Expectations and Implications--Women

Ladies, ladies, ladies. My friends, I come to you today in humility to offer up a bit of my most hard-earned life lesson: Don't Have Expectations.

Beyond expecting to be treated well and to have a good (not easy, not perfect) life, everything else isn't going to happen the way you think it should.  

I am currently living my plan C life.  I have been thrown a few curve balls that I didn't see coming, and for the first time I'm feeling pretty confident and content in Plan C.  

May I make one suggestion, take your plans, your ideas of a perfect life, your visions of how your life will be and throw them out the window.  It's time to look at your life as is and then see what's in your control and then do something about those things, then just let the rest be. 

You cannot control, and thus you cannot expect others, in their right to choose freely, to make your life happy, put-together, and simple.  That's just never ever going to happen, married, single, dating, not dating, with children, without children, with a good job, with a bad job, with no job, etc.  

Because we have the "nature to nurture" we desperately want other people in our lives and when we don't it can be upsetting, and when we do it can be disappointing when they don't behave/think the way we want them to. 

I'm unmarried and thus cannot comment on married life, so to you lovely married ladies know that I admire you and recognize your struggles as no less difficult than my own, but for now I'll focus on the single ladies.

Ladies, you need to know that MARRIAGE IS NOT A RIGHT, it's not even a privilege offered to the "deserving" or a blessing offered to the faithful, it is a human relationship that comes to some and not to others depending on where they are in their lives.   

IT IS NOT UP TO GOD TO GIVE YOU A SPOUSE. That's not how it works. Pray for a happy marriage in your future, show God that that is your righteous desire by all means if you want, but don't accusingly ask Him why you aren't married or in a relationship as if it is some how His responsibility to hand you a functioning family/relationship; you have to make such things happen for yourself.

Who you are with or your relationship status is not the defining attribute of who you are, but additives.  You NEED a distinct sense of self without the influence of others. 

In the Mormon church families are prized as the most important unit in society, and rightfully so, but among unmarried women with no children  the complaint that it is "difficult being single in a church full of families" often comes up, to which I like to pose the question, "compared to what?"  Would you rather live within a culture that discourages women from becoming wives and mothers or that defamed the title of motherhood? Would you rather live in the world where the desire of making a family is laughed at and ridiculed? Even if I never marry and never have children I would still choose to live amongst those who preach that there is nothing more ennobling and empowering than motherhood.

Stop expecting men to be what you want, think how you do, or act like you.  Stop thinking that every guy you meet is "the one"-- there isn't a "one and only" so stop looking for it.  If you are doing that you'll miss the good, deserving guys on the way.

Don't be desperate, when your desperate only one of two things will happen: 1. you'll end up with a schmuck, or 2. you'll end up alone.  You don't like needy, desperate men, why should they like a needy, desperate you?

Yes, it sucks to go to bed alone. Yes it's frustrating to not have someone to talk your day out with.  Yes it can be lonely to spend a weekend by yourself.  Yes, it is not good for [wo]man to be alone, but chances are you won't always be alone and you will find someone some day that will love you and that you can love and take care of.  Just chill and don't spend the energy and time it takes to worry over the when and how and who.