Stop Complaining About Your Friends Getting Engaged

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The group-speak of the modern day postgrad seems to be that you hate all your friends who are getting engaged. You don’t “hate” them in the same way you “hate” Nazis or ISIS or the people who hog the Starbucks cream and sugar section. You “hate” them in the “I’ll be at your wedding even though I’ve been talking shit about it for six months” type of way. I get it. The whole 2014 process is a little wearing. There aren’t five minutes of your life that don’t involve a “fuck this bitch” moment. There are sexy engagement pictures that could double as headshots for an adult film, Facebook testimonials of love they could have just said to one another in person, and the pictures of the ring next to another object (in case you weren’t sure how big it was). You have to go to bridal showers, engagement parties, and rehearsal dinners, and there’s always that “63 days until I marry my best friend” post, even though you can remember 100 days ago when she made out with another chick. It seemingly never ends and only repeats with each ensuing baby. But for every person I hear complaining, I wonder, what’s the rush? Aren’t all those exclamations of “FML” and “I just can’t” and “she has a nub and I’m single” wasted breath? You’re going to get married. You’re probably going to get divorced. Let’s all take a second to smell the roses.

2014 is the best time you could ever be single. You’ll never go on a date that’s set up by an aunt without full knowledge of your attraction. You have websites that let you be “out there” without really having to try, and apps like Tinder that can make any 15 minute poop feel like a relaxing stroll through a dude library. And that’s without mentioning the stuff you don’t have to do. Whose parents’ house will you be going to for the holidays? Yours. The one that smells normal. What show will you watch this Sunday night? Your show, the one without a 10 minute lecture on which dragon is which, where it doesn’t take seven episodes to “get going.” And you know what you’re doing next Saturday? You don’t fucking know. No plan. No calls to make. No waking up early because it’s someone’s birthday month. Maybe you’ll see a movie alone. Or maybe you’ll silently masturbate three times in a row, only speaking to scream “Hat trick!” on the third climax. Why? Because you’re single and you’re in your physical prime.

Yes, dating can be tough, but go talk to someone who has been married for more than 10 years. None of them will say, “Hurry up and find someone!” They go into a weirdly depressing routine. It starts with them making assumptions about your unmarried life, statements like, “I bet you go out all the time” and “You’re so lucky! Everyone shaves now!” Then they move onto the questions. They ask things like, “Do you go on a lot of dates?” and “How many dates until you see their feet?” Then they get personal. They talk about their glory days like a sad high school football legend. You can tell it’s been a long time since his their last hat trick. They get to the part about meeting their wife and their marriage sounds like a weightlifting regimen: “it takes hard work,” they say, as you imagine them slapping a “Play like a champion today!” banner on the way into dinner. Then it ends the same way every time. They make a joke about the lack of sex. They scream something like, “I mean what’s a blow job?!” Then they cackle so hard you half expect them to cry. They tell you not to rush and then grab your hand, holding tightly enough to show they’re not kidding. At first, the conversation seems so cliché that you don’t even listen, but by the fifth guy, you’ll start to understand that things right now aren’t so bad.

We all have a choice; we can rush through the best years of our lives and complain at every turn, or we can bathe in it. A lot of the engagement complaints come from girls, and I get that. There’s an amount of attention a bride-to-be gets that’s unparalleled. It’s the reason you’re complaining in the first place. But there’s a girl who sits and glares and there’s another taking shots while scream-singing Whitney Houston songs–I don’t think I have to tell you who will get married first. The fact is, you will all get your engagements and the Facebook likes that go with them. Your time will come, and then it will pass. Ten years down the line, you’ll be staring into another person’s eyes as you ask for the hundredth time, “What do you want to do for dinner?” And she or he will say, “I don’t know. What do you want?” And at that moment, you’d give all those Facebook likes back just to say, “Forget it, I’m having a hat trick.”.

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JTrain

Jared Freid is a NYC based comedian. He has been featured on Tru TV's "NFL Full Contact" and more recently on MTV's "Failosophy." He is also a writer for The Huffington Post, The Fan Hub, Weekly World News, TotalFratMove, BroBible, and HeTexted. If you're not the reading type, Jared created the "Frat Dude Goes To" series where he travels the country interviewing "Bros" at wild events like the Carolina Cup and the AVN Awards. Follow him on twitter @JTrain56 for all of his weekly content.

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