Phrases We'd Like to Stab in the Face: "You're Too Picky"

Recently, I came to the horrifying realization that I am alone. Not in some kind of existential way, and not in that I suddenly noticed that I am, in fact, single. (Really single.)  No, I'm alone in a way that our friends at HBO prefer to pretend isn't possible: I am fresh out of single friends.

Let me let you in on a little secret, gang: Sex and the City is a farce, and not just because there isn't a dating columnist / blogger (ahem) on earth who can afford $40,000 worth of Manolos. It's a farce because as soon as those girls got boyfriends, the days of getting all dolled up and going out to help their still-single counterparts search for men would have been out the damned window. And more alarmingly, so would their empathy for the plight of the single girl.

I didn't even have to go to Paris to have my social life go to the dogs.

Now that my whole gang is all wifed up -- guys and girls, mind you, so don't think you're off the hook, gentlemen! -- there's no one to call on a Saturday night to go see a band downtown, because they're all in the Hamptons having couples dinners. There's no one to meet up with for karaoke on a random Wednesday because they're all staying in together. There's no one to relate hilariously farcical dating stories to over a bottle of Sauv Blanc because they seem to have developed some kind of collective amnesia about how truly terrifying it is to try and get a relationship off the ground in this city. And that amnesia expresses itself with some alarming symptoms: my friendly texts go unanswered, my darts partners are conspicuously absent, and worst of all, it seems that I am now "too picky."

This is a phrase I've never understood, and even less so now that it comes exclusively out of the mouths of people in committed, functional happy relationships. "You're too picky." As though I have no business expecting to be attracted to the person I'm sleeping with. "You're too picky." As if they all just magically conjured their partners and I should just do the same. "You're too picky." As though it's somehow my fault that I haven't met an eligible man who would give me the time of day since...well, sports fans, I don't even remember. And that's a sad thing, not something I should be back-handedly blamed for by being designated "too picky"! 

Look, I work weird hours, travel a great deal and occasionally enjoy having a little time to myself. That's not being "too picky"; it's being what all of my friends used to be like before they all got boyfriends / girlfriends / husbands / wives. And that fact alone makes me want to stab "You're too picky" right in its smug, presumptuous face.

Cher knows what's up.