I’ve always prided myself on being thick-skinned, so imagine my surprise when a few years ago I was almost reduced to tears by an obnoxious woman at a friend’s birthday party.
After discovering I was in my late 20s, but yet to bag a husband (her words, not mine) she proceeded to tell me how awful single life must be. She started by delighting in how deliriously happy she was to be married and how she would absolutely die if she were ever single again.
At that moment I made a promise to myself that if I settled down with a significant other, I would never, ever, turn into one of those insufferable smug marrieds whose sole purpose seems to be to make single women feel rubbish simply for being single. In the years following, and since taking the plunge myself, I like to think I’ve lived up to that promise.
However, I have often wondered how these self-satisfied women become this way? Does a button in your brain get switched on as soon as you become a Mrs? And are we even aware of it, in which case have I been walking around in smug married ignorance?
Amid all this reflection I had to concede that I had begun displaying certain characteristics that, in my single years, would have qualified me as a smug married. Double dates with fellow loved-up couples. Tick. Bailing on girls’ nights in favour of HBO marathons with my other half. Tick. Saying things like, “Tinder? What’s Tinder?” Tick.
However, I was still resolute that deep down I was not one of those women. Just because I preferred a quiet night in with my husband to being ushered in through a velvet rope to a VIP bar, it didn’t make me a smug married… did it?
I got my answer a little while later when out for brunch with a gaggle of single girlfriends who were doubling up on their bagel order after a particularly crazy evening. As they nattered away about a club where Aston Martins are seen outside, and a swarthy stranger who picked up their bar bill, I sipped my cappuccino discretely, hoping that the inevitable question would not crop up. “So, what did you get up to last night?” one of them beamed at me. I mumbled something about pizza and Orange is the New Black. I wasn’t proud of it, but until that moment I hadn’t been ashamed of it either. They looked at me, nonplussed, before continuing the discussion of the swarthy stranger. The penny dropped. Perhaps I was a smug married after all, but they were smug too. Smug singles.
Later I stumbled across a study about normative idealisation, which, according to psychologists, is our tendency to idealise one’s own lifestyle and to believe others would benefit from it. The study provided evidence that people look down on other lifestyles to make themselves feel better about their own.
This rang true for me as I’ve certainly spent the odd taxi ride home thinking about how lucky I am to have my husband waiting for me at the end of it. But on reflection, my jubilance was probably linked to me bailing on post-dinner drinks and feeling sore that my chums were going to be having a top time at some after party without me.
Likewise, their weekends make mine look dull in comparison, but maybe there’s a part of them that fantasises about switching their stilettos for my slippers.
Ultimately it’s a two-way street, but the lesson here is that while the grass is always going to be greener on the other side of the fence, we should never deliberately put others in the shade, in order to brighten our own outlook.
