After a Living Single seminar.

My overall feeling is that singles seminars shouldn't happen just for singles. I think how singles fit into church is an issue for the whole church. Don't always put singles in a closed-off place and let them shout about their problems without bothering anyone. In the same vein, don't have all the marriage and parenting things off in their own seminars either. Encourage everyone to come along, because whenever I've heard anything about marriage, I mean gritty day-to-day stuff not ordinary sermon stuff, I don't feel jealous, I feel like I understand other people better, and marriage is sort of demystified. I think it'd be helpful for marrieds to be reminded of what it's like to be single, or to learn what it's like to be single at an older age. My church did a good thing at our 5pm weekend away recently. All women at different stages of life in one room, all men in the other, a panel of singles and marrieds and parents in each room, DISCUSS. It's that easy.

The way NOT to discuss singleness is to ask a single person why they are single. That's not something that happens to me often and I hadn't worked up any rage, but a single person rarely has an answer they feel good about. Unless they CHOSE singleness, the answer has to be "nobody loves me" or "there aren't enough men/women" or "was in a relationship for a while" etc etc. If the answer is "God's will", that begs the question why ask them in the first place? Why is anyone married? Why is anybody born? God's will.

Also, people can get really tense about negotiating dating. I haven't had many issues but I could see others feel extremely hurt and frustrated. The older you get as a single person, the more difficult it is. You've got a few rejections under your belt. You've got some scars and sensitivities. Behaviour of both men and women can be confusing. People get shot down for being too direct, too vague, too keen, too stand-offish. Guh. No wonder people stay single. There isn't this one formula that everyone approves of and feels safe communicating within... things that say "this means I like you as a friend" and "this means I'm asking you out for real". I guess there never will be, and that's why we have romantic comedies. I don't know if I've said this before, but a matchmaker would save a lot of bother.

And I think it's possibly harder to be a single man than a single woman. I've blogged this before, but last night reinforced it. I won't speak for them, you should ask them yourself.

Anyway, the big thing is breaking down stigma to care for each other better; less pity, more understanding; the little niggly details of singleness aren't something I'm going to spend time on, because I'm going to let go of my hang-ups and be awesome, as per my earlier blog post.