Recently, one of my younger friends, feeling the sting of singleness rather acutely, sent me an email.
“I don’t know how you do this single thing so well,” she wrote. “I’m frustrated, angry and tired of hoping.”
Then came my favorite line.
“How did you get to be 36 and single without going crazy?”
Once I got my laughter under control, I wrote back, telling her that I don’t always do it so well. I have more than my share of days when I’m lonely, confused and shaking my fist at the picture in my hallway of the Sacred Heart. Most of us do.
I also explained that the only way I’ve gotten to be 36 and single without going crazy is by not spending the past 10 years thinking about being 36 and single.
That’s because all I would have seen would have been those two stark realities: 36 and single. I wouldn’t have seen all the blessings and opportunities that would come my way during that time. Nor could I have seen how Christ would use my struggles with singleness to draw me closer to him.
Nobody can.
Which is why our job isn’t to fret too much about whether or not we’ll still be single in another year — or 10. It’s simply about being in the day, giving thanks for the present blessings and focusing on the present tasks.
It’s also our job to cultivate a spirit of hope.
No matter how old we are, if we believe we’re called to the vocation of marriage, we can never stop hoping God will send the right someone along. Maybe we can stop expecting, but we can never stop hoping.
Why?
First, because to do that ignores the fact that people over the age of 30 get married every day. The pool of eligible spouses may be small, but God is always making that pool bigger, healing wounded souls and preparing people for marriage. Grace is at work all around us, which means the only expiration date on a vocation to marriage is death.
We also have to hold onto hope because without hope we can’t be the joyful witnesses God calls us to be. Remember, to not hope is to despair. And to despair is a bad thing — a big, bad sin in and of itself and the doorway to any number of other sins.
It’s despair that leads us to date people we shouldn’t and do things we oughtn’t. It’s despair that makes us bitter, hard and cold, the embodiment of everything the culture tells us we’ll be if we’re living a chaste single life. And it’s despair that turns us in on ourselves, preventing us from seeing the needs of others and loving them as they need to be loved.
Despair is not our friend. Hope is our friend. Hope is what gets us through a string of bad dates or a stretch of none at all. Hope is what keeps us going after a breakup or when we feel like the last single person standing. Hope is what allows us to trust that God really does know what he’s doing.
Remaining hopeful may be the single person’s greatest task. We have to hope. And we have to trust that these years of singleness are not unaccounted for, that God is providing for us through them, and that, somehow, this time of waiting will not only make sense some day, but will, in fact, be seen as a thing of perfect beauty.
After all, if it’s part of God’s plan, it can’t be anything less.
Emily Stimpson is the author of The Catholic Girl’s Survival Guide for the Single Years:
The Nuts and Bolts of Staying Sane and Happy While Waiting for Mr. Right.
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Thank you!!!! I needed to read this!
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Thanks for this article - very encouraging!
Three cheers! It’s about time we got a singles column. It’s hard enough to be single and Catholic in today’s society. The sense of being forgotten by the Church makes it that much harder. Being single and over 30 today—let along being over 40 or 50—is a constant struggle against despair and loneliness. We need all the encouragement we can get, starting with frank admission of the problem.
Hallelujah! A singles column on a Catholic website/publication!!!
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Beautiful writing Emily! “Maybe we can stop expecting, but we can never stop hoping.” - the first real smile to spread across my face while reading NCR in months. You’ve just proven that you ‘get it’. Thank you!!
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Meanwhile, I’m in a stage of both hope and despair. It’s possible to feel both at once, although it’s very uncomfortable here.
Thanks for the uplifting article. I know being single and 45 has its share of loneliness. But I’d rather love Jesus and know how much he loves me rather than date people who do not really love our Lord. And many men really do not want to be entangled in a loving relationship either. At least, that’s my impression. True love has become ever more elusive in our fallen world.
Therefore, women have to guard themselves, especially now in a world that’s increasingly Godless. God knows how much women deserve better (men too).
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So pleased to see you on the NC Register and so grateful to see a singles column! As you pointed out in your OSV article in 2011, there are 13 million never-been-married Catholic adults in the US…it’s about time there was a singles column :D
I left a very nice comment here last night, but it seems to have disappeared.
I’d hate for the NCR to think that the singles column isn’t appreciated due to lack of comments if comments are disappearing!!
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Thank you for this! Very well done Emily!
The days of arranged marriages may be over; but perhaps parishes should organise various social functions so that the ‘right boy’ has the opportunity to meet the ‘right girl’ (& v.v.).
Welcome to NCR, Emily!
My husband was 35 when we got married - and we didn’t meet until he was 32. I’m ten years younger than he is, so I tell him that us meeting (or dating) any sooner would have been scandalous.
