A little help on dealing with a sensitive topic

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AlinMT1984

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Hello, first time here and figured this may be about the only place to ask this and hope everyone understands. Is there any polite way to tell a priest who brings up your lack of a spouse that you have no interest in dating, relationships, and absolutely hate weddings and anything else close to romantic love? I had the same problem at my sister’s wedding when my aunt and grandmother started implying when I would get married would be and I tried to get them to drop the topic then and got the same reply of “you never know”.

Please understand I am a single guy, I own my own home, paid off my vehicle, am gainfully employed while trying to earn a master’s degree and have made a life for myself in one of the hardest cities to survive in within Montana over a thousand miles away from the rest of my family following my dreams on my own so I am a fully functioning member of society who has had to work excessively hard to get where I am and do it mostly by myself with little help from anyone.

But from a lifetime of mistreatment from a number of female relatives, being stood-up constantly through high-school and college, seeing what divorce does to men who’s partners cheat on them, and finding few if any women attractive anymore (for many reasons which I won’t go into here), I just gave up looking after the one time I felt I was in love die when I found out that the woman I loved and respected the most lied to me about what I meant to her I just gave up on romance entirely and would like people to stop talking about it with me. So please how do you politely tell someone who probably meant no harm to just drop the entire conversation about this immediately because it is extremely painful and get them to understand that you don’t associate the experience or concept with anything more than pain and heartache?
 
I agree with His_helpmeet. In the meantime, if you don’t wish to discuss the topic, it would be best to use the polite ways of dropping the subject that we use in regular social interactions, such as:
  • Smiling and changing the subject by asking the other person a question about their own activities, so they’ll talk about that instead. “Hey, I heard you just got back from a trip to Spain, how was it? What was the best thing you saw? How was the food?”
  • Politely excusing yourself. “Excuse me, I need to go get a coffee refill.”
  • If the person won’t let up on the subject, and they’re someone you can’t redirect or get away from using the first two approaches (such as a parent), politely say, "I’d rather not talk about that, if you don’t mind. It’s a personal topic for me. " If they still continue, end the conversation politely but firmly.
 
I notice in your post, you go on for a while about your justifications for why you wish to stay single. Is the issue really that you don’t want to talk about it, or that you want other people to understand/accept/agree with your positions that marriage and romantic relationships are bad? If it’s the first, then it should be obvious. Tactfully change the subject to something you actually want to talk about. You probably won’t be successful in sending out a “mass message” to the world that you don’t ever want to hear a word about family life because it is a simple reality that family life is the center of most other people’s existence and is generally what is first and foremost on their mind. So you are going to have to change the subject yourself. Now if you want to convince the world that your point of view is correct, you’ll be setting up yourself for frustration. Most people garner tremendous joy and satisfaction from their family life and they are going to go with their first hand experience before your opinion on what family life seems to be like.
 
I did so as to provide context and nip any of the comments I have gotten before when trying to talk about my issue being relegated to simple and even banal dismissives about “it will happen when you least expect it” or platitudes of again “you never know”. Also I have attempted to change the conversation with little to no effect on this such as “I don’t think so” and “it’s not really something on my radar”, or even more direct “I’m not interested”. I am asking as people don’t seem to take the hint and I was wondering how do you actually tactfully tell someone this is not something you care to chat about who isn’t getting the hint, especially to those who are not actually in the dating game.
 
AlinMT1984 said:
So please how do you politely tell someone who probably meant no harm to just drop the entire conversation about this immediately because it is extremely painful and get them to understand that you don’t associate the experience or concept with anything more than pain and heartache?
Click to expand...
“Thank you for your concern, but I’m good. How about those (insert favorite sports team here)?”
Repeat as necessary.
 
I never “hint” at anything. If a person was trying to incessantly talk to me about a personal matter that I didn’t want to discuss, I would just say, “I’m not going to discuss this with you. Would you like to talk about something else?” I have a really hard time imagining any of the people I know insisting that I discuss my love life with them after that. Even my own mother would realize there was no use discussing it with me. I have to wonder why there are so many people in your life that feel entitled to direct it for you that this is such a problem? If it can be said, how many people are we talking? Did you mom, sisters, and aunties try to stage an intervention or something?
 
You can always say that you haven’t found the someone. You don’t owe anybody any other explanations.
 
If you are truly bothered by these occurrences, you should seek some counseling. If it truly is just an annoyance, maybe developing a sense of humor would help. For example, maybe saying ‘it’s nothing definite, but keep next February 30th in mind’. They’ll either forget it, or get a big surprise when they try to mark the date!
 
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