Grieving Singlehood

 To introduce ourselves, we're a young, multicultural couple. He's American, and she's Swedish. We met just over 18 months ago in a small town in the south of France. 

Since then we have traveled - more in the last year than a lot of people will ever do their whole lives - if the theme of ‘transition’ doesn’t capture our lives together so far, there are very few other terms that might do a better job. 

In these months, we’ve lived in 6 different countries: Got engaged in one, married in another. And our family of two will become three in yet another country; in a month's time. 

We don’t say this to boast, but to summarize how our lives have been. 

Transition is almost never easy and frequently comes with stages of grief, anxiety, joy, and excitement. 

While marriage, covenant, and family make up something that’s pretty amazing, that doesn’t mean that giving up singlehood is easy. 

As we’re preparing for what is probably the greatest transition so far - that of parenthood - it occurred to us that we still need to grieve that singlehood is over. As introverts, we quite enjoyed singleness - to a degree. That might be a shock to many, but we’ve all seen the hurts that come with break-ups and the desperate pining for relationships that many singles have, thinking that marriage or dating might somehow cure their loneliness. That sex might cure their lust and that babies might cure their sense of worthlessness. So far, none of these have been true for us. Cures don’t come from outside of ourselves very often, because the illness is of the heart. 

Within the frame of the Covenant, however, we have made progress through these emotions. Not because the other person has automatically fixed them, but because we created a safe space for these things to surface. And having someone - your partner - stand by you through that might actually be what you need most. 

But what’s this about grieving singleness? What do we not have in a marriage that we had plenty of while we were single, and why would singleness have to be grieved?

Both of us are people that easily make friends with the opposite sex. While within that, obviously there are many pitfalls that plenty of people have fallen into - adultery, jealousy, neglect - we have had our own struggles trying to figure out how to be friends with other boys and girls, whilst also respecting each other. 

In order to begin to make sense of this struggle, we’ve used Henry Cloud’s tools on boundaries where he defines boundaries as a “flexible gate opening, rather than a rigid fence, i.e limit”. Neither of us is interested in limiting one another, and so this tool has gotten good use. 

We are also both hardcore introverts, so finding the balance between discretionary time and quality time is continual work. It helps that we tend to like each other quite a bit of the time, but understanding our own capacities to entertain and love one another has been a learning process, a process that would be lots easier if it never had to be done. Hence the grieving singleness.

Having a lifetime partner also gives you a 24/7 accountability partner, for better and for worse. Depending on your mood at the time, it can be your best support or just plain annoying. There’s always another person around, who may or may not agree with everything you feel like doing or opinions you have. Oh, and the compromise. Neither of us likes compromising in anything we do, and we also have a very hard time arguing. So this project will stretch both of us, inside and out. But as this Covenant is for life, we realize that hard conversations are more beneficial than letting things slide. The conversations are rarely smooth, and infrequently pleasant, but in the long run, they are essential. The amount of trust that we have earned through these conversations is invaluable and pure. We both feel respected and heard.

The conclusion that we came to while having this conversation is that singlehood was just a lot easier. Decisions were faster, we only had ourselves to mind. Overall, marriage just takes a lot more coordination. And it’s about double the price, sometimes more. But it's worth it.

By the way, ‘rawnest’ is defined as “raw and honest.” It’s a term we started using while we were long-distance dating and has become our favorite term for one of the foundations we planted our relationship on. Our goal is to describe our marriage 'rawnestly' if you will, and to honor Jesus and His sovereign hand in the process. Thanks for taking a part in our journey as you read this, and we look forward to having you again soon! Hej då!