Why aren't you married? How to talk about being single!

433,082 views ・ 2016-08-30

English with Ronnie


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:00
Hi, there. My name's Ronnie.
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Maybe you're watching www.engvid.com or maybe you're watching
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me on YouTube. Thanks. Awesome.
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I have a question for you, though. How old are you? Yeah? Okay.
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Are you married? No. Do you have a problem with this? Because I know before I got married,
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I had no problem not being married, but other people did. For example, my friends who were married,
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maybe they were jealous, other people who I worked with, and people who I generally
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met from day to day.
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So, today I've got a special lesson for you people who are not married. This lesson is called:
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"Oh My Gawd, You're Not Married Yet? What's Wrong With Her? What's Wrong With Him?"
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So, people automatically assume that if you're over the ripe age of 30 and you're not married,
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there's something wrong with you. Maybe there's something wrong with the other people who
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want to tell you their opinion of how you should live your life. That's what I think.
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So, I'm going to go through some terms, some of them slang, some of them more traditional,
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and reasons why you can give people why you're not married yet. And it's none of their business,
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really. I was fortunate enough to have a mom who didn't push me to get married. Thanks,
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mom. Does your mom push you to get married? -"Come on, get married, get married."
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-"Find me a handsome guy, mom, who's not a dick. Maybe I'll do that."
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So, first of all, people are going to say behind your back, which means not in front
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of you: "What's wrong with him?" Most of the time people will say: "He must be gay." Because
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every man out there who's not married just must be gay. This came from a long, long,
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long, long time ago. There's an area of history... An era of history called the Victorian Era.
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They didn't admit to people that they were gay because that's wrong, or that was wrong
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back then. They had this really amazing kind of sneaky word to say, a "confirmed bachelor".
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Now, if we lived in the Victorian times and somebody told you that they were a confirmed
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bachelor, we would know that that means that that man is gay. Nowadays, we just go:
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"He's gay." Or if you're a gay man, you say: "I'm gay." But gay men can marry, so yeah, there's
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no excuse.
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What I'm going to teach you is the difference between men and women being married and not
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being married. So, if you're a man who's not married, we have a word called a "bachelor".
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This is a very common, very famous TV show called The Bachelor. If you're a woman who's
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not married, you are a "bachelorette". If you know anything about French or if your
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language has masculine and feminine, you would understand that the "ette" part makes it a
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girl. So, we have the male is a bachelor or a confirmed bachelor, and then we have the
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female as a bachelorette. So, if you are a man and you're not married, everything's fine
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unless people think that you're gay. If you're gay, that's fine. The confirmed bachelor.
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But if you're a woman and you're not married, we got some really bad names for you guys
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in English, especially if you're old, like over 30. So, we have two names that are not
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good that we substitute for a bachelorette, because a bachelorette should be young. We
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have the word "old maid" and a "spinster". So, an old maid and a spinster are older women
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who have not yet married or never will marry. So, this goes back to the question:
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What's wrong with her? Why did nobody marry her? Hmm. This is what we call in English a double
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standard. "A double standard" means what is acceptable or in society for a man, bachelor
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- it's not acceptable in society for a woman. So, a man who's over 30 hasn't met the right
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woman yet, but a woman who's over 30 and not married is a spinster or an old maid. Double
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standards are not cool at all.
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Then some people, tragically, have lost their husband or wife. This is a very bad thing,
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but we actually have a name for it. Now, the one for women are... Is most common that you
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know. If a woman has lost her husband, she's called a "widow". Be careful. Not a window.
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"My mom's a window." Your mom's a window? "Widow", "widow", there's no "n". Okay? So,
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"widow". And if you're a man who's lost his wife, you're called a "widower". I think that
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you guys probably have heard of "widow", but not "widower" because in the history of war
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and health problems, women seem to live longer than men, so widows are more common than widowers,
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but they do happen.
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Another reason why maybe you're not married is maybe you were married, but your marriage
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was not so good in the end and you got divorced. So, if you got divorced, you would be called
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a "divorcee". This is a noun. All of these words, here, I have put a "n", it means a
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noun. So, a divorcee is a man or a woman who has been divorced. Are you divorced? No? Me
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neither. And we're back to our double standards for women. A woman who has been divorced would
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go to a bar, have a good time, maybe find a young boy to amuse her. If this happens,
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this lovely lady is called a "Cougar". A cougar is slang for a usually divorced lady who likes
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to enjoy herself after a couple refreshments at the bar, and have some fun with younger
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men. As a man, though, we do not have a cougar counterpart, because in our society, unfortunately,
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it's quite normal that men would find a younger lady to amuse him if he's divorced, or married,
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or single. So, this double standard exists I think a bit too much.
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On to the adjectives. So, we have some adjectives... Adjectives to describe your situation. You're
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not married. Oh my gawd. So, you can tell the person: "I'm divorced." This means, once
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again, your marriage has finished. Bye-bye. You can say: "I'm happily divorced", which
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means this was a good thing for you. Bye-bye. You can say you're recently divorced, this
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means it happened not too long ago. It's not telling if it's a good thing or a bad thing,
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but the person knows that it's a new situation.
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People can also be separated. Now, "separated" is one step away from being divorced. So,
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let's say that you and your husband or you and your wife were fighting a lot, not really
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having a happy marriage, a lot of people choose to separate. So this means they live in different
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rooms, different houses, different cities, and they try to continue their relationship.
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So, they're not yet divorced, but they're separated.
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Of course, if you've never been married and you aren't married, you would be single. I'm
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single. Okay. And there's another term that we use a lot for maybe tax purposes or to
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help us explain to people what's happening, although you never have to, we have an expression
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in a lot of countries called "common-law". So it says: "We are common-law." Common-law
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means that you live together, you're in a relationship, and you're been living together
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for quite a while. I think, legally, it's six months, but it could be six months to
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a year. So, be careful, maybe you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend and you've been living with
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them for six months. So, under the government's eyes-dunh-dunh-dunh-dunh-and they are brutal,
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you will become what's known as common-law.
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I've also seen one thing here that again, Ronnie-hello-has made a spelling mistake.
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Do you make spelling mistakes? I do. Let me just change something, here. This word: "seperated"
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actually is spelt s-e-p-a-r-a-t-e-d, so always check your spelling, Ronnie.
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If you have questions about this, you could ask people.
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But remember: What somebody does behind closed doors is their own business.
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And if you're really wondering why that person isn't married, why don't you think about it before asking them?
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Maybe it'll make your life a little bit better.
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Toodles.
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