What Married Women Miss

I have to warn you up front: This is definitely not an article that is weighty, intense, thought-provoking or deeply introspective. If you are a married woman, however, it will hopefully give you a few smiles and remind you of life when you were single – as well as the lives of many of your friends. Of course, I had to ask other women that I knew what they miss most about being single. Their answers were surprising!

First I checked with my friend Sharon, who is married.

“Movies, restaurants and cooking,” she said. When she was single, she could pick out the movie she wanted to see, and then either see it by herself or tell her date that that was what she wanted. She said that when you’re married, you need to be more accommodating – also, your husband was just as likely to tell you what he would and would not watch.

As to restaurants, she said it was the same kind of deal. Yes, you can go to a restaurant by yourself if you are single, but how much time is there for that? You usually try to spend your spare time with your husband, and who wants to go to a restaurant that your husband really can’t stand?

Cooking is what a married woman is supposed to do, male acquaintances have informed me – although, thankfully, not as much as we used to. When we ladies were single, we cooked when there was something we wanted. But on no account did we fix meals two or three times a day! With a single person, food usually involves Lean Cuisine, Egg McMuffins or dinner at Mom’s (along with the occasional dinner out with the boyfriend). Being single doesn’t include a male voice saying “What’s for dinner, honey?” every night.

I asked my friend Gail what she had missed most when she was married. “The bed,” she said. Was there a slowdown in her sex life? No, it turns out that when she was married, she had a “bed hog” for a husband. She had to fight for every inch of space she got in their queen-sized bed. There was no point in getting a king-sized bed, she told me. He would have just taken all that space, too. Plus, he snored.

As you might expect, I’ve been told by others that what they missed the most was being able to make decisions by themselves. Well, they were able to make decisions, but they also had to take into account what their husbands wanted, as well. Everything from selecting new carpeting and furniture to where to vacation that year had to be bilaterally considered. A husband who didn’t like the vacation that was going on his credit card could be hard to live with.

Actually, I was rather surprised that I didn’t get some answers that I expected from my informal survey. Really, I thought there would be more of missing torrid single sex, of complaints of not receiving roses, of not-to-be flirtations at a Friday Happy Hour. But the biggest allusion I received as to a drop in the romantic level was a friend who talked about her husband clipping his toenails. “When we were single, he didn’t do that.”

There are indeed a number of things we women miss about being single, and I know I haven’t covered them all here. Yet, even with the things that we miss, we wouldn’t trade our marriages for their return. Because, you know, it works both ways. When we’re single, we miss out on what there is to be gained from being married!

Which do you prefer – being single or being married?