Disclaimer: This isn't therapy, and Dr. Audrey's advice is for the general audience, meaning it may not always work for everyone. In addition, this article does not establish or imply that there is a professional therapeutic relationship between Dr. Audrey and the person whose question is addressed here. To send her your questions, visit her website.
Question: Can you link me to a potential spouse? I’m a late forties single and completely over the single life. - HG
Dear HG,
Thank you for sending your question with clarity and brevity both!
Let me summarize what I discerned from your question:
Feeling like you’re overdue for marriage can be hard to bear. Unlike substituting childhood for adulthood, with 18 being the recognized legal age for the transition, there is no formal age at which a singleton can expect to enter #marriedlife. Which means the wait for marriage can feel boundless—which is burdensome.
(One researcher corroborated the hardship around singleness. He discovered that for participants who never married, the longer they waited for marriage, the more depressed they felt.)
All this to say, I feel your pain. I wish I could satisfy your inquiry by emailing you a database of quality contenders. However, I’m a psychologist, not a matchmaker. Guess what, though? There are people who are. A fellow 40-something single woman discovered her spouse after contacting one such agency. Obviously, a matchmaker isn’t required to settle your singleness for good. Other couples wound up tying the knot thanks to dating apps, blind dates, or because their friendship grew into more. Flip through a few romcom novels and you’ll glean the many tropes authors choose from to couple up their characters. But if romance authors can concoct a variety of plots to do so, imagine how many more ways creator God has to accomplish the same objective!
Instead of trying to figure out how you’ll meet your future spouse, therefore, how about focusing on things that are more within our control? Like soul-searching the following questions.
1. What has God said?
Does the Lord want you to be married? If you’ve only given this question a passing thought, I recommend an attitude shift. Examining the issue with intentionality will benefit you. After all, the One who designed your DNA has also determined the days fashioned for you (Psalm 139:16). If you have no question that His heart for you is to be wedded, you can rest assured knowing He will supply you with a fitting match. So, pray for clarity. Ask God for a verse or passage from the Bible to confirm His will on this issue. Don’t settle for anything less than a clear yay or nay. Fast if need be.
If you’ve never sensed a heavenly no, your desire for a spouse is legitimate. Keep praying and persevering. Hunt for Bible verses that strengthen your faith that one day you’ll find a mate. Scour the internet for stories of those whose search for a happily ever took a few decades to culminate. Let their testimonials inspire you to keep believing that God is weaving your own special story even now. The Bible is unequivocal: God refuses to ignore those who trust in Him (Psalm 25:3, Psalm 34:22, Proverbs 30:5). Trusting Him with respect to marriage is never a wasted investment.
2. Why are you single?
What a difficult question. I agree. For one thing, who has the complete answer on this side of eternity? Besides, there could be a number of different reasons why anyone is single: for instance, because the lover you set your heart on picked another instead—and you’ve never found a compatible partner since. Then again, you’ve also been busy with your career and caring for your family, and before you realized it, a couple of decades have whizzed by. Or maybe you’re single again, as in divorce. Or widowed. Or some other scenario you’d rather not delve too deeply into.
I exhort you to consider this question—why are you single?—not so that self-blame or regret can swallow you whole. Rather, meditating on the question might reveal factors that fall within your realm of responsibility. Eliminating these factors from controlling your life, in turn, will better prep you to enter holy matrimony.
With that in mind, how is your mental and emotional health? This isn’t to imply that just because you’re single, you’ve got issues. But if your past hides anything rancid that hasn’t healed, the unresolved pain might distort your perspective on dating, marriage, and what constitutes attractiveness. As an example, if you’ve been the unwanted recipient of sexual harassment but haven’t fully dealt with the aftermath, you might automatically avoid anyone who reminds you of the incident. But what if the potential spouse God intends for you happen to be someone you’ve rejected, including because there are aspects of his personality that are reminiscent of the perpetrator?
So, review the singles—AKA potential spouses—in your world. Ask the Lord if your reasons for rejecting those individuals are warranted. Consider asking Him to change your heart if you’ve unintentionally nixed His chosen candidate for you. If you’ve waited this long to say I do, might as well say it to the partner He picks for you.
3. Do you have enough time?
The thought of busying yourself with the above while still clueless about if or when you’ll ever be a Mrs. can feel daunting. Especially if you’ve been single for a while. I get it. Time marches on ruthlessly, right? Which is why I’ll share the following familiar account from the New Testament. But let me preface it by saying that I take seriously the promise I made when introducing the launch of this advice column. After receiving your email, I cradled your query in my heart and called on God for wisdom.
I then felt led to study the book of Acts—and stumbled on the following passage. A man who was “lame from his mother’s womb” (Acts 3: 2, NKJV) met apostle Peter and, unexpectedly, a miracle. Watch how his story unfolds:
“Peter said, ‘Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.’ And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up, and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. So he, leaping up, stood and walked and entered the temple with them—walking, leaping, and praising God.” (Acts 3:6-8, NKJV)
Did you notice what the man did first? Revisit the italicized words in the above verses. According to the New King James, before standing, walking, or entering the temple, the man leaped. Leaped?
Yep. Never mind that a normal developmental trajectory calls for babies to first crawl and stand away before they know how to walk. Much less leap. Somehow this man who “had been unable to walk from birth” (Acts 3:2, NASB) spent zero time mastering any of the prior steps. He bypassed the number of months required to coordinate his leg muscles or contract them just so in order to execute a successful jump. The man experienced in an instant what others—like surgery patients—have to agonize in physical training for months before they could even hope to approximate the same result. That’s because when God gave him the miracle, He also extracted time from the entire process. Such a God move, right there. He doesn’t just deliver your heart’s desire; He also knows how to redeem time in the process.
The story gets better. According to the Bible, the man was “over 40 years old” (Acts 4:22). As someone who’s also in her forties and in need of a breakthrough, how do you feel about this particular piece of detail? Let me share how the man’s age struck me. If God could cause a man over 40 who’d never walked before to leap, you can expect this same God to deliver a mate to you, dear woman in her late 40’s—because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8, NKJV). You don’t even have to worry about the time factor.
One last word before we wrap up. I hope the following request doesn’t sound impertinent. But if you find yourself planning a wedding, would you send me an invite?
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Drs Producoes