I.L.P.

"Paris.  How cliched to be impressed.  But I was.  It's an unbelievable gift to be able to travel.  It just is.  How thrilling.  How thrilling to be somewhere different - where every sight and smell seems strange and exotic.  Paris, where I'd been so many times before, was still a foreign city to me.  The cafes, the bread, the cheese, the men with their ruddy faces and gray mustaches - and the smell.  It smells old and earthy.  European.  I love it."

Single Schmingle

7/15/09

It's the most annoying question and they just can't help asking you. You'll be asked it at family gatherings, particularly weddings. Men will ask you it on first dates. Therapists will ask you over and over again. And you'll ask yourself it far too often. It's the question that has no good answer, and that never makes anyone feel better. It's the question, that when people stop asking it, makes you feel even worse.

And yet, I can't help but ask. Why are you single? You seem like an awfully nice person. And very attractive. I just don't understand it.

But times are changing. In almost every country around the world, the trend is for people to remain single longer and to divorce more easily. As more and more women become economically independent, their need for personal freedom increases, and that often results in not marrying so quickly.

A human being's desire to mate, to pair up, to be a part of a couple, will never change. But, the way we go about it, how badly we need it, what we are willing to sacrifice for it, most definitely is changing.

So maybe the question isn't anymore, "Why are you single?" Maybe the question you should be asking yourself is "How are you single?" It's a big new world out there and the rules keep changing.