Personal questions

what do you say when people ask things like your age, and if you have a spouse or are you married?

Are you straight up, or do you make a joke of it, or do you try to evade the question.

Because its not like you go round with a number on your forehead that tells everyone how old you are or what year you were born, and not everyone will wear a wedding ring even if they are married.

Do you say single and looking or.
Im single! and do you get looks of pity or people saying oh theres still plenty of time. lol

Or do you just say none of your business. Or I havent met Mrs or Mr Right.

I often wonder if some people I know (but not too well) are divorced or widowed. But I find that it might be rude to ask them or it might trigger them or something. I wonder if Im being too nosy about their personal life but how can you tell if someone is genuninely widowed or if they just bumped off their spouse? Or will they say well he cheated on me or he dumped me or...I dumped him. I kinda want to know where wives absent husbands are....for safety reasons more than anything else, for all I know they could be in jail...

When people ask me my age I tell them, "sorry, that's classified information. You require alpha epsilon or higher security clearance to access the requested data."

When people ask me if I'm single, I tell them I am and I hope that will be the end of it. It never, ever is. Apparently people think I don't have a right to be single, or maybe they think it is a problem that needs to be fixed and they want to help me. Whatever, they never can leave it at the fact that I am single. They always have to try to figure out why and find a way for me to meet somebody.

Would asking why you are so comfortable in singleness violate security standards and remain within acceptable boundaries of courtesy? If I promise to end it there will this help?

I think it is too forward to ask if someone is divorced, widowed, married, straight/gay, etc. For the longest time I had no idea about my boss as he didn't wear a ring and gave no information about his personal life, but later he mentioned a wife.

Recently a hairdresser asked if I had kids and I said no, which was met with awkward silence. She has a few kids.

Most people are going to make some judgement if you are single or without kids.

No prob.

I'm a nerd. One of the maxims a nerd lives by is, "Only upgrade for a reason." Windows 7 was ultra-smooth, but all three of my computers at the time still ran Windows XP because all three of my computers were doing exactly what I wanted them to do. Why would I mess up something that was working just fine?

Same thing with my relationship status. I'm doing just fine right now. Why would I want to mess up a perfectly good life?

That doesn't mean I'm afraid of it, mind you. When I got another laptop it came with Win7 and it was great. Someday I might happen to find a nice lady and we might wind up dating and eventually marrying. Who knows? But I'm not going to go out looking for her. I'm not going to deliberately seek and pursue an alleged upgrade to my life when I don't see any need for it. My life is running just fine right now as it is.

To illustrate:

When Windows 8 came out, a coworker upgraded automatically. Shortly thereafter he asked me for help to downgrade it back to Win7.

"Why did you upgrade it?"
"Because Windows 8 is new."
"What did Windows 7 not do that you needed done?"
"Nothing."
"It was working fine, doing everything you wanted?"
"Yup."
"So... Why did you upgrade to Win8?"
"Because it was new. New is supposed to be better."

*facepalm

I know a lot of people who have tried to upgrade their lives because society tells us having a spouse is automatically and objectively better than being single. I know a lot of people who have gotten a very expensive downgrade back down to "single" too. But society told them single was the status they were supposed to get away from, so they tried really hard to upgrade just for the sake of getting an upgrade, because the upgrade is supposed to be better for some nebulous reason.

No thank you.

I just assume everyone is single unless they are with their husband or wife or wearing a wedding ring or talking about them, its easier.

But people who have children or grandchildren and their spouse is never around or mentioned, I do kind of wonder what happened to them....

as for age, everyone with no grey hairs is young. Everyone whos dyed it or got grey hairs is old.

People who are younger than me, I consider young...people who are older than me, are older...I just keep it simple as I cant always be bothered remembering everyones birthdays lol.

I generally don't ask since I don't like to divulge details about myself. I worked for many years and my boss didn't know my race/background or if I had siblings. Finally he asked directly. Obviously those are not private details but I just don't talk about myself unless I am really having a conversation with someone.

well you dont really talk personal with your boss thats more of a business relationship. But getting to know people, who they are, you do need a to share a few personal details. We are persons (people) after all, not robots or slaves (for some its the same thing...)

I don't mind answering openly

Reckon I'm old then. But I already knew that.

I’ve been dying my hair various colors like blue, purple, orange by mistake… and that makes me old? Lol I’ve been doing that since I was 18 and I’m 41 now. I’ve been told I am an old soul. It makes sense to me now.

dyeing hair doesnt make you old its just that in the Bible white hair symbolises old age or rather wisdom lol

Lots of people dye their hair when it starts turning white. Its easier!

like what

I thought they would say great, I've got too many, have some of mine.

I think there are many:
Never met the right person/Too picky
Doesn't like kids (strange esp for women)
Sexuality issues/or lack thereof
Past trauma
Too career focused
Can't get over someone
Selt esteem issues

Getting married and having children is considered "normal" since the majority of people follow this pattern. Anything outside what the majorty of people do deviates from what is the norm and is considered abnormal more or less, or even as a threat. This is not only true for married/single issue but other issues as well, like vegetarianism. Married people naturally view individualism/ personal freedom as a threat, and freedom is what singles embody.

what is their problem. single people dont threaten anyone. They just arent married.

Nobody should force anyone to marry if they dont want to.

I think its good to be free, obviously, so I dont think people should mind or try to hide being single. Its nothing to be ashamed of.

if the ex is out of the picture I think its best to be honest though and say whether they died or had a restraining order or have left the country though! Often an ex is just referred to as so and so's father, or the dad and isnt even given a name. (or mother, the 'mum') So you are like ok obviously he or she is not your husband or wife (anymore) but is still alive.

Or is that too awkward to talk about.

The married people I know don't seem to find me very threatening...