If there’s one thing I’m sick and tired of hearing as a single girl, it’s that I’m single because I’m “looking for men in the wrong places,” or that I’ll find the right guy when I stop looking. Not only is it ridiculous to think someone else knows how I should be navigating the dating world, it’s also completely untrue.
- So, you already know where I met every single one of my exes? People assume that all my exes were sleazebags I found in bars. This can’t be further from the truth. I met some while I was at college, others at religious meetups, some at nightclubs and even more on the job. In fact, there isn’t a damned place I can think of that I haven’t met at least one ex in. How the hell can I be meeting people in the wrong places if I’m meeting people everywhere?
- Please, continue to wax poetic about how my taste in men sucks. Because, clearly, I actively must be trying to hurt myself by going to said “wrong places.” It’s not like I can’t control my attraction to people, right?
- Don’t patronize me. Seriously. When people say these kinds of sayings, it always comes out so condescendingly. I can’t help but get offended half of the time.
- Are you going to try to set me up on a date? No? Well then, shut your mouth. Call me salty or call me just fed up with people trying to console me over my crap love life, but I don’t want to hear people remarking about my singlehood unless they’re going to do something to correct it.
- A lot of people stopped looking for love and still haven’t found it. I ought to know. I’m single because I gave up on finding a decent man. I still have yet to see some Prince Charming show up at my door. In fact, I don’t know many people who are total recluses who actually have husbands or wives show up at their door without a “mail order” service being involved.
- So, where is this supposed mythical ‘right’ place? Obviously, I haven’t seen this mythical Valhalla of decent men and my taken friends have. Where is it? Is it under a rock? The far off corner of Timbuktu? Seriously, let a sister know.
- There are nicer ways to say you feel sorry for me, you know. I often equate these kinds of stupid cliches as ways that people say that they’re sorry that I have such awful luck in love. I really wish that they’d just say, “I’m sorry.”
- You don’t know my love life. You don’t know me, either. The thing that really pisses me off is that people often suggest that I am not making a serious effort in finding an honest, decent, commitment-ready guy. There’s no way that people could know how much effort I’ve put into dating guys, meeting guys, and everything else. When people tell me that I’m searching in the wrong places, they make it sound like I’m the reason I’m single, when in reality, I pulled out every stop to try to find a halfway decent soulmate.
- How exactly am I supposed to stop looking while looking? I get it — desperation isn’t sexy. But seriously, how the hell am I supposed to just stop looking? Last time I checked, the way you find something is to seek it out!
- I’m pretty sure you’re not psychic. Why is it that when people tell me I’ll find love when I’m not looking, they always say it as if they’re 100 percent dead sure? Last time I checked, no one can tell the future, but I can predict with certainty that the next person who says this crap to me will annoy me.
- I find it really odd that the people who tell me this garbage are often in pretty awful relationships. True story, I heard the “wrong places” cliche come from a person who was being cheated on by her husband. If she knows the mythical “right place,” maybe she should go get a new husband, too? Hell, I’d be cool with taking a trip to the Great Husband Store with her if she’d just show me where it’s located!
- I’m so tired of searching. This suggests that I should be the one doing the searching, and I’m sick of it. Why isn’t anyone searching for me?
