Never Married Women: Stigma Needs Total Destruction!

I really had my last straw with this, when a former client of mine, a man in his 70s named Gene, asked me if I had ever been married. I was his personal trainer, so I had to contain my resentment that he would ask this. Since he was my client, he was helping me pay my bills!

I nonchalantly told him I'd never been married. I couldn't believe his response. Let's see if I can recall precisely what he did. He shook his head in disgust and muttered something like, "Geez, what is WRONG with these men?"

There is a stigma that if a woman has never been married, then something must be wrong with HER. But if a woman HAS been married, but divorced a few times, nobody wonders what could be wrong with her.

If a woman has never been married, the idea is that something about her was bad or ugly, which would explain why no man ever wanted her. According to this ridiculous line of logic, the woman who's been divorced apparently had nothing wrong with her. In other words, there must be something really right with her, even though the bum she was married to, may have married her for all the wrong reasons!

In other words, let's take a woman who's been divorced twice. How do you know she wasn't married to a couple of alley cats? Or drunkards? Though this may reflect her judgment, it sure doesn't mean she was more desirable than the never-married woman, just because two men wanted her to be their wives.

Am I any less attractive or less dynamic or less desirable than a woman who's BEEN married? And what about all those married women? Seems like quite a few of them have mostly rotten things to say about their husbands.

When I learn a woman has been divorced - even if it's just once - I tend to pity her. Because a divorce means that she threw those married years down the drain. A divorce means that maybe the entire divorce process was a huge mess, a relentless legal battle. Gee, who'd ever want to go through that?

And there's more. A divorce can mean ongoing child custody battles, fighting in front of the kids, stalking, and who knows what else. The marriage that culminates in divorce could have been studded with unfaithfulness, neglect and abuse.

So when you learn that a woman has never, ever been married, don't hang open your mouth like Gene did. The never-married woman doesn't have it as bad as you think. Think of all your married-women friends. How many have been divorced? How many are separated? How many sleep in separate rooms from their husbands? How many are no longer turned on by that strange man who shares her house?

My sister-in-law's first marriage lasted 13 years. I can't help but think of how she wasted those years. So don't pity me. I've had it with all the fools who keep putting that stigma on never-married women. Get over it.