Entering my late twenties as a single Ph.D. student

2nd October 2020 : 6 min read

By: Ayushi Agarwal Follow @ayushiagg17Tweet

I am a single woman in my late twenties and second year of Ph.D.🚫(which is like a crime in our society). People often ask me why I am not married, and when I will settle down and start a family. I have had many such discussions where I had to explain my life choices to friends, and family. Such discussions, almost always, ended with a thorough list of advice and suggestions on how I should be living my life. Staying single and pursuing my dreams is never a part of those suggestions.

The women in our culture must get married by the time they turn 25; otherwise, people start talking about how her character is not suitable for marriage and how she is a disgrace to her family⚠️.

However, it is normal for a man not to be married till 30, and the explanation that he is busy in his career is normal and acceptable to people. ✅

The culture shows how much importance we give to a number than a person (yes, women are also people).

We are all supposed to have a plan.

But what if someone wants to swerve from this path? [What did you just think? Are you out of your mind?🤫] This is what our "trained" brain will tell us when we will think about the slightest deviation from this path. Well, even I will accept, there are some devilish securities and certainties in this path that everyone wants in life.

It's time we shatter the past culture of security and determinism and start taking risks in life.

Men have been successful in taking risks and have done amazingly well. They have been trained to take risks in life, to get out there and do what they must do.

Some women have started to take that risk in their life, but society makes them feel guilty about it. When she chooses to be single for doing what she wants to, she is shamed by society. [Huge frown on everyone's face, sigh! She is destroying her life. She could have married someone doing well and live happily like a queen, forever dependent on someone else].

Speaking up to hush these frowns has its challenges for women, given that the society is also crippled by honor killing. But people need to understand that women want independence, financial, and emotional, more than wanting to be someone's queen.

[Shame on her for talking like this, has her mother taught them nothing? This is what they said to hush her voice 😶 demanding freedom].

Recently, when I had one such encounter with a friend, I thought of taking this one differently.💡 Why explain it to people because marriage is my choice. My friend is stuck in that myth of age, and no offense, I think we all are.

[Friend]: Why are you still unmarried? Isn't 28-29 the best age to get married and settle down? 🤨

[Me]: I am sorry, but I would like to follow up on your question with a question. Why do you think that this is the perfect age to get married?

[Friend]: According to me, it is half of our life span so why not start sharing it soon with someone.

[Me]: I guess I do not give much thought to how many years I will live and certainly not make decisions according to it. It is just a hypothetical number now, isn't it? I could die tomorrow for all I know. And the notion of sharing my life with someone just because of aging does not make sense. One should be sharing our experience with someone who we connect with and someone who we love. 💕

[Friend]: Are you against marriage?

[Me]: Not at all, I want to get married. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, every human (as a part of humanity) needs to cross the level of Love and Intimacy to reach self-actualization. Though all that can happen independently, according to my own experience, the quality of interpersonal relationships has a significant impact on how much you know about yourself and how much you can accomplish. So yes, I want to get married and see how it grows on me.

[Friend]: Even though you had the freedom to say no to getting married at an early age, many girls in our society are married young at the ripe age of 22. Thoughts?

[Me]: Well, this is how it has been done in our culture and our country. Girls were made to believe that this is what they are born to do, that is how they were raised, to be a perfect caregiver, a perfect wife to someone, a perfect mother. So, it is not about how much freedom you have. It is about whether you believe that you should get married or not. I have seen girls marry at the age of 22 because they wanted to and because they believed it was what they must do. According to Freud, it is what their superego makes them believe. However, I have seen women unmarried in their thirties and still happy about it.

[Friend]: Don't you think it would be too late for you to start a family if you get married after your Ph.D.? After a point in life, people tend to develop anti-emotions and stay alone forever.

[Me]: That is a good question, and to be honest, I have given it my fair share of thought. I concluded by asking myself who and what decides the time to get married? The capability to produce an offspring or the drought of eligible bachelor’s in the dating market? The fact that I might become hateful and unpleasant? The fact that I might be scared to be alone. None of these are good enough to convince me to settle and get married to someone I know might not be the right partner. I would rather wait. See, age is just a number, and marriage should be a choice. I should not be married just because I am afraid of all the things that can go wrong if I don't.

[Friend]: How would you find someone elder to you if you wait that long for the right person?

[Me]: Excuse me, should I be marrying someone elder to me. Is that a rule? 🤔

[Friend]: Not a rule, even though elder guys are more mature and hence better compatibility.

[Me]: Again, age has nothing to do with how mature a person is. Compatibility does not depend on how mature the two people are. Two mature people could be unbelievably bad as a couple.

[Friend]: So, it means you are open to marrying someone younger to you? How will you convince society? What if they do not accept you?

[Me]: Well, society, to be honest, does not care. 🤷🏻 They will find entertainment in judging me for a while, but eventually, they will forget about it. What you must root for is your own long-term happiness and not short-term judgments passed by people who do not even care.

[Friend]: Don't you think you are a burden on your parents by delaying marriage because they must answer to society? How do they feel about not being able to get you settled?

[Me]: To be honest, my parents are no different from any other parents in society. They worry, they fret, and they ask me continuously to get married. Not because I am a burden to them (I call myself lucky in that sense), but mostly because of other societal pressures which trouble them more than me. But, they understand that hurrying into something wrong and awful can be life-wrecking and painful. It can not only take away the whole career of their daughter but also her whole life. They behave like that because of the shaming a girl will receive if she chooses to stay unmarried for long to pursue science and technology.

[Friend]: Would you call yourself happy?

[Me]: Certainly, I am incredibly happy with the way things are. Happiness is overrated, and people often lose sight of so many pleasant things around them in the pursuit of happiness. Happiness is within you; in trivial things, you do throughout the day. Eating gives me happiness (funny right?). Authoring this article gave me happiness. Listening to my favorite song gives me happiness. Even lying around the entire day doing nothing gives me happiness. Why fret about something that I do not have when I have so much of everything else?

[Friend]: Well, to be honest, this was an enjoyable conversation. Age has been especially important to me, and as you said, I had a plan like everyone else. But now, I might have to reconsider some things I used to believe in.

[Me]: There is so much more in the world than just marriage. Feel the value of commitment, true love, and honesty for your existing relations. We have started ignoring them, and somehow, we continuously fret about adding a few more relations to ignore. We want to desperately share our life with someone, but not share it with our parents. Somehow, this bias seems so unfair to me.

Disclaimer: The conversation was documented by me after the approval of my friend who chose to stay anonymous for personal reasons.