Perth, Friends and Singlehood

I was single when I lived in San Francisco but I was never so keenly aware of my lack of marital status as when I moved to Perth.

Let me explain what Perth is like; it is a quiet, clean city where the shops close at 5pm, most do not open on Sundays, there are lots of little parks, trees and tons of suburbs. Most people live in the suburbs and commute long distances via bus, car or train into the city for work each day. At 4:55 each day when I look up from my desk it is to the sound of the mass exodus as everyone heads for the door at 5pm (Granted they do start at 8pm so I do not blame them for getting out of there) but what is interesting is that they are all rushing home to families.

See Perthites marry, or get into relationships really young. So far the only people over 30 who I have met that are never married, have no children and not or have not been in a long term committed relationship are those like myself who have moved from another country. I wager there are more baby faced engaged, married or relationshiped 20 somethings than there are people in that age range with four year degrees in Perth.

And if you have lived here your whole life you also have the same 20 friends you had since kindergarten and Perth is a very cliquey town so most people I have met that are from Perth are not at all interested in making new friends. Don’t get me wrong they are very friendly people and you will enjoy working alongside them, interacting with them in the store, church etc but they have a partner, children and the afore mentioned 20 friends and thus no room to add a new person – you.

So my new strategy is to grab them while they are still fresh off the boat/plane like myself and as such I have met a couple of lovely girls I hope to get to know better. I am still open to getting to know the locals but now that I know how Perth works it no longer bothers me. Plus, I am lucky that I have always enjoyed my own company.

Now that I have the friend thing figured out (fresh off the boat), I have been given random, unsolicited advice by male colleagues on how to go about finding a man. See on Monday when everyone is reciting their family and spousal weekend activities mine are usually solo so one day I have the following conversation:

Male Colleague (MC): “You need to get a boyfriend”

ME: puzzled, what vibe I am giving off “I do?”

MC: “Yeah don’t you want one?”

ME: “Yeah if the right one came along”

MC: “Well get out there and find one”

ME: “Ah So where do people meet other people here?”

MC: “Online, Bars, Clubs, getting drunk”

ME: chuckle “None of those are really my thing”

MC: “You just need to get out there get drunk and meet someone”

ME: “So tell me how did you meet your wife?”

MC: “Oh we were both drunk in a bar”

ME: “Ahh ha how’s that working for you?”

MC: “Great it’s been 10 awesome years, 4 beautiful kids”

ME: “Oh my wow”

I knew so many beautiful, fabulous, single friends in San Francisco so that being single was just a part of life and I will confess that when everyone else in the prayer group was praying for husbands I was praying for a killer body and tons of money. So far God has not seen it fit to answer either of those prayers and now I live in Perth so even if I started praying for a husband now I suspect it will take a miracle and I am still really holding out hope for the killer body and the tons of money too.