fall into this scenario…ones I have admired from afar, to ones that I spent more time with in friendship settings, to guys whom I mustered up the confidence to let them know I was interested. Every single one (except the last guy I was interested in…that hasn’t been 6 months yet…there’s still a chance for the streak to continue!), has gone on to choose someone else. Although these aren’t acknowledged as relationships (and I don’t mean the admiring from afar circumstances, I mean the ones that you felt were on the verge of becoming ‘something more’)…there is still a lot of time, effort, and emotion that is invested into the situation… which ultimately ends in disappointment.

So how do we pick ourselves up each time and keep our hearts open?

Well, I have to say that I’ve found it to be pretty difficult. There was a period of time where I found it a lot easier to just ‘give up’, and state to myself that I will be single forever, because no man will ever choose me. This led me to a very stressful and upsetting time of personal grief. There were a lot of tears, and I’m not usually a crying person…my friends will attest to that! Almost every couple that came on tv made me cry, seeing old people walking around together made me cry, seeing a sunset made me cry, …basically I was out of control with the crying, and I didn’t like who I was becoming emotionally.

I was forcing an answer to ‘will I be single forever?’, so that I could close my heart and not have to go through the pain of rejection again. But the truth is that I don’t know what the answer is to that question. I may not get married, but I may get married. By providing my own answer, I am saying to God that I know better than Him…which is completely not what I actually think.

So…instead of thinking:

“this will never happen to me” when I see a couple,

I now try to say to myself  “this might happen to me.”

Forceably closing the door on such a desired passion was not at all healthy for me. I was becoming bitter and turning away from God. I needed to acknowledge that I would really, really like to get married one day…even though past experiences make it feel like an impossible dream.

I want to know what it’s like to hold hands with a man, and I want to know what it’s like to be wanted by a man. It is however, very difficult to let myself be emotionally vulnerable, and let myself believe that it’s possible that a guy might one day choose me.

I know that my joy is not dependent on my marital status, but it was a turning point for me to realise that despite this, I’m still allowed to acknowledge the strong desire I have to get married.  I thought that telling myself I would never get married would make the desire go away. But gosh, it just made me go through too many boxes of tissues!

So I’m currently trying to acknowledge these desires, while still celebrating the stage of life I am in. This is tricky because I am one of the few single women at church in my age bracket…so I can’t say that I’m on top of it yet in every situation! But, I know my joy comes from the fact that God loves me more than I can fathom, and these earthly pleasures, although wonderful, are minimal compared to His promises.