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" This weekend, I made the trek back home, where my mother and I then went to visit my 95-year-old grandmother (who still drives AND works a part-time job\u2014she&amp;#039;s my inspiration!) And, of course, the conversation turned to men. And why I&amp;#039;m not married. And why all my friends are engaged/married/pregnant/etc. My grandmother &amp;quot;met&amp;quot; my grandfather when they were both pre-verbal. Their mothers were friends, and there&amp;#039;s a picture of the two of them, circa 1918 when they were both around 3 years old, sitting next to each other at a Sunday School picnic.  Flash forward fifty years, to 1968, where my mom met my dad at an honest-to-goodness, advertised in the New York Times singles party in New York City. Now, it&amp;#039;s forty years later, 2008, the era of online dating, five-minute dating, fourth-wave feminism and what have you. Shouldn&amp;#039;t it be easier than ever? And, yes, that&amp;#039;s a rhetorical question, because, as we know, it&amp;#039;s anything but. And it&amp;#039;s getting hard to keep explaining to family members that I&amp;#039;m still single, that no, I&amp;#039;m not seeing anybody special, that no, I haven&amp;#039;t looked my high school boyfriend up to find out how he&amp;#039;s doing. And it&amp;#039;s not like my mom gives me grief about it that often. After all, I was raised in a Free to Be . . . You and Me generation/household and finding a boyfriend/husband was NEVER something drilled into me as a task to prioritize. But should it be? Have you found love when you least expected it or was it something you actually had to work for? Going to singles nights, going on date after online date, going to parties just because you heard a friend&amp;#039;s cute brother might be there when you&amp;#039;d rather be spaced out in front of the TV sounds absolutely antithetical to romance. It almost sounds calculating. But just sitting there, hoping you&amp;#039;ll meet The One while you&amp;#039;re running late to work seems too chancy.  So, what&amp;#039;s a single girl with two generations of relatives breathing down her back to do? PS\u2014in case you were wondering, after all that prep for a potential date with Brendan, he cancelled on me! He said he had too much work, but I haven&amp;#039;t heard back from him so who knows? Maybe some things are better left untouched after a few years . . . "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/love-sex/relationships/a3808/family-matters/>