Keeping my commitment to "not commit"

A few years ago, I made a life-altering decision that would liberate me from a future of unnecessary stress. That decision, made in my late 20’s, was to never get married — to sustain a single-status lifestyle. Following my commitment to “not commit,” I was released from that stifling, societal expectation of maintaining a spouse.

I was finally free.

My first summer as an established bachelorette was filled with Friday night trailer parties with some fine, redneck friends. Saturday nights were often an encore, and were liable to take place by some Franklin County tobacco field or cow pasture. My single-status proclamation had proved itself a success.

That is, until my inner-circle of single friends started to disappear.

“I’ve met this guy,” my friend Jamie confided to me one day during an after-work phone call. And so began the details of her man-friend, who would soon become her boyfriend and naturally the new focus of her social life.

A few weeks later I sighted another single friend of mine at a local restaurant. Yet, he didn’t appear so single sitting beside of his opposite-sex seat mate.

“Hey there, Chris!” I waved as I approached his booth.

“Uh, uh ... hey, Gina,” he replied. And then he introduced me to his girlfriend, whose glaring stares served as a “stay away” warning.

As I drove home that afternoon, I pondered the curious confrontation with my guy friend Chris and his leery lady-friend. And I wondered what was to become of my inner-circle of single friends.

Four years later, I can testify to the fate of that crew of companions.

“They’re all married!” I lamented to my best friend Kris last Saturday night — my sole friend who espouses the same non-matrimonial decree as me, yet who lives in Pittsburgh, Penn. “And if they’re not married, they’re engaged.”

“Or they have kids,” Kris replied, as we pulled into a local restaurant during her weekend visit home.

To salvage our social lives, Kris and I have done what many a man suffering from a mid-life crisis has done — we’ve scouted out younger, single companions. And surprisingly, we’ve reconnected with a few friends from the former inner-circle who, despite a few detours, stayed the single course.

“So I met this girl on New Year’s Eve,” our guy friend Chris said over a drink that Saturday night. “And we went out a few times. But then, she gave me the ‘just friends’ speech,” he sighed, while simultaneously winking at an approaching waitress.

“Chris, I really don’t see you as the relationship type,” I laughed as my bachelor friend scanned the bar for available ladies.

“You know the only day of the week I buy the newspaper?” another friend, Jason, said to me of my livelihood. “Sundays ... so I can check that wedding page to see who’s officially off the market.”

While we all laughed about our dating disasters, I wondered what would become of my remaining single friends. Would time transform them into married men, as it has so many of my pals? Would kids come along, taking my cohorts captive until their retirement years?

And then I wondered what would become of me. Would time make a mockery of my anti-marriage proposal? Would I someday succumb to love, forfeiting my freedom as I vowed before both God and my partner, “Till death do us part?”

Since I can’t lie to the Lord, I guess not.

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