How To Be OK With Being Married

It’s not the end of the world just because you’re not single

Photo by Zachary Kadolph on Unsplash

Single people get showered with advice. I should know — I’m 70, and I’ve been single my whole life. Married people explain things to us. Marriage.com, for example, offers us “15 tips on how to be single and happy.” The Cleveland Clinic, a medical center, tells us “how to be OK with being single,” as if we have an incurable disease and need to learn to come to terms with it. Even Tiny Buddha, who I thought would be calm and unbothered about single life, instructs us on “the art of being happily single.”

This isn’t fair to married people. They have concerns, too, but single people are not compiling lists of unsolicited advice for them. I want to do something about that. I’ve identified some of the questions and misgivings that married people may have and I will respond with similar tips, validation, and reassurance.

Is it normal to be married?

If you are married, you may feel like you are on the margins of society. After all, the percentage of people who are married has been decreasing for decades. People spend more years of their adult lives single than married.

But none of that is a reason to feel badly about being married. Lots of people are married. It is perfectly normal.

How do I answer the awkward question, “Why are you married?” or even worse, “Why are you still married?”

Those questions are rude — it doesn’t matter if you complain about your spouse every time you see your friend. You don’t owe anyone an explanation for being married or staying married. Don’t apologize or make excuses. Remember that being married is perfectly acceptable.

Consider answering in a way that upends their expectation that you feel badly about your marital status. For example, say, “Just lucky, I guess.”

I’m married and happy. Does that mean there’s something wrong with me?

I understand. Some married people feel perfectly happy, but they doubt themselves. They worry that maybe they are just fooling themselves. They wonder whether…