FOUR THINGS NOT TO DO WHEN YOU’RE SINGLE

By Andrea Guachalla

I’m sitting in my living room waiting while my brother quietly reads an article I just wrote about singleness. I asked him to review it before I go on to post it in a few days. A couple of minutes go by and he’s finally done. He puts my laptop down and immediately tells me I shouldn’t post it and then exhorts me to be content in my singleness.

I, of course, don’t receive the exhortation well, though I recognize the article was just a rant about me being single. 

In my mind, I am totally entitled to express how upset I am that a couple of weeks ago I had several people from church ask me again and again about my relationship status. One after another would come up to me with the same question in a different wording: “So, are you in a relationship right now?” “When are you getting married?” “Don´t worry, someone will come along when you least expect it” “Is there anyone special in your life?” “C’mon Andrea! What are you waiting for to get married!”, “Sister, I highly advise you to marry.” 

They seemed like harmless comments and questions, and they were in a sense. But you get tired of those kinds of questions after a while. Especially when you’re chronically single, and you don’t wish to be.

And so… What I did was to write an article about how annoyed and upset I was that I had so many well-intended brothers and sisters insist that I should marry while also ignoring the fact that I was NOT keeping myself single on purpose!

I thank God I asked my brother to read it before I went ahead and posted my rant online. That article never saw, and will never see, the light of day. However, I would like to address some of the common reactions singles have when they are in an undesired season of singleness. 

So, if you are currently (and perhaps chronically) single or you have people close to you who are, do yourself a favor and read along, hopefully me sharing the mistakes I’ve made over the years will help you not to do the same:

1. Don’t obsess over marriage!

Don’t spend all those years of singleness obsessing over marriage. It’s not worth it!

We’ve learned and we know that marriage is good because God instituted it. We know that it is good to desire to be married and have children. We should love God’s design for marriage. But! That doesn’t mean that we need to obsess over it, and that doesn’t mean that marriage is a walk in the park all the time.

If you are in a season, whether long or short, where there seems to be no possibility of a relationship, let alone marriage, in the foreseeable future, then enjoy it! Be intentional on growing as a Christian, and in your relationship with the Lord and others. Seek God in prayer and rest in his timing. You don’t need to think  about marriage 24/7 and feel discontent, or bitter, or sad that you are still unmarried, when you have so much time on your hands to invest in other things.

2. Don’t rant about singleness

God’s timing is not your timing. If he has given you a long period of singleness, and you haven’t been negligent in being open to a relationship with a godly man, then praise God! He has given you a lot of time to invest in your family, friends, church and your personal growth as a Christian.

You really don’t want to spend your single years complaining about your relationship status, when you could be content and joyful that God is in control of your deepest longings, and that regardless of your marital status he has given you a purpose: to glorify Him!

3. Don’t idolize romantic relationships

It is very easy to idolize romantic relationships when you are hyper-focused on marriage, and especially when you haven’t been in one yet, and that can have devastating effects. I hope someone listens to me on this because I learned it the hard way.

One of the worst mistakes that singles make is to idolize any romantic relationship they enter from the start thinking that it will be like in the movies, and that it will lead to marriage for sure. Well, surprise, surprise! It doesn’t always end that way.

Though I believe Christians should always date with marriage being the end goal of the courtship season, I also believe that courtship is a season of discovering if it’s God’s will (or not) for the couple to marry. And that means that sometimes it is NOT God’s will for a relationship to end in marriage. And that is painful, but it’s Ok.

When a person idolizes romantic relationships or a specific person that they think they want to marry, is when they cause themselves unnecessary harm and start resenting God for not giving them what they think they want.

Breaking news: God knows better. Therefore, His timing and plans are always better. 

4. Don’t resent marriage (or married people)

Lastly. 

If you are not married, and you really wish you were, don’t resent marriage or married people. God hasn’t called us to dwell on our unfulfilled desires but rather to rejoice in the salvation we received in Christ, and to think about the things that are good, and pure, and praiseworthy.

With shame I admit that years ago I looked down on married women who didn’t know as much theology as I did, or were as mature as I was because I didn’t think they deserved it. I didn’t think they deserved to enjoy marriage while I, the “good servant”, remained single for years and years. Of course that reasoning came from the very pit of hell, but at the time I didn’t stop myself from becoming bitter when comparing myself to other women my age who were wives and mothers already.

Don’t do that. Don’t envy or resent married people.

Another reaction people get when they remain unmarried for longer than wanted is to become bitter and start despising marriage and parenthood altogether. I’ve heard singles speak against marriage as if it was a plague to be avoided, even though they used to desire it.

Don’t do that either.

Neither despising married couples nor despising marriage will lead you to be content or to embrace God’s purpose for your life as a single. 

One thing I’ve loved over the years has been to listen to Bethany Beal speak about singleness. Bethany Beal is a Christian woman from Texas who married when she was 30 years old, and is the founder of a ministry called GirlDefined. She had a 10 year-long journey of desiring marriage and never seeing her longing fulfilled. Instead of complaining and being paralyzed by the unexpected story God wrote for her, she dedicated her life to serving other women, writing books, preparing for marriage and investing her time in the lives of others. 

For the singles out there, wouldn’t it be nice to look back on our single years and see that you rejoiced in Christ and that you stewarded your time, gifts and resources to serve Him? Wouldn’t it be nice to look back and not see that you made yourself miserable by obsessing over marriage, or demanding God to follow your timing, but rather that you waited patiently for His good will? 

Embrace the story God has written for you, because He is the Lord, and your value relies on Christ not in your marital status.