Hi, there. My name's Ronnie.
Maybe you're watching www.engvid.com or maybe you're watching
me on YouTube. Thanks. Awesome.
I have a question for you, though. How old are you? Yeah? Okay.
Are you married? No. Do you have a problem with this? Because I know before I got married,
I had no problem not being married, but other people did. For example, my friends who were married,
maybe they were jealous, other people who I worked with, and people who I generally
met from day to day.
So, today I've got a special lesson for you people who are not married. This lesson is called:
"Oh My Gawd, You're Not Married Yet? What's Wrong With Her? What's Wrong With Him?"
So, people automatically assume that if you're over the ripe age of 30 and you're not married,
there's something wrong with you. Maybe there's something wrong with the other people who
want to tell you their opinion of how you should live your life. That's what I think.
So, I'm going to go through some terms, some of them slang, some of them more traditional,
and reasons why you can give people why you're not married yet. And it's none of their business,
really. I was fortunate enough to have a mom who didn't push me to get married. Thanks,
mom. Does your mom push you to get married? -"Come on, get married, get married."
-"Find me a handsome guy, mom, who's not a dick. Maybe I'll do that."
So, first of all, people are going to say behind your back, which means not in front
of you: "What's wrong with him?" Most of the time people will say: "He must be gay." Because
every man out there who's not married just must be gay. This came from a long, long,
long, long time ago. There's an area of history... An era of history called the Victorian Era.
They didn't admit to people that they were gay because that's wrong, or that was wrong
back then. They had this really amazing kind of sneaky word to say, a "confirmed bachelor".
Now, if we lived in the Victorian times and somebody told you that they were a confirmed
bachelor, we would know that that means that that man is gay. Nowadays, we just go:
"He's gay." Or if you're a gay man, you say: "I'm gay." But gay men can marry, so yeah, there's
no excuse.
What I'm going to teach you is the difference between men and women being married and not
being married. So, if you're a man who's not married, we have a word called a "bachelor".
This is a very common, very famous TV show called The Bachelor. If you're a woman who's
not married, you are a "bachelorette". If you know anything about French or if your
language has masculine and feminine, you would understand that the "ette" part makes it a
girl. So, we have the male is a bachelor or a confirmed bachelor, and then we have the
female as a bachelorette. So, if you are a man and you're not married, everything's fine
unless people think that you're gay. If you're gay, that's fine. The confirmed bachelor.
But if you're a woman and you're not married, we got some really bad names for you guys
in English, especially if you're old, like over 30. So, we have two names that are not
good that we substitute for a bachelorette, because a bachelorette should be young. We
have the word "old maid" and a "spinster". So, an old maid and a spinster are older women
who have not yet married or never will marry. So, this goes back to the question:
What's wrong with her? Why did nobody marry her? Hmm. This is what we call in English a double
standard. "A double standard" means what is acceptable or in society for a man, bachelor
- it's not acceptable in society for a woman. So, a man who's over 30 hasn't met the right
woman yet, but a woman who's over 30 and not married is a spinster or an old maid. Double
standards are not cool at all.
Then some people, tragically, have lost their husband or wife. This is a very bad thing,
but we actually have a name for it. Now, the one for women are... Is most common that you
know. If a woman has lost her husband, she's called a "widow". Be careful. Not a window.
"My mom's a window." Your mom's a window? "Widow", "widow", there's no "n". Okay? So,
"widow". And if you're a man who's lost his wife, you're called a "widower". I think that
you guys probably have heard of "widow", but not "widower" because in the history of war
and health problems, women seem to live longer than men, so widows are more common than widowers,
but they do happen.
Another reason why maybe you're not married is maybe you were married, but your marriage
was not so good in the end and you got divorced. So, if you got divorced, you would be called
a "divorcee". This is a noun. All of these words, here, I have put a "n", it means a
noun. So, a divorcee is a man or a woman who has been divorced. Are you divorced? No? Me
neither. And we're back to our double standards for women. A woman who has been divorced would
go to a bar, have a good time, maybe find a young boy to amuse her. If this happens,
this lovely lady is called a "Cougar". A cougar is slang for a usually divorced lady who likes
to enjoy herself after a couple refreshments at the bar, and have some fun with younger
men. As a man, though, we do not have a cougar counterpart, because in our society, unfortunately,
it's quite normal that men would find a younger lady to amuse him if he's divorced, or married,
or single. So, this double standard exists I think a bit too much.
On to the adjectives. So, we have some adjectives... Adjectives to describe your situation. You're
not married. Oh my gawd. So, you can tell the person: "I'm divorced." This means, once
again, your marriage has finished. Bye-bye. You can say: "I'm happily divorced", which
means this was a good thing for you. Bye-bye. You can say you're recently divorced, this
means it happened not too long ago. It's not telling if it's a good thing or a bad thing,
but the person knows that it's a new situation.
People can also be separated. Now, "separated" is one step away from being divorced. So,
let's say that you and your husband or you and your wife were fighting a lot, not really
having a happy marriage, a lot of people choose to separate. So this means they live in different
rooms, different houses, different cities, and they try to continue their relationship.
So, they're not yet divorced, but they're separated.
Of course, if you've never been married and you aren't married, you would be single. I'm
single. Okay. And there's another term that we use a lot for maybe tax purposes or to
help us explain to people what's happening, although you never have to, we have an expression
in a lot of countries called "common-law". So it says: "We are common-law." Common-law
means that you live together, you're in a relationship, and you're been living together
for quite a while. I think, legally, it's six months, but it could be six months to
a year. So, be careful, maybe you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend and you've been living with
them for six months. So, under the government's eyes-dunh-dunh-dunh-dunh-and they are brutal,
you will become what's known as common-law.
I've also seen one thing here that again, Ronnie-hello-has made a spelling mistake.
Do you make spelling mistakes? I do. Let me just change something, here. This word: "seperated"
actually is spelt s-e-p-a-r-a-t-e-d, so always check your spelling, Ronnie.
If you have questions about this, you could ask people.
But remember: What somebody does behind closed doors is their own business.
And if you're really wondering why that person isn't married, why don't you think about it before asking them?
Maybe it'll make your life a little bit better.
Toodles.