The Sorrow of Being Rejected Because You’re Single

I recently spent a Sunday away for a wedding party. Four of my "close friends" were also in attendance, all with their husbands. One of the couples just spent time with the group when they had to the marriage reception, and so on. The other three couples basically formed the "couples club." These three women have an air about them now that they didn't before they got married.

All of a sudden, it's like discussing about me is just the polite thing to do, even if they are of a higher status. They went off and did things as the couples club without bothering to invite or even clue in anybody else. Fortunately there was one other single guest and some guests whose romantic spouses couldn't make the journey. I spent the majority of my time with them even if I was longing for spending time with my "close friends" that I don't get to meet very often.

There's a theme I've addressed here before but it keeps coming up again and again. Just in the past day or three, I've heard from some readers on it. A single man, for instance, writes that he used to be a part of a close group of single friends. Now, although, other people have become coupled and hang out together as couples; he's no longer invited.

Another reader, M, described how lonely it feels to be a single person among couples (during those times when she is included) and wonders whether any Living Single readers can explain that feeling (and also, I would add, how to get beyond it).

I, too, have experienced the pain of exclusion by friends who were, or became, coupled. In fact, wondering whether I was being left out because I was single motivated some of my initial interest in studying single life.

By now, I see those practices (of socializing only with other couples and neglecting single friends) as more a reflection on the practitioners than on me. At least some of those people, I suspect, really do believe that their coupled status makes them superior to single people, and that socializing just with couples is more prestigious than spending time with the people you like the most, regardless of their relationship status.

Often I find that the key distinction is not whether another person is or is not coupled, but whether the coupled person enjoys having a life that is not entirely enmeshed with their partner's. I always like spending some one-on-one time with each of my friends, but if a friend is partnered with someone I like, I might also enjoy some time with the friend and the partner.

When I post about this topic, a lively debate almost always ensues. Who is ditching whom? Is the trimming of friendship circles reasonable or mean? I would love to see some rigorous research done on the topic.

There is a related topic, though, that is one of the liveliest and most important areas of research in social psychology today. That's the study of ostracism and social exclusion. The field got kicked into high gear when early studies showed that the most minimal forms of exclusion could feel devastating. In one paradigm, for instance, people play catch in cyberspace.

As is true in all social psychological research, not everyone responds the same way or with the same intensity. Still, I think there is an interesting implication: If you find interpersonal exclusion to be deeply painful, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are overly sensitive. Ostracism - even minimal forms of it - typically is unnerving.

Now consider the kinds of interpersonal exclusions we have been discussing here. The persons doing the excluding are not impersonal avatars in cyberspace - they are people you have known, maybe for years. People you have considered to be your friends. Of course it hurts.

OK, then, let the controversy start still again. And allow me stipulate, once again, that ultimate investigation on the dynamics of interactions between singles and partners remains to be done.

I think we singles down in the trenches might have a greater time dispelling the myth that life happiness can just come from coupling. That's a myth that can be more effortlessly debunked on a gut emotional level by anybody who has been in a relationship. As for singles, I don't think married persons are ever going to see that as being a problem since they're in a group who's not experiencing the discrimination.

Copyright by Lucy who likes shopping online, going fishing, often searches nike air max ltd and michael jordan sneakers on the Internet.