New Year's Parties Ain't Shopping Malls

This is a post I wrote on a New Year’s Eve thread:

Hi everyone,

I have to be honest with you – I agree with the gentlemen who responded before me. We single women are very unlikely to meet an eligible dating prospect on New Year’s Eve. Many years’ worth of eager anticipations over one of the biggest party nights of the year, followed by the acrid let-down of yet another evening ended as a single woman, have led to a certain realism for me about holidays such as New Year’s Eve.

As single women, the biggest gift we can give to ourselves is the gift of honesty. We are all vibrant, active women, enjoying life, and none of us wants to be left in the lurch on New Year’s. We want to be out and about, enjoying the energy, partying with everyone else. That’s an absolutely beautiful thing that I think we should honor respectfully. We deserve to party like anyone else. But the problem comes when our hopes overtake our relaxed attitude towards simply enjoying the night.

I know that, speaking for myself, my hopes of finding an eligible bachelor have often taken over my experience of whatever party I happened to be at on New Year’s, leaving me resentful and frustrated. At this point in my life, I’ve learned to expect very little from nights like New Year’s. I’ve learned that dates will be sporadic in life and often come from the most unexpected of places.

And I’ve learned that I certainly can’t expect that those eligible bachelors show up on my timetable. Just because I took the time to go to the salon and get my hair blown out, spend money on a brand new dress and pair of heels, use the expensive body scrub, and spend forty minutes on makeup doesn’t mean that some guy is obligated to show up at my side at a given event and appreciate all the hard work I put into it. If I want to do those things, I do them for myself and for the pleasure of the way they affect my interactions with others. They don’t guarantee a warm reception with potential dates. The night a new date shows up might be the night I am dragging myself home from hot yoga in my Pink yoga pants and Aeropostale sweatshirt, skin inadvertently glowing from the workout.

At the end of the day, I go to these things for me, because you can’t guarantee a warm reception. If you want to go out to a bar or club on New Year’s Eve, go for the music, the open bar, the free buffet, the balloon drop, and the company. Forget about meeting someone. You can’t control that. Just enjoy it for what it is. And if you meet someone, all the better.

… Or you could just order in fancy gourmet pizza, invite a friend over, and drink sweet wine and watch documentaries like me. We're all at different points in our lives. Don't be afraid to be different.

The Satisfied Single

thesatisfiedsingle.blogspot.com

Honoring the Christmas Spirit... Satisfied Single Style

Merry Christmas, everyone!

I’m sitting in my local Dunkin’ Donuts, having a cup of decaf coffee and working on a term paper. I spent a sublime morning tidying up my beautiful home after a wonderful workout, and capped it off with a warm shower and a comforting bowl of lentil soup with spinach and a couple of diet grilled cheese sandwiches (I’m doing Weight Watchers). I was supposed to meet a friend, but that didn’t work out, so I’m going to study for the rest of the day and then head to bed early to be at work in the morning.

Most likely, many of you are with your families on this seasonable December morning. That’s a lovely thing. It’s wonderful to have family, and it’s great to see them during the holidays. But some of us are probably thinking about what it would be like to have families of our own. For those of us who are heading out of our terrible twenties and into the primes of our lives, our thoughts turn every now and again to the subject of wanting a husband and, maybe - just maybe - a couple of little dumplings (as I call them).

It’s hard to deal with being single at these times. The wistful thoughts about what could have been can be torturous. The loneliness which hits every once in a while during the year can hit like a tidal wave during the holidays. Christmas is the very definition of hearthside familial warmth, and it can make one heartsick to imagine that one might be deprived of experiencing that warmth.

Even if you’re too young or indifferent to be thinking about wanting your own family, some of us - including myself - may simply never have had much of a family to begin with. For those of us who never really experienced familial warmth, Christmas can loom like the cavernous maw of an mountainside cliff, threatening to consume us with its emptiness and the pain which that engenders.

I’m well-acquainted with both the emptiness and, in recent years, the disappointment. My decade and a half as a single woman has forced me to walk with the pain and, happily, has uniquely equipped me to wring the joy and satisfaction out of such difficult times. My strategy for mining joy from suffering has been to take every bit of satisfaction out of every pleasure I can give myself in this tough situation and to honor the courage and strength it takes for me to survive it. On every family holiday, I do whatever I want to do, whenever I want to do it, however I want to do it. I wake up to my own rhythