An email landed in my inbox today with an interview opportunity for two marriage counselors who have been married for more than 33 years.
Shyrone and Rebecca Richardson have spent more than two decades counseling couples, and they have a new book called Winning Together: 8 Keys to Building a Thriving Marriage.
The idea behind it is that good relationships don’t just magically happen. Couples have to make intentional choices about communication, conflict, faith, and all the other things that go into building a life together.
Which sounds perfectly reasonable.
And I read the email and thought:
I absolutely do not want any of that.
Not the book specifically. I’m sure their advice is great.
I mean marriage.
The whole thing.
I am so completely and totally uninterested in getting married again that sometimes I genuinely wonder why we still act like finding another person is the inevitable next chapter of a woman’s life.
My kid is grown.
I already did the family thing.
I already did the marriage thing.
My ex-husband moved out, and at one point he went to jail after trying to kill me.
So now I live alone.
And you know what?
It is so peaceful in here.
Sometimes I literally just sit in my house and appreciate how calm it is.
Nobody is angry.
Nobody is stomping around.
Nobody’s mood changes the entire atmosphere of the room.
I don’t have to figure out whether somebody is upset with me.
I don’t have to negotiate what we’re doing tonight or what we’re eating or whether it’s okay if I work for another three hours because I’m on a roll.
I don’t have to manage another adult person’s feelings.
I just live here.
And I freaking love it.
That is the part I don’t think we talk about enough.
There are endless books about how to save your marriage.
How to communicate with your spouse.
How to bring back the spark.
How to fight fairly.
How to understand men.
How to understand women.
How to speak somebody else’s love language.
How to build a thriving marriage.
But where is the giant section of the bookstore called:
Actually, You Can Just Be Single.
Where is Eight Keys to Having the Entire Bed to Yourself?
Where is How to Stop Asking Someone What They Want for Dinner for the Rest of Your Natural Life?
Because I would like to subscribe to that newsletter.
And before somebody says, “Well, you just haven’t met the right person yet,” that’s exactly what I’m talking about.
Why does there have to be another person?
Why can’t this be the right life?
I completely understand wanting a partner.
I understand falling in love.
I understand people wanting to build families together.
And I absolutely understand why people who want their marriages to work would benefit from learning how to communicate and handle conflict better.
But I don’t understand why singlehood is so often treated like a temporary condition.
Like we’re all hanging around in some emotional airport terminal waiting for our next relationship to board.
Maybe I’m not waiting.
Maybe I’ve arrived.
Because being alone and being lonely are two very different things.
I’ve been lonely while married.
I’ve been lonely with another person sitting right there.
This isn’t lonely.
This is peaceful.
This is waking up in a house where the energy belongs to me.
This is making plans without checking with anybody.
This is changing my mind.
This is eating something ridiculous for dinner.
This is working until midnight because I want to.
This is going to bed at 8:30 because I want to.
This is knowing that when I close my front door, my home feels safe.
And after everything I’ve lived through, that peace is not something I am particularly interested in casually handing over because society thinks eventually I’m supposed to want a boyfriend.
Maybe someday I will.
I don’t know.
Some unbelievably spectacular human could show up tomorrow and make me reconsider the entire thing.
But that’s not the same as waiting for him.
I’m not building my life around the possibility that somebody else might eventually join it.
I’m already living it.
So, yes, Shyrone and Rebecca Richardson may very well be right that a thriving marriage requires intention.
But maybe a thriving single life does, too.
Maybe you intentionally protect your peace.
Maybe you intentionally build friendships and adventures and work you care about.
Maybe you make your home exactly the way you want it.
Maybe you stop treating romance like the final missing puzzle piece.
And maybe the successful relationship you’re supposed to be working on for a while is the one you have with your own damn life.
Because right now, I don’t want a successful marriage.
I want this.
