如果朋友圈只剩你一个人单身
Making your way through this cruel, confounding, ever-changing world is difficult. Something make you anxious this week, or any week? Lay it on me at askdaveholmes@gmail.com. I'm here to help you minimize the damage you will necessarily inflict on the world. So, what's your problem? Dave, I am newly 30, and feeling lost. I am pretty sure (ugh) I am gay, but have not come out-not for any fear of retribution, but I personally feel it is my business and mine only. My real insecurity lies somewhere else at the moment. I have had the same best friends since grade school. Turning 30, they are all getting engaged or married or having kids. I am happy for them, truly. I want to be part of their new and exciting lives. But I am slowly circling the drain of being the only single friend left in a sea of couples. I have never really cared all that much, but I feel like now I am fighting a clock to find happiness, and that happiness exists only with a mate. I enjoy my single life and solitude, but I am feeling more and more out of place among the people whom I love the most. I feel like I cannot relate to them the same way anymore. How can I be single in a world of coupledom without crippling anxiety? Is this normal when you turn 30? It doesn't help that parents are nagging, work is not as fulfilling as it once was, and I am longing for a drastic change in life but have no idea where to begin. -Andy It is completely natural to feel anxious when all of your friends are coupling up, which they seem to be doing right on schedule. But I'd ask you to pause your churning mind for a moment and ask yourself one simple question: Whose schedule are you on? Do you want to be in a relationship because you're ready to explore life with another human being? Or do you want it because you're the only one who doesn't have it? Does your happiness truly depend on having a mate, or is it this year's iPhone? |