Autonomy and Catagorizing

One of my friends is engaged. I feel old. I've known him since he was 17 and now he's 27 and engaged. Blehhhh. I'm happy for him. I think he's been seeing this girl for a year. It sounds like they're really good for each other. It just makes me feel like I should be getting married or something. Like I'm doing something wrong with my relationship to not be married, even though I don't want to be married right now and neither does the Boy.

Its strange and kind of annoying how people are pairing up now. I know its hypocritical for me to say, since I'm in a relationship, but its like you can't see your friends without it being a group date. Nothing is a one on one conversation, its all a group thing and if you're single, you're the 7th wheel and I feel for you. No wonder everyone is afraid of being alone. Its more difficult because most of my friends are guys and when you're in pairs, it seems like all the girls are supposed to be friends and all the boys are supposed to be friends and that's not really how it works. I got really pissed not too long ago when Al and I went to a friend and his girlfriend's potluck in celebration of her birthday. It was great and I met a second college friend's girlfriend who was really cool and we talked about farming and travelling and all this neat stuff. Anyways, on the way out my (male) friend who put on the potluck and my boyfriend joked about having a "Guys Night" at some point. I said that I wanted to go on the "Guys Night", and Al replied that the definition of "Guys Night" is that there's no girls invited. He said, "Well, I go out with the guys and you go out with the girls." This seems highly unfair to me since all the guys are my original friends and all the girls are their girlfriends who I am becoming friends with. Its not to say they aren't cool or that I don't like them, they're actually really awesome and smart and chill and I certainly want to hang out with them. Its that I feel excluded from an event that takes place with MY longstanding friends simply because I'm female and I resent it. Not to mention, many of my friends from college met Al through me after I was already good friends with them. Bah Humbug!

Finally, the one thing I enjoyed about single-dom was just being me. In a couple, you become so and so's girlfriend. On my own, I get introduced as myself. When I was with Danny it was super obvious and annoying. I met alot of people my freshmen year of college and there was one person in particular that I would get mad at because he had literally met me on three seperate occasions in my buddy's room before he met my boyfriend, but after my boyfriend met him and introduced us he acted like he had never met me before. Like, Oh, nice to meet you." When I was alone and saw him, he said hi to me and what's up and chatted. When I crossed paths with him while with Danny he all but ignored me completely. It was a little wave to me after saying "Hey man, what's up", talking only to Danny and then saying, "See you later man, have a good one" and walking away without acknowledging me at all. I am just me, regardless of who I'm with. Don't introduce me as, "Al's girlfriend", just introduce me as "C". That's who I am.

This kind of became a rant and it was supposed to evolve into something else, but whatever. No surprise there.