When people, especially women, reach a certain age between their late twenties to their mid-thirties, it’s like nothing else they do matters and the one question that keeps haunting them is ‘why aren’t you married yet?’ or even worse ‘better hurry up and get married so you can have babies’ like suddenly that’s what your worth depends on. That’s what all those years of education and hard work and personal development should get you; a husband or a wife otherwise something must be terribly wrong with you.

I know both men and women are tired of this stigma that if you’re not married by a certain age then you’re never going to get married because the train has left the station and this ship has sailed, but I often wonder when people ask these questions or judge or make these remarks, do they ever stop and think that maybe it is our choice to stay single or that we actually would like to take our time picking the person that we’re going to spend the rest of our lives with? Do they ever wonder that maybe we don’t want to have kids or get married traditionally or even get married at all? Do they ever think that we had plenty of options and opportunities to get married ‘early’ and we didn’t do it because we weren’t ready or we weren’t sure? Why is the assumption always that something is wrong with us or we’re people who can’t be loved? Why can’t we normalize the decision to marry whenever it feels right for us?

Personally, I know so many people who regret getting married young because they have grown up, evolved and fell out of love with their partners and I know so many people who regret having kids because they weren’t mentally or emotionally ready for that kind of responsibility and I know so many people who are stuck in unhappy marriages because they don’t want to go through the mayhem of divorce or they’d rather be labeled ‘married’ than ‘divorced’ even it’s costing them their own peace of mind and happiness. Why don’t we have a word with these people too? Why don’t we judge them and put the same kind of pressure on them?

It baffles me that being married elevates you in society even if you’re miserable or you’re not in love with your spouse or you’re not a good parent and it baffles me that people actually push you to just go for it as if they’re telling you to try their grandma’s special cheesecake. Marriage is a huge commitment. Kids are a lifetime responsibility. Finding the right person takes a lot of time, trial and error, experience and a bit of luck. So it’s perfectly normal for people to make that decision later in life when they’re evolved and mature and more sure of what they want and it’s perfectly normal for people to stay unmarried if they haven’t found the right person instead of settling for the wrong person and regretting it later.

Getting married late is better than marrying the wrong person early and not wanting to have kids is better than having kids and neglecting them because that’s the one thing you want to get right. That’s the kind of commitment you don’t want to rush. That’s the one thing you should think a hundred times before doing because it won’t be just you anymore, you’ll be sharing a home with someone else and you’ll have people who depend on you for their lives. You can’t afford to be selfish and you can’t afford to be unsure about any of it.