Smug Marrieds

Before I rant I will offer the caveat that of course I am not referring to all married people. I hang out with married people all of the time and most of them I even like. I'm even happy for most of them to rub at least some of their smug togetherness in my face from time to time.


That said, I'm going to depart from the Bridget Jones way of thinking. Bridget, bless her red penguin pyjamas, couldn't wait to join the hooked-up brigade. As I feel right now not only do I feel the opposite of desperate to be tied down again (my Mum is desperate enough for the both of us) I'm convinced I'd rather be on my own.

It takes a night out with a bunch of smug marrieds to make me feel this way admittedly. There's only so much discussion of 'what your partner needs' that I can stomach before I'd like to throw up. Worse, I see no reason why a request from me that a married woman share a filthy text that she's received from her husband be met with blank stares and horror that I would consider breaching the sacred bond that is husband and wife. Is it really only single girls that swap dirty details and cock pictures?

Having said that it was a newly engaged girl that was so upset by my suggestion. I wouldn't mind but said 'girl' is now the wrong side of 4o and engaged to what will be her second husband - surely she should be obliged to retain a little healthy cynicism that allows for oversharing with her girlfriends?

My aunt in the meantime refuses to consider that my life is no way resembles the life of anybody's 'Mrs'. Despite the fact that I retained my own name when I was married, that I had a heated discussion with her while married about how I had retained my own name (and don't you start asking me why - it's my name for fucks sake!) she continues to send cards to me as Mrs (my initial) (his surname).

My aunt is old enough to have forgotten our heated 'but WHY should a woman change her name' conversation, that I will grant her. However I'm convinced she does not have dementia when it comes to my having got divorced. My uniquely alone presence at our annual family christmas party is enough of a reminder and I'm sure, knowing our family gossip tree, that she has recently been availed of the information that my ex is prepared to marry (yet another) woman.

My mother insists that it is a simple matter of having not crossed off my married name from her address book. But when one considers that I never even had a married name I wonder how such a wantonly incorrect entry ever made it into the address book, how it didn't get crossed out when I insisted that my birth name had never and would never change, and why my aunt persists in calling me something that now, 5 years after I first left my ex-husband, is not only a reminder of a failed relationship that I don't need and an insult to my independence.