What If My Relationship Status Never Changes?

Back in my day (I’m over 30 now, I’m officially allowed to use that phrase), not just anyone could have a Facebook profile. In the early 2000s you not only had to be a bona fide college student, with an active .edu email address, but your college had to be on the approved list of schools using the service. My school was pretty small and wasn’t on the list right away, but once we were approved, you can bet that everyone immediately set up their accounts with the perfect profile pic (selfie wasn’t really a word yet) and set their relationship status: single, in a relationship, or, because this was a site for college students, it’s complicated.

My first profile pic (we were still in the era of MySpace photos):

Around this same time, a movie came out that flopped with critics but would go on to become one of my favorites: Penelope, a fairy tale romance where a shaggy-haired James McAvoy falls for Christiana Ricci, a girl who was born with a pig nose as part of an old family curse.

Basically, the plot of the movie is that Penelope has to live as a “pig-faced girl” until someone of her own kind claims her as their own and the curse is broken. Her mother (wonderfully played by Catherine O’Hara) takes this to mean that she has to marry a fellow blue-blood, and starts matchmaking in hopes of finding a willing husband.

It doesn’t go well, obviously, and eventually Penelope gets fed up with the whole situation and runs away. Her parents (especially her mother) are distraught. At one point, her father worriedly says,

“We’ve spent so much time preparing her for the day when things would be different. We've never prepared her for the day that they're not.”

I think about this movie, and particularly this quote, more than the average person, I’m sure. Penelope had spent her entire life learning the skills and qualities that would make her a desirable wife, so that the curse could be broken. But what if she never found a husband? What if the curse was never broken? What if things never changed?

We recently watched this movie as party of my birthday month for our podcast, Viewing Party (you can listen to the whole episode here). My co-host Katie and I had a whole discussion about this particular quote, and why I think about it so much. To me, this line is so indicative of the way singleness is treated, especially in the church. We focus on marriage and families and how to prepare to succeed in those contexts, but we rarely hear how to succeed outside of them. Katie put it very well:

“We don’t spend enough time preparing ourselves for what [happens] if things don’t look different. How do you become content and peaceful and celebrate exactly what is instead of always looking for what isn’t?”

Facebook was designed so that the status could be changed, and that everyone would be notified when it did. Mine has been untouched since I first set it up, back in the day of Razr phones and endless loops of The Fray’s How to Save a Life. But what if my relationship status never changes? How do I celebrate what is instead of looking for what isn’t?

I’m not always good at it, if I’m being honest. I have days where I’m a lot more like Penelope’s mom, earnestly trying to find a cure so that I can finally live my best life instead of this insufficient one I’m dealing with right now. For a large part of this movie being single and unloveable is directly associated with being cursed, and there are definitely times where that feels true.

But it’s not true — and it is possible to celebrate exactly what is, right now. It’s not always easy, but it’s possible. When Penelope runs away, she finally goes and does all the things she’s put off doing before: she eats junk food, visits the street fair, goes to a pub, makes new friends. And eventually she realizes that she likes herself just the way she is, not the way that she could be when the curse is broken.

So here’s what I’m trying to do, and what you should do, too: Get out and do the things you’ve been putting off. Visit the places. Eat the things. Meet the people. Celebrate who you are right now.

Maybe things will be different someday. Maybe I’ll finally update that decade-old relationship status. Or maybe not — and that’s okay, even if it can be a bitter pill to swallow (and something I will talk about more in the upcoming post Will I Be Okay If I Never Get Married?). I’m not going to stop hoping that someday things could change. But I don’t want to miss out on celebrating my life if things don’t. 💜