When I was single, smug married people drove me nuts. Then I became one.
A few years ago, a friend told me she was worried that she’d never find a partner. She had been single for a long time and didn’t see much chance that this would change.
“You’ll find someone,” I said. “I just know it.”
She shot me a deadly look. “Do you know how many people have told me that?”
I apologized immediately, embarrassed by the asinine comment. I had been single throughout my 20s and 30s, and always hated know-it-all proclamations from coupled friends. Now here I was, uttering the same words that pissed me off so many years ago. It was easy, I realized, to become the smug-married enemy.