Single at 30′

Gosh, it feels so good to be writing again.

I don’t know if it is the sound of my pen scratching the paper (I always put my mind on paper before I type it on the computer) or if I am just high on flu medication, but this “Sex & The Bled” post better be a good come back post.

I woke up this morning, and as a lazy young millennial woman, I started off my day by scrolling through my Instagram feed and clicked “Next” on all the IG story videos, cause no one has time to watch a full 15 seconds video. Surprisingly, all my contact’s happened to be at a wedding that night… and there it was: the ultimate threat of every accomplished woman: being single at 30′. This is literally the social adaptation of the famous horror movie “SAW”.

Why do we fear to be single at this age? why is 30 the deadline to find your other half when the biological clock goes over 30? Why are we single at 30 when our mothers had us at 25? Do we expire at 30′? What’s wrong with being single at 30′ anyway? What does that tell about a girl in our society in 2019?

While asking myself all these questions, I remembered I was 27y/o which means I still have 3 years before I start stressing out about not being married (do I even want to get married?!!), but still, I want this stress to be well thought out, prepared and organized, so I might as well start  now.

30′ is the age where we are supposed to peak in every domain, career, money, friends family and what not.

We might get the job we want, the perfect hobbies, learn new things, travel around the world and have a fine circle of close friends, there still will be a whole that needs to be filled: the husband. (No puns intended, wink wink)

In our society, a woman needs to be everything: beautiful, healthy, sexy, successful, funny and smart, and then she can apply to the marriage field, of course, it doesn’t necessarily go in that order but this is how we were raised in the Moroccan society, most of the young girls are being taught to prepare for this big step, to be the best eligible bride: you need to speak little, be quite, lower your voice and be domestic as F***. Nobody likes a girl with big glasses and a big mouth who speaks her mind.

“If you are 29 with no marriage perspective you might as well grab your fake Lady Dior bag and go hit those coffee shops where everybody knows everybody, and start a staring contest with a stranger who thinks nobody knows about his fake Rolex.” So I heard while I was waiting in line at a shop in front of two girls sharing their anxiety about adulthood, and I didn’t know if this was even sadder than using Dating Apps.

The more you finesse yourself, the more successful you become the more you age as well, which means you need to lower your expectations to meet the market and compete with those early 20’s firm breasts no thighs girls.

If you hit 30 while single in Morocco, your friends will hold your hand and reassure you that time has changed and it takes time to find the perfect match, your parents will smile at you with worried eyes, your parent’s friends will think that something must be wrong with you for you to be that age and that accomplished without a man.

I personally think that pressure around marriage should be banished, and our parents’ generation needs to understand that it takes more time now to build a career, and be financially and mentally stable than it took 30 years earlier when they were going through the same path.

30 y/o is not a deadline to achieve everything and start thinking about having a kid, even better: not everybody wants to set the same goals and have the exact same life, some of us don’t want children, some of us don’t want to be tied to someone with a contract, there was a period where I was asked every day if I had someone, the question was so recurrent that I started hating the idea of marriage, and I seriously thought of it a lot, what’s in it for me to get married? what’s marriage anyway? a paper where you promise to love someone no matter what? is that even possible?

Everything needs to be put in perspective, we might all follow the same path in life, but we also might just want to go on our own pace, without rushing into anything and having to fix things later, we also might have different needs, different goals, life is full of choices just make your own. (this one sounds a bit like a cheesy Instagram quote but I am keeping it).

Would love to hear how you handle being single at 30/ late 20’s. Do you stress about it? Do you love it? Do you even care about it? Let me know in the comments.