Advantages of Singlehood
People would tell me there are advantages to being single. In my heart I called them liars. Yes there are more difficulties that come with relationships but there is also greater pleasure. Surely the higher reward is worth the added pain and trouble. They were just trying to console me. However my eyes have seen differently. There is truth in their words.
My friends are now getting married. 3 are married, 1 engaged, 2 seriously dating, and 2 single. Things aren’t the same at home anymore. It used to be that I’d hang out w/ the boys every night. We’d stay up late and do stupid boy stuff. Alas our days are numbered. The only guys that would hang out w/ me are the ones who weren’t married. Frankly, married people are no fun. They don’t come out and play and when they can, they don’t stay out late. Even those dating and engaged often had strings attached. It wasn’t like the old days; it won’t ever be like the old days ever again.
Friday night; our supposedly ‘boy’s night out’ to celebrate my friend’s new job, there were only 3 of us. The one getting engaged enlightened me while we were talking about our friends and how times have changed. They’re not free to hang out anymore. They can’t just always leave their SO and come hang out. They can’t stay out till the wee hours of the morning every day anymore. There’re responsibilities; another person’s needs. Adding an SO also brings along ‘friend restrictions’. You’re friends become her friends; her friends become your friends; the only friends that survive are the mutual friends. My friend explained the ‘couple’s friends’. Often times the couples would pair up b/c the two guys got along real well and the two girls. They would often do stuff together in their couple pairs without the rest of the world. Mutual friends survived and other friends became acquaintances. Once a couple became more serious their social lives changed.
Then it dawned on me; this is the advantage of singlehood. Forget the ‘life’s easier’ speech. There are additional blessings to marriage which help counteract the troubles. This argument seldom persuades those who are partnerless. The advantage is freedom in ministry. I saw my advantages when I saw how my friends behaved socially. If I was married I wouldn’t be able to stay at the dorms until midnight. I would have to eat at home more than the 2-3 times a week I do now. I wouldn’t be able to invest into relationships as heavily as I can now. One of my friends who’s married tells me how he misses being a small group leader and how he wishes he could still do it and how he’d still be a good one. I have no doubt he’d lead a good Bible Study but he doesn’t have the time to pour out into a small group. He can’t hang out with them 2-3 nights a week. He has a home and a wife to take care of.
I realized my ministry, as it is now, would nearly not exist if I were married. Everything would change. The flexibility in my time allows for me to do things married people cannot. It gives me a dimension in my ministry that goes away once I would become married or seriously involved with someone. I need to leverage this as much as possible. There is an advantage to my relational status and I need to become a good steward of it.
All this sparks another thought about why I’m still single which is to be continued . . .