Where Have All the Single People Gone?

...gotten married, every one.

Why is it that every time I go out these days, I only call two people and then I'm done with my list? It used to be I never went out in public with less than a dozen friends. Restaurants hated us. When we used to go out, we looked like a very laid back, lazy attack squad released on downtown, fanning out in all directions.

I have noticed an epidemic in the last few years. Like a true contagious and deadly disease, it has taken out many of my friends. It has struck not only those who seemed vulnerable to it, but also those who said they would never ever be trapped by it. I wonder if the people who always loudly declare "I will never get AIDS!" are likewise the first ones to contract it? Similar to survivors of the plague, it is unlikely to recover a friend after they've gotten married. If you do, they are just a burned out, traumatized, bitter shell of what they used to be.

In a way it's worse than a disease. Because while my friends who get married don't die off (at least not yet), neither are they the people I enjoyed good times with in the past. They morph into adults with responsibilities, their thoughts are about kids and houses and future joint burial plots with their spouses. I can not relate to any of these things, nor do I want to. I remember one married friend showing me her newly painted townhouse. She was really really excited about it. They had painted the whole thing beige. Freakin beige. What kind of reality is that where the pique of excitement is beige paint??

Honestly, the whole boring-married people thing baffles me. I know it is possible to be married AND still be fun, and normal, because I know couples like that. They are few and far between but they exist, giving me hope for my remaining friends who will undoubtedly get hitched soon. But why are the lame ones the predominant species in the married family?

The biggest difference between ebola and marriage? I don't want ebola. And maybe the reason I'm so distressed about all this is that I don't want to become insipid when I get married. And maybe what worries me the most of all, is that I may never have a chance to find out.

The Administration called, they want their asshole back

In the last couple weeks I have been knocked flat on my ass with stories of men treating my friends like shit. There's always one of those douche-bag stories floating around, but it seems like lately the number of assholes has sky-rocketed. Is there something in the water? Or rather, in the beer? Are all the men on the planet PMSing at once? Because this behavior has skipped right over the Atlantic Ocean and effected my friends across the pond as well.

It is bad enough to hear stories of my friends getting treated like doormats (or whores), but the most depressing part for me is how these conversations always go:

[friend wraps up story]
Me: Gasp! I can't believe he said/did that! What an outrageous asshole! Please tell me you are never talking to him again/seeing him again/kicked him in the balls/slapped him in the face/shoved him out of a moving car/fed him poison??
Friend: Well, no...that's just the way he is/he's very stressed out right now/i dont think he meant it like that/he had a paper cut so was very cranky/i just take things too personally/he's right, monogamy is outdated/its my fault for bringing it up....etc.

There are few excuses for being rude or callous to another person. But when men act like babies or assholes or self-centered bastards, and the women in their lives just take it, what reason would they ever have to change? This guy, let's call him Shmeric, should not have called my beautiful, smart, capable, globe-trotting friend a "ditzy blonde with no situational awareness who dresses like a mom". What kind of insufferable jerk says things like that out loud to another person? On the other hand, my friend should not have gone to New York with him, after they had broken up and he had treated her like shit for months and made her feel less than human and incompetent, fat and ugly and worthless. It is his responsibility that he acted like scum, but what did she really expect from him by that point??

I am not saying I have never let a guy treat me badly. In fact, I've been in a couple outrageously unhealthy relationships, the second one all the worse because I should have learned from the first one. But I think that's why I get so upset now. I know what its like to defend someone who doesn't deserve it, and I also know the freedom and empowerment that finally comes with standing up for yourself, with tossing aside the sludgy guy, with having the confidence to be alone and knowing that being alone is better than being with someone who diminishes you every day.

It just boggles my mind that I have so many friends that are so extremely smart and motivated and capable until it comes to men and then they are simpering idiots. What is that about??

If you are a guy, please, don't be an ass. Its not that hard to be decent to the people around you, I promise it isn't. But if you are a girl, stop putting up with bullshit. You deserve better.