I'm 26. And while that may seem young to you, watching my friends and family get married and have kids while I'm romantically stagnant with no suitable prospects makes a quarter of a century feel like a lifetime.
As my ovaries and my tolerance depreciate by the minute, it leaves me to wonder if I've been too picky in my dating life, or if I swiped left on Mr. Right a long time ago. Pressure bursts pipes, and sometimes the fear of my biological clock can trigger me to make some pretty irrational decisions. According to Sherri Shepherd, she knows the FOMO struggle and experienced it first-hand in her previous marriage.
After divorcing her first husband, Sherri was fighting for custody of her son when she introduced to a stranger, by mutual friend Niecy Nash, who would one day become her husband. Although her ex had a salacious reputation among her inner circle, you know what they say, love is blind, and their advice fell upon deaf ears. Sherri told D.L. Huguley:
"Everybody said that. Steve Harvey said it, Barbara Walters said it, Whoopi [Goldberg] wouldn't come to my wedding. Everybody tried to tell me. The only person who showed up was Kym Whitley because she got a free iPad and she was my bridesmaid. We gave away free iPads [laughs]."
It's a rule that you should never go grocery shopping when you're hungry, and you should never offer your love to a man when you don't love your damn self. In Sherri Shepherd's case, her fear of being alone led her to make one of the biggest mistakes of her life.
"I was in New York doing 'The View' and I was lonely. That's what it was. You can't do stuff out of fear and being lonely. All of the women of 'The View' were amazing but they had lives. Whoopi would go home and eat her brownies, she was gone for the night. Then, Elizabeth Hasselbeck had her family and Joy [Behar] had hers so I was out there by myself."
Later, that relationship led to fractures in relationships with even her closest friends, including Niecy. Although the two of them have mended their relationship since the divorce, Sherri says that she's wary of ever letting her friends play matchmaker again:
"We had a big blowout. We did. I said, 'Niecy, I will never go out with anybody you introduce me to.' We came to a meeting of the minds yesterday, we were together, she said, 'Would you just go out?' I said, 'Yeah, but I'm not going to get married to any of your recommendations.'"
Ultimately, Sherri was able to take responsibility for her own shortcomings in her former relationship and admitted that she should have never made a major life decision out of a fear of being alone. She explained:
"At the time I was in my 40s and scared. I was like, 'I'm getting older, who's going to want to be in a relationship?' It was a lot of stuff done out of fear. I was also raised to in the church to believe you can't have sex before you get married, so I was horny! The whole celibacy thing, this idea that it's better to get married than to burn. So I got married too because I was horny, and look, we never had sex."
"At the time I was in my 40s and scared. I was like, 'I'm getting older, who's going to want to be in a relationship?' It was a lot of stuff done out of fear."
Sherri is a reminder is to be careful what you pray for, and that you should never settle until you get it. Your standards aren't too high, you just have to be patient enough to meet a man who can rise to the occasion. Sherri learned the hard way that you should never let your fear of missing out cause you to miss out on what you deserve.
Featured image by Instagram/@sherrieshepherd.