Waiting well when everyone else is settling

Somebody asked me last month whether holding out was arrogance. She was thirty-eight, she had turned down two proposals, and her mother had started praying about it out loud at family lunch.

I told her what I will tell you: there is a difference between a standard and a shopping list, and most people who are accused of being too picky are actually just tired of explaining themselves.

A standard is short. It is usually three or four things, and they are about character rather than circumstance — how someone handles being wrong, what they do when they are tired, whether they are kind to people who cannot do anything for them. A shopping list is long, and most of it is about height.

The cost of settling is not paid on the wedding day

It is paid in year four, quietly, in a kitchen. We sit with those couples every week. Almost none of them tell us they married the wrong person; most of them tell us they married a person they had not yet finished being honest with.

Waiting is not passive. Done properly it is the most active thing you will do this year.

Waiting well looks like getting your own house in order — your money, your temper, your friendships, the thing you have been avoiding since 2021. It looks like being in rooms where people who might suit you actually are. And it looks like telling two or three people you trust exactly what you are looking for, out loud, in plain words.

What to do this month

Write your four things down. Not fourteen — four. Then ask the two people who know you best whether that list describes a partner or describes an audience. Their faces will tell you before their mouths do.

And then get on with your life, loudly and in company. In our experience that is usually when the introduction arrives.