*caution: rant ahead*

If I read one more thing about finding a partner to fill the lonely, dreadful, pitiable, gaping hole in your life that simply SCREAMS out to find someone, anyone, to love and adore you and marry you on a Christian website, I am quite possibly going to punch someone. Someone... anyone...

*ahem*

Over-the-top-ness aside, I am starting to get irritated by how many of the Christian magazine sites and so on have heaps of articles about how to become marriage material, how to find Mr/Miss Right, how God will provide them when you're least expecting it (for those who are crying into their copies of Rebecca St James's book about how to become not single and wailing, 'Where is MINE!?' and don't realise that perhaps they should quit with the wailing because it's about as attractive as the scent of a territorial lion), what to do to change yourself so that you'll find someone to marry, blah blah blah...

The message seems to be stop being single, don't be single, hey, you're still single so hurry up and find a boyfriend/girlfriend, dude, God will bring you someone to cure that singleness problem that you have, HEY I told you stop being single! and so on, ad infinitum.

Bollocks! By now I want to have at the authors of the articles with a stun-gun.

And this morning, I got an e-mail advertising a new book about how not to be single from an American publishing place. The book's called Marriable and the ad included such gems of:

This isn't a typical dating guide book. Not with chapters like these...
• How Being "Just Friends" Is a Waste of Time
• Desperate Lies Women Tell Themselves
• Men Lie to Get What They Want
• Nice Guys Really Do Finish Last
• Don't Marry Your Best Friend

In Marriable, newlyweds Hayley and Michael DiMarco offer practical wisdom for surviving singleness in the trenches. Writing from their experiences of doing it all wrong so you can do it right, Hayley and Michael set fire to the so-called "rules of dating success" and give you real dating advice that won't send a potential date running in the opposite direction...

Personally, I think your date would be running in the opposite direction if you mentioned ANYTHING about the book. Especially the title. And the lying stuff - mmmm, now that's attractive. And why marry a best friend? No, no, marry your enemy instead! Hurrah! Or someone you met online, like the couple who wrote the book did. Nothing says love like IM, does it not?

Being single is fun, people should be allowed to enjoy it, and realise that if they do hook up with someone somewhere, that's cool. And if not, that's all good too. Personally, I love being single and don't feel like any of the articles are relevant. Why should people need someone else to feel validated or something like that? I mean, if people aren't happy by themselves, how can they be happy with someone else? It's not like having a partner suddenly fixes the world and makes glittery happiness burst forth from everything you touch. Being single is something you only have for a while - marriage tends to last a lot longer. So why not enjoy life, no matter where you're at? :)