Getting to the Next Scene or
Why Won’t He Ask to Marry Me?
(send this link to a young woman
who is stuck in love)
It’s wedding season and, what, you are not getting married? Again. Another year and still no ring, no wedding gown, no battle with your mother over who to – and not to – invite. You’re stuck in Adele’s world – your heart and brain suffering with a longing and love you can’t seen to do anything about.
Wait, do you see my heart on my sleeve?
It’s been there for days on end and
It’s been waiting for you to open up
Yours too baby, come on now
I’m trying to tell you just how
I’d like to hear the words roll out of your mouth finally
Say that it’s always been me
This made you feel a way you’ve never felt before
And I’m all you need and that you never want more
Then you’d say all of the right things without a clue
But you’d save the best for last
Like I’m the one for you
You don’t know what you are doing wrong. Perhaps it’s time to Non Conform and try a New Feminist approach to your love life.
Maybe you’ve already tried the conformity route? There’s one guy you’ve adored – maybe more. You detected a possible match made in heaven because he is a good guy. You can imagine happy ever after with him –you’ve waited for him to think about you the way you think about him.
He hasn’t though. Not yet. And you are getting frustrated.
You did the diet, the workout, the sculpting and shaping class. You’ve loved him, forgiven him, broken up with him and taken him back into your arms one more time because . . . you just had to. You took the birth control pill, the morning after pill and perhaps something for those STDs he doesn’t know how he got.
You’ve worn cute skimpy stuff, killer heels, designer blue jeans and nothing at all. You drank, danced and drugged it up until the wee hours of the morning and he said, “I love you party girl.” Then, you went to the gym with him, jogged with him, played soccer, tennis and anything he wanted with him and he said, “I love an athletic girl.”
Meanwhile, you’ve been going to classes, pursuing your degree and talking about your future as a journalist, interior designer or Capitol Hill lobbyist. You’ve done internships, summer jobs and talked about going to grad school one day. You’ve taken him to the office parties and introduced him to your boss, colleagues and clients and he said, “I love a professional gal.”
Never once, not once, have you mentioned how much you want him to give you a ring and tell you “you are the one for me” and “I will honor and adore you all the days of my life.” You have never mentioned, not once, how much you want to have a baby – HIS baby to be precise. You’ve kept to yourself how confused you become trying to figure out how all this is going to work out and how you are going to be remain his party girl, his athlete, and his professional sidekick, while also having that baby and taking care of that home no one is talking about. You haven’t mentioned words like “moderation,” “compromise,” or “balance” – because these seem like spoilers which can ruin the movie you are trying to make.
But, now, do you find yourself stuck in that movie? -with a really great guy, an enviable set of skills and possibilities and no way to get to the next scene? –wondering if you are starting to sound more like Adele everyday?
Perhaps it is time for you to Non Conform and say “no more” to what you’ve been doing – and what you know with growing certainty is NOT working. Here are three things you can do toward taking charge of your life and your worth and refusing to conform to a culture that has failed to deliver. In the process, you may discover some great ways to get to the next scene – the one with the happy ending.
1. Talk to whoever sent this link to you. Tell them, “I will take you out for a glass of wine if you will tell me honestly what the heck I am doing wrong.”
2. Pick up Carrie Lukas’ “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex and Feminism.” If reading a Non Conformist challenge to the culture that is failing you is too much, start with the comments at Amazon and go from there.
3. If you are ready for a truly radical leap into Non Conformity, try Jennifer Roback Morse’s “Smart Sex: Finding Life-long Love in a Hook-Up World” (for sale at Amazon where you will notice that the reader who hates, hates, hates this book the most is an elderly guy named “Arnold” whose real concerned about “Maslow’s heirarchy of human needs.”)
So, get going … you, too, can have a good, long life with the man of your dreams!
Ok. So I understand what you are trying to do here. But let me tell you MY story. I did it the way you write here. I didn’t birth control it. I saved myself for marriage. Once married, I NFP’d it. Heck, I even taught others NFP and I was involved in marriage ministries. (Screeching sound) All stopped when my sweet child told me that her father, my husband was abusing her. Yeah. So much for fairy tales and cheap prescriptions and magical thinking. There is NO such thing as easy. Sure, you CAN do x, y, and z, but at the end of the day we live in a fallen world and people sin. I had a smug devout woman, married for many years tell me, “I will never divorce.” And I responded, “it might not be your choice.” Since my horrific custody battle and divorce, I now find myself friends with other single mothers MOST of whom were deserted by their husbands EVEN though they were “good girls.” To speak bluntly, this advice that you write here and that I used to espouse at many a speaking function to both teens and adults is bullshit. I truly believe that if you manage to find a decent partner REGARDLESS of all the sexual choices. it is luck. Pure and simple. The most happily together couple who have shared power and shared responsibilities in their home is not even married even though they have been together for thirteen years. We do right not because we get something out of it, but because it is the right thing to do.
My prayers are with you In Need of Grace. I see from your site how hard you are working to let love prevail where great wrong and harm has been done. I long ago concluded that the phrase “God does not send us things we cannot handle” made less sense to me than “only God knows how we handle some of the things He sends”. I hope that you have a great network of supportive women – young and old – where you and your child have found comfort and healing and safety.