Always the photographer, never the bride

Q. Last weekend I went to my seventh wedding of the year. As happy as I am for my friends, I am increasingly finding it harder and harder to attend these weddings because all it leaves me feeling is that it will never be me. I will never be the bride. I am now 36 years old and haven't had a serious relationship for over four years. I really thought that, by now, I would have settled down as well. I would have found my person.

Everyone keeps saying 'You'll meet someone when you least expect it' and, to be honest, all this does is get on my nerves and makes me feel like people don't really understand what it's like being on your own. The other side of the problem is that, as most of my friends are now married and starting families, I have noticed that I am slowly not being invited for dinners or days out. It just makes me feel even more lonely and as if I am being punished for being single.

Why do I care so much?

Before I was a Therapeutic Coach, I was a professional photographer. Whilst it was fun capturing those precious moments of newborns, families and loved ones, my favourite gig was always a wedding.

But it came with a catch.

It was a piercing and stark reminder that I was always the photographer, and never the bride.

This cut so deep because, like millions of women, I had dreamed of my wedding day since I was a little girl. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I became somewhat obsessed with finding a husband, donning that beautiful white dress (which would be vintage lace, if you're interested), watching the tears roll down his face as I walked down the aisle, and hearing the sound of my friends and family cheering when we said, 'I do', before happily riding off into the sunset.

When I think about that now it feels so disconnected from who I have become and what's important to me. I guess that age is now (finally) on my side, in that I am sadly watching half of those people go through painful divorces. But, other than statistics assuaging the pain, I learned that finding a husband and 'being married' would not help me escape the inevitable truth about the human condition that I had been running from all of my life - aloneness.

A word that, in my own growth, I have changed to solitude.

So, why am I telling you this? Why would you care that I no longer care about getting hitched?

Because I've stood where you're standing. I've felt the pain that you're describing. And I've been frozen out of social circles by people whom I once would have invited to my imaginary wedding.

We can't just solely blame Disney for the belief that we have only really 'made it' in life when we have become someone's significant other. It is a cultural and social message that has, until fairly recently, been rammed down our throats until it became the fabric of who we are.

I read a news article the other day that talked about how an unprecedented number of women are now freezing their eggs because, it was suggested, they could not find a man whom they consider a viable choice for a husband and father of their child. This is certainly something I've witnessed in the therapy room with clients as well as observing my friends' own painful journeys across this rocky trajectory.

I could assuage your pain by telling you the pessimistic view that marriage originally existed to maintain bloodlines, use women as property to be bartered with, and create 'safe' environments where procreation could occur. We were, essentially, bought, sold and traded like trinkets in a jewellery box.

I could tell you that, statistically, unmarried childless women are the happiest in society.

I could also tell you that from the experience of having discussed this for a countless number of hours with clients and friends, that the last point would appear to be utter bullshit.

Because what I've observed is that unmarried and childless women are tormented on a daily basis about being single - both internally, through feelings of shame and loneliness, and externally by, as you've just described, being ostracised simply for not being able to bring a plus-one to the dinner party.

I used to watch the bride and groom stand at the altar, reading out their beautiful vows and how they promised to love each other forever, through good and bad, and a tear would roll down my cheek. All the while I was thinking - why not me? This, I think, is a very dangerous question to torment yourself with. What you're really telling yourself is that you are the reason that you're not married - that there is essentially something wrong with you.

Trust me when I say, there isn't.

You're not married because you haven't found someone that you want to be with forever. That is ok. In fact, that is more than ok. What that tells me is that you're taking this very seriously.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not for a minute suggesting that anyone who is married has just gone eeny meeny miny mo and grabbed the first willing suspect. Far from it, I hope. But measuring yourself against other people's life trajectories, circumstances, decisions, and luck, is about as productive as trying to push spaghetti up a hill. We are all on different journeys and this insidious message that we must have figured this all out by the time we hit 30 (as is normally the age when the panic starts to set in) is absolute nonsense.

I know people who have been happily single for over a decade, people who got married when they were in their 60s, and people who have decided, along the way, that finding a husband in no way defines them and is not going to bring them everlasting happiness even if they had found him.

Ask any of your married friends and they will confirm this.

I guess you have two options - you can make it your life's work to find a husband. Go on as many dates as possible, sign up to all the sites, ask as many friends as you can find to set you up on blind dates. Keep going until you have reached your goal.

Or, you can accept that it will happen as and when it's meant to - if at all. Accept that no one can make you feel whole. There is a saying that true love is all about timing. I never used to really understand what this meant other than a serendipitous ideology. I now understand that it means that it is about the timing of your own growth.

And the issue that you're having with not being invited to social events...well...accept that this happens a lot and that it isn't personal. People drift apart when lives take different turns and that's ok. Not all your friends will treat you this way - hold onto the ones that don't.

And, above all else, never ever forget that you are your person.