Am I too old for your column? From what I’ve seen, many of your readers ae yonger women. Ms. Stimpson, all I ever wand was to be married ... to love and to be loved. I’ve been in love and I know there is one man I shall love all my life. Yet ththe husband of whom I dream eludes me as stubbornly as a moth to a flame and the older I get the more I fear I shall live and die alone. I’m a believer, a Christian. I do not have a vocation. And I have led an interesting life. But (and I hate saying this because it sounds so weak) it’s a lonely life and, at times, a strange one. I just would like to have a man of my own to love and who would love me and with whom to share my life and his. Am I asking too much? Thank you for reading my contribution and thank you for this column.
Being forgotten by the Church is not so bad. We are forgotten by God.
Hope ... whom are you kidding?
Woman after 35 can only hope for somebody’s leftovers.
Emily Stimpson is a catch, in more ways than one. She’s simply a smart, dynamic, and sincere writer. Happy to see her writing here… and I suggest making bumper stickers out of a few of her gems:
the only expiration date on a vocation to marriage is death
Hope is what allows us to trust that God really does know what he’s doing.
I’ll be linking to this elsewhere.
Oh Emily, I’m also single and you are so right! I’m glad you are going to be writing on NCR! You have a lovely way of putting across your point in a beautiful way - God bless.
Very impressive.
As a single catholic, I am often weary of the ‘single catholic’ articles. Yet, this first article of yours (in this new column) has been a breath of fresh air. It actually gets right to the heart of the matter: HOPE!... a virtue which is quite often neglected. I look forward to many more posts.
Great work Emily.
Thanks, Emily, for this new column! Look forward to following along. Is there any way I can sign up for an alert when you write another column?
Dave (42 and annulled ... hope that qualifies me as a single ;-)
As a single, celibate Catholic woman trying to do the right thing and live as I should, seeing happy, smiling gay couples celebrated and glorified in the media is so painful, especially since straight singles—especially single women—past 40 are viewed as pitiable freaks of nature, poor creatures who just couldn’t snag a man. Let’s face it, the world walks in twos, and being coupled—straight or gay—is the only way to gain respect and status. Unless you’re a religious, single and celibate past a certain age is a cross indeed.
The time of waiting is, indeed, “a thing of perfect beauty.” I was single, if not celibate, until I was 34. After becoming “saved” (I use that term because I met the Lord in a rather Evangelical way), my fiancee and I spent a year in blessed chastity before getting married in an Episcopal church. He wasn’t ready to become Catholic yet. Twelve years, four step-daughters (I only say “step” because I cannot take credit for birthing them) and two sons later (including a really wrong-headed attempt to homeschool the girls at which I utterly failed)my beloved and I had our marriage convalidated and he entered the Catholic church. I was blissfully happy and fully expected and hoped to live the rest of our lives out together as a faithful Catholic couple. About a year later he was gone, living with his mistress who is about the age of his oldest daughter. I think Satan got in there somewhere in the form of a temptation to a mid-life crisis. Although he came back for a year, during which time I totally forgave him for the infidelity and we sought the aid of the church through participation in Retrouvaille (the Catholic ministry for marriages on the brink of divorce) we had to part again when he told me he was still in love with the other woman and not willing to stop seeing her. So, now I am single too, in a different way than you. I will never say that marriage wasn’t worth the sacrifices we both made or that I am better off now (although sometimes I am sorely tempted to think that way when I happily wake up in the middle of my king size bed with my sweet cat.) The grief of divorce is the death that keeps on dying, because he is still there as a reminder to me every day that it was not supposed to turn out this way! But what can I do now? I am single, but not free to marry. What a relief in a way! I can’t really marry Jesus (as nuns do) because I am already married to my husband! Plus not many orders take 54 year olds (although I hear Rosalind Moss’ new order has no age limit.) So as I begin to feel my way around my new state of singleness I struggle for identity. The World says to start dating and find a new man asap! I did befriend a nice divorced Catholic man my age for a while but I just was not interested in partnering up. Plus I still sometimes weep for my marriage and beg God to save my husband. Recently I discovered that there is an apostolate out of Canada called Solitude Myriam. I found them because every few months I googled “consecrated divorcee.” After all, there are consecrated virgins so why not consecrated divorcees? Yesterday I found this group and will follow up with them. I am beginning to discern a vocation in my present state! I will remain single and available if and when my husband decides to return to the Lord and perhaps also me. I will focus on living a rich single life filled with ministry to my children, grandchildren and those in my community. I will pray and study and try to advance in holiness while I wait in hopeful expectation for the Lord to come back, either the next time I receive the Eucharist, when I die or when he descends with a shout! I will pray for you as you begin your new column and I wish you a fruitful and joyful single life…until…
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