Brethren, as we enter the month of love, let’s take a moment to appreciate the hardships that those searching for the right mate go through.
When my single friends tell me about their adventures in the dating world, I clutch my handbag a little more closely to myself and look at them with a new level of admiration, wondering how they have kept their sanity through it all.
As one of my favourite writers, Jackson Biko, put it, things have become so dire that if you are in the dating scenario, “You need to wear a hazmat suit”.
The most recent tale that had my eyes popping was of one gutsy not-so-young-man whose response to the innocent question “So, are you married?” was “Not really.”
Not really? Not really?
I ask you again, ‘Not really’? ‘Not really’ is an acceptable response when trying to decide whether you are full or whether there is room for dessert. It is in no way a suitable description of one’s marital status. What on earth did he mean by that?
Was half of him married while the other half remained resolutely single? Was he halfway married to half a person? Did he vaguely suspect that he was in a relationship, though he couldn’t be quite sure?
The problem is, this not- really- married man is not alone in his strange worldview. There are many more halfway-married people out here than you would ever have thought possible.
A close cousin of not-really-married is ‘It’s complicated’. Single ladies, if you come across Mr Complicated, don’t wait for the alarm bells in your head to stop ringing, or start thinking that you will be the one to finally end all the Complications in his life. Flee! Don’t stop moving until you have put at least 2 kilometres between you and Mr Complicated, before you become the next big Complication in his life.
Unfortunately, space does not allow me to introduce us to the cast of complicated characters littering the path that leads to the right mate. My advice to you, my dear single-and –searching friends, is this: wear your Hazmat suit!
