Smug Marrieds
Channeling my inner-Bridget to survive the horror that is the Smug Marrieds.
(This post is taken from the dusty depths of my personal archives)
When it comes to issues of love and relationships, I often find myself turning to Bridget Jones for advice.
For the unacquainted, how’s life under the rock? Bridget is not a family friend or a panelist on Loose Women as you may have assumed, but the protagonist of Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding. More than that, she is the voice of single women everywhere who are sick to death of their married friends, or ‘Smug Marrieds’ as she so lovingly calls them.
Throughout the books, Bridget was tormented by the Smug Marrieds. Determined to find her a husband, presumably so that she would have someone to bring to their dinner parties- you can’t buy chicken kievs in odd numbers- they constantly asked her “How’s the love life going” and lovingly reminded her that “the clock is ticking”.
Since Bridget is in her thirties, I thought I wouldn’t have to put up with this behaviour from my friends for a long time. However, to my absolute horror I have recently found myself in a similar situation.
One by one all of my university friends have entered relationships. They’re too young and too poor to be Smug Marrieds and so I will refer to them from this point onwards as Smug Couples.
That just leaves me. Me, myself and I. Lone wolf. Spinster. Or, in true Bridget Jones speak, singleton. A singleton who is, as of late, drowning in the Sea of Love.
Of course, I’m happy for my friends. No, really I am. Young love and all that, isn’t it sweet, aren’t they great together… etc etc.
However, the problem with these Smug Couples is that once their own love lives settle down, they become infatuated with those who haven’t found someone yet. Being single is a fascinating alternate universe to them and so you become their project. While they’re off having the time of their lives on Planet Venus, my feet are planted firmly on Planet Earth- and we simply can’t have that.
Smug Couples forget what life is like on Planet Earth because they can’t fathom life without their other half. The idea of eating dinner alone is alien to them, they always have someone to go to the cinema with, and every day the idea of being single grows more foreign to them.
In their eyes I am a dangerous specimen: a singleton they must tame. My love life is the subject of every conversation, as they try to find a solution to my perpetual singleness. “When are you going to get a boyfriend?” is as common as “How are you?”, only to be quickly followed up with “But have you tried?”.
To make matters worse, I am living with most of my coupled-up friends in our student house next year. Now this is completely my own doing but when we decided to live together, all of us were single. Funnily enough, I didn’t think that I would be the only single one left by June. As one of my friends so kindly put it the other day:
“Isn’t it crazy how we are all in relationships at the same time? Oh sorry Saoirse, I forgot you were here”
Unfortunately, she is right. There are couples wherever I turn. It’s an epidemic.
As for the house, to put it bluntly it’s going to be a Sex Mansion isn’t it? And by Mansion, I mean a grotty terraced house with no garden. More than that, it’s going to be my own personal hell. My Room 101. My worst nightmare.
As well as the noises, (I sincerely hope the house has thick walls), it also means I won’t be able to escape the pitying glances and endless questions about ‘my love life’. The morning after every Big Night Out (BNO) will be an interrogation scene where every interaction I had with a male the previous night will be cross-examined by the Smug Couples.
I don’t mean to play the victim card but why am I being punished like this? I haven’t committed any serious crimes, apart from when I accidentally shoplifted a birthday card when I was 8 (my mum realised by the time we reached the car park and made a beeline back to the M&S Food Hall to pay for it).
Besides, this isn’t Regency England. It is perfectly acceptable for an 18 year old to be single (at least it should be perfectly acceptable). I don’t have a dowry to settle or a scandal to hush-up, what’s the rush? On second thoughts maybe a dowry would help… No stop it! I can’t give in to their madness.
In the meantime, I must pull myself together. To deal with her situation, Bridget Jones chooses vodka and Chaka Khan but while this is tempting, the world has moved on since the nineties and it is no longer socially acceptable to drink copious amounts of vodka alone in your knickers (sigh). If I did, the university support services would almost certainly be called and I don’t need them to pity me too.
I am only 18. I shouldn’t be worrying about dying alone. Or being eaten by Alsatians. What I really need is for my friends to stop acting like Mrs Bennet and just let me get on with it. Until they take off their bonnets and make peace with my singleness, I am going to flaunt my single life in their faces. How I do this, I am not sure. Perhaps, I will buy my own diamonds and buy my own rings. My student budget won’t really stretch to that though. Vodka and Chaka Khan it is- cheers to my carefree, single life.