Table For One

Ready To Marry

It was the first time and it felt, somehow, good.

I went for my favorite food which, ironically and annoyingly, is the one my digestive system hates the most: pizza.

I could eat pizza every fucking day. Just throw different ingredients on top and call it a balanced diet 😅. But at this point it’s a scientific fact that carbohydrates gather in my stomach, form a secret society, and plot against me.

Still, from time to time, I don’t give a f*ck. Because I’ve learned something important: even when steak and eggs made me feel amazing digestion-wise… I felt erotically miserable. Bored. Sad.

So now, I eat healthy - except when I don’t.
I don’t drink alcohol - except when I do.
That’s the dynamic.

One thing though: I don’t eat much. One meal a day plus a snack and I’m done. Last night’s pizza was a push. And let’s be honest - we are overfed as a society in more ways than one.

As a solo woman in the middle of a restaurant (and a nosey one), I naturally observed what everyone else was eating.

On my right: two women catching up. Work stories. HR. Team meetings. They ordered dough balls as a starter… and then one pizza each.

So it’s bread and then bread again? I’ve never understood that.

On my left: a woman, three kids, and what I believe was a man dressed as a woman. Not judging. Just observing. My mind made up a whole story: divorced mother falls for someone unexpected and is having the time of her life in the bedroom.

The interesting part? She had a starter, a full pizza like mine, brownie with ice cream, and coffee.

How?

The other adult just had pasta 🤷‍♀️

Meanwhile, I was staring at the name of my pizza:

“Will You Marry Me” Chicken.

The chicken did not marry me. It was, honestly, meh.

But the name made me laugh because now, apparently, I am ready to marry.

Let me explain.

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The Marriage I Never Wanted

If I have to label myself for the sake of conversation, I’ve always been anti-marriage.

In my twenties, I was a singer. I did hundreds of wedding gigs. Some weekends three of them. Saturday lunch, Saturday dinner, Sunday lunch. I saw everything: backstage panic, family fights, near heart attacks over seating plans.

They built toward perfection for months ( or years!) and in a few hours it evaporated.

It always felt like a theatrical production.

Then I looked at what came after in many cases: obligation, compromise, quiet resentment, freedom quietly packing and leaving the household.

So I was outspoken about it and my mum worried.

I met the father of my children in 1999 when I was 25. Unconventional life. Dropped out before college. Boyfriends. Gigs. No roadmap.

Then something shifted. I moved in with him. Went back to university while working full time. Got fitter than I had ever been (I was really hot, by the way - I just didn’t know it).

Maternity came at 32. Again at 34. And at 37, the eagle that had been dormant woke up. It wanted expansion, air, meaning… not just function.

(note I was still single at this stage)

We moved countries in 2012 (long story).

Then someone (not me) suggested we should get married “just in case” the kids were taken away from us 🙄

So we did. We signed papers at the city council on a rainy day with two neighbors as witnesses. No dress. No photos. No fairy tale. My instinct had been right all along.

I have yet to see a personal advantage to that contract in my own story.

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The Marriage Myth

What fascinates me now is not bitterness - it’s patterns.

We are expected to choose a career at 18 when we don’t even know who we are. Then we’re expected to find “the one,” fall in love (which temporarily turns you into an idiot), and build a life around a version of ourselves that hasn’t individuated yet.

No one talks about individuation unless you fall down a Jungian rabbit hole.

So what happens?

You follow borrowed scripts. You fulfill expectations (mainly from your parents) and build your own prison with total unawareness of what you’re actually doing.

And if you don’t follow that script, you feel like a failure. Total madness.

Then midlife arrives. You look back, forward, left, right… and find yourself in a life that, even if, conventionally successful, functional and stable, it feels like you’re sleeping next to one of your mates.

That realization hurts the soul in a very quiet way (more of this coming up).

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My New Theory

So why am I ready to marry now at 52?

Because now I know who I am. I know what I want and what I don’t want.
And I genuinely don’t care what anyone expects from me anymore.

After my last relationship ended (not my marriage), I fell into a deep hole. And that hole was the best education I’ve ever had.

There was a phase of: “I will never have a relationship again. I want my space. My autonomy. My table for one.”

And for the first time in my life (at 50 then) I was truly alone and it was confronting but also liberating.

“Table for one” is cool but here’s the truth: recently I’ve met a couple of men who challenged that certainty.

And I realized something surprising: I could consciously marry now 😊

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What Does “Consciously Marry” Mean?

It means self-awareness, freedom, mutual respect, emotional maturity (big huge this one!), soul-led connection, desire, fire, sexual attraction, spontaneity in the ordinary.

Not scheduled “date nights” like business meetings 🙄

Real aliveness.

The traditional model works beautifully if your priority is structure and stability but it works less beautifully if your priority is erotic vitality.

So here’s the paradigm shift I propose:

You build a family when you’re ready and willing (like most of us have done). You give it everything consciously but, if one day romantic love ends, you part with dignity instead of staying half-dead to preserve appearances.

Not “till death do us part.”

More like: “till life do us part.”

You keep sacred what you built but you don’t chain two evolving souls to a script written by ancestors who never heard about therapy or self-awareness.

It can be done because I’ve done it.

And if I never marry again and remain a “table for one”, it will still have been worth it because the pain of staying half-dead was far greater than the slight unease of not having anyone who holds me tonight…

I would rather miss someone than miss myself.

Love,

Rose 🌹