The Ultimatum

It’s like…no matter what you do or what you say, sometimes you can’t convince people that despite all the bumps and bruises you’ve sustained along the way, you’re living your life exactly the way you planned to.

Yesterday at the end of work, I stumbled across my boss getting a bag of Fritos and a soda from the vending machine. I laugh and proceed to make fun of his bad choices and he tells me since he and his wife were working late that day, it was his first dinner. We’re both laughing at the sadness of the situation when a coworker comes over, looks my boss up and down and goes “Dinner?” I immediately burst into laughter at how she caught that and ask her how she knew.

“I’ve got a husband, I know how it goes.” I’m still laughing when I tell her I don’t have that kind of intuition because I’m not married. “Oh, don’t worry, one day you will be.”

If there’s anything that I’ve been finding to drive me crazy in the last 5 years of my life, it’s people telling me that one day my stance on marriage will change like there’s going to be this proverbial switch that goes off in my head where I’ll start craving the wedding and the husband and the titles and the kind of lifelong companionship that only seems to come from tying the knot around my neck. Just kidding, that was harsh. There’s nothing wrong with marriage, I can see it’s benefits and whatever, but what turns me off of it is having someone tell me that I secretly want it. Because if I’ve told you I’m not ready, and you insist on going “Yes you are” then you’re basically calling me a liar, and we can’t be friends. Especially when I’m still just trying to figure out if I do.

So I tell my coworker I don’t know that for sure and she immediately asks me 3 questions I knew were going to lead to some nonsense: If I have a boyfriend, how long had we been dating and how old I was. Apparently guys, the answers I gave her meant I was doing something wrong because why wasn’t I wifed up yet?! Why should he buy the cow if he’s getting the milk for free, she said and if he likes me then he should put a ring on it. I kid you not, all of these clichés fell from her mouth like horrible diarrhea and I could only just laugh. Like yo, hey lady, I’mma let you finish but you barely know me, my boyfriend or anything about our relationship except what I told you and now you’re telling me that I HAVE to demand he proposes to me because otherwise I’ll end up wasting too much time of my life waiting by the window for him to ride up on his horse and ask my father for my hand? Silly rabbit.

Since I was a lady of a certain age (not even 30 yet, chill), I was fading away without that ring on my finger. Oh no. God forbid. Stop the presses, alert the media! This was hilarious. Like, I appreciate her taking it upon herself to make sure every vagina she met was matched with its life mate via insertion of finger in ring, but I didn’t need her to almost make me feel bad about not forcing the boy to get on one knee. The talk has been had. If it happens, it happens and it’ll be a special declaration for us, as two people who came into a relationship wanting nothing and discovering everything we didn’t even know we wanted in the other. But will I instantly stop loving him because he doesn’t make an “honest woman” of me? No! Can we still maintain a relationship for the rest of our lives without marriage? Yes! And there’s nothing wrong with that. So to my coworker I say thanks for worrying about me, but I’ve got mama and sisters enough to do that, and they’ll actually take the time to listen to me before dropping the philosophy of Beyoncé on me like it’s law. There was no point telling her I wasn’t a fan. *shrugs*

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