Snarky Answers to the Question,”Why Aren’t You Married?” 

Between college and career, a myriad of both professional and relationship choices abound. Many women, hoping to cash in on big careers choose late nights at the office over late nights on the town.

Although most women would not have traded their career success for college relationships and an MRS degree, they are dumbfounded into silence when their unknowing friends, family and even other business women ask the big question, “Why aren’t you married?” Or the even more bothersome, “Why are you still single?”

When several of my single-by-choice friends expressed their dismay at such invasive questions, I was incredulous. Do people really ask those questions in 2014? Indeed, they do. More alarming than the questions are the questioners. An astounding number of women ask, “Why aren’t you married?” Even if a large percentage of those women might be trying to gauge if they personally made the correct choice by marrying or having a family, women shouldn’t have to field those questions from other women.

Where is our solidarity? Where is the respect we are supposed to have for women who have made it? Where is the liberation that “women’s lib” was supposed to offer us?

Hanging within each syllable of those questions is the unspoken pity over a social life, married life or family life wasted. To a woman approaching 40, the question, “Why are you still single?” can be especially problematic. In the words of Rebecca Mask, a Senior Marketing Analyst with a worldwide information solutions company, “still implies that being in relationships but not getting married means one is single. I disagree with that.”  Still implies that one is holding out, or worse, doesn’t have the sense to latch onto viable candidates.  The reality is, when faced with the possibilities of giving up one’s limited free time with friends, having to turn down career opportunities to keep a relationship solvent or needing to juggle a spouse or partner’s needs along with one’s own, many women just do not see the benefits outweighing the risks. Some women choose a committed relationship but no wedding vows. With divorce rates so high, who can blame them?  Mask’s reply, “Why screw up a good thing?” says it all. Women are increasingly unwilling to mess with success in order to sport a ring and have a guaranteed “plus 1.”

Successful women, who have worked hard to build careers and lives of their own, are unwilling to settle for less from a partner than they would, themselves, bring to a relationship. They have great careers, houses, vacations and friends without having a man (or woman) in their lives. They live big and they don’t wish to accept less.  Neena Malinich, salon owner and stylist at Sassy Shears, said, “I refuse to settle for anything less than butterflies.”

Sometimes, our own mothers, some of whom married young and had to forgo careers for homemaking, fear we will give up too much and encourage us to stay single. Paralegal Amber Lengacher admitted her own mother warned her not to get married, thinking that her daughter might “get bored” with such a life. Lengacher said her mother’s comments were “completely empowering and insulting at the same time.” Empowering because we all want the backing and support of the influential women in our lives, but insulting if they think we might not be able to have it all.

Realistically, women should celebrate that we have choices, not one choice to marry or to not. We can choose to get an education. We can choose to have careers. We can choose to date. We choose to marry or not. We choose to have children or to remain childless.  And tomorrow, we can choose to change our minds.

In the meantime, when insensitive or uninformed individuals ask, “Why aren’t you married?” or “Why are you still single?” Here are some quick retorts that every single woman should keep in her suit pocket:

• • Why do you ask?
  • I am waiting for the person I can live with but cannot live without.
  • Because being single is better than being in a bad relationship.
  • Most men just can’t handle all of my awesomeness.
  • Marriage is the #1 cause of divorce.
  • All the good ones are taken.
  • I was saving myself for George Clooney.
  • ___________ (insert your favorite, married hottie) is already taken.
  • It gives my mother something to live for.
  • Just lucky, I guess.
  • That’s a good question, I never thought of it before.
  • You’re so funny! Bless your heart! If you are from the South, you understand there is no real blessing involved here.
  • You have not asked me.
  • A spouse is not an insurance policy.
  • Momma didn’t raise a fool.