Person1, while being an older single girl can be difficult at times, I have found that most of the time I am able to be pretty happy. Actually, I never really thought of being an older single as being so hard and certainly not as being a crisis. I think that there are a few reasons for this:
1. I have experienced things in my life that were WAY harder and I am just thankful that most of those things are past. I look back and can’t believe the things I had to go through in my life. Being single is nothing in comparision!
2. Being single in and of itself is not so hard for me. What is hard are the indirect results of being single, but I don’t usually associate those things with being single, even though perhaps I should. Recently, I did start to associate those things with being single, so I started to think that being single is difficult, but that was a very recent conclusion.
I am referring to things like trying to find a good living arrangement.
The truth is that I think that I have only been thinking about this lately because I recently moved home. The only way I can deal with living at home is by thinking that it is very temporary and that I will get married soon. When I lived on my own, I don’t think that being single bothered me as much.
I don’t know for sure and I never thought about this until this second (as I am writing this), but I would guess that when singles live on their own, they are generally more focused on living their lives in the present but when they live at home, they are more likely to view their current situation as temporary and to be more focused on getting married.
There are maalos and chesronos to each approach. Personally, I found that when I lived on my own and had to find a way to pay the rent, I didn’t have time and energy for shidduch hishtadlus. On the one hand, this meant that I wasn’t depressed about being single (since I was too busy and preoccupied to think about it) but on the other hand, I wasn’t doing hishtadlus. Now that I am living at home, partially in order to be able to spend more time and effort on hishtadlus (although there are other reasons as well), but I find that means that I am more preoccupied and stressed out about being single.
3. Boruch Hashem, I have a very fulfilling life, so being single doesn’t bother me so much. I never saw being married as being my main goal in life. My main goal in life has always been to learn and to teach (as you can tell by my user name!) When I wasn’t doing the teaching I wanted to be doing, I was much more depressed about that than I have ever been about being single. I think that for girls who view being married the way I view learning and teaching, it must be much harder.
4. I think the only times I really start to get bothered (depressed is way too strong a word) by the fact that I am single are when I read articles about how terrible the shidduch crisis is and how awful it is to be an older single, or when someone says something implying that it really hard to be an older single and they feel really bad for me. Then I have to remind myself that I did not consider it a crisis until I read that it was one!!! So I should stop feeling sorry for myself!!
5. I do think that it must be much harder to be an older single guy than an older single girl. It has always bothered me that people are so focused on feeling bad for the girls and no one feels bad for the boys even though it is probably WAY harder for them since boys need to be married much more than girls do.
My impression is that people don’t feel bad for the boys because they assume that any boy who is older and single must have issues, but I don’t think that’s fair for two reasons: A. It’s a very unfair generalization that is not necessarily true in all cases (clearly not in yours, for example).
B. Why is that a reason not to feel bad for them? They didn’t choose to have issues. Even if someone wants to argue that any boy who is older and single must be too picky or have commitment issues because there are so many wonderful single girls out there, why is that something to hold against them? They didn’t choose to have these issues and there might not be anything they can do about it.
6. Lately whenever I have been feeling a bit down about being single, I started hanging out in the CR. It’s a great antidote to stress, boredom and loneliness!
Hatzlacha Rabba! You sound like a wonderful person (1) and I hope you find your zivug soon!!