Time for a rant.
Sometimes, parents make the most idiotic comments and I am astonished they don't realize how careless and stupid they sound.
In a recent conversation with a parent, he was informing me how his daughter got engaged. "That is great news!" I told him. His concluding comment is what infuriated me. He said "Yes, she is getting her life together."
Several layers going on here. There is the unstated assumption that not being married means you don't have your life together. Let's put that one aside. What is interesting in this specific situation is that the daughter definitely already has her life together. She was a top grad from a prestigious university. She has a very high paying job. And, on top of her demanding day job, she also created a tutoring business that she manages herself. I am not saying that these characteristics are "requirements" for having one's life together. There are many paths that lead to a meaningful life. However, objectively speaking, any reasonable person looking at her life would come to the painfully obvious conclusion that she has a lot going for herself and is doing fine. She doesn't need to do anything further to "get her life together." Whatever she has going on should already be enough to make her parents proud.
But nope. According to her father, she apparently didn't have her life together until she obtained the most important ingredient, finding herself a man.
I so badly wanted to tell this man he's a moron for making such a careless comment. But, I held my tongue of course. Not like I would have changed his mind.
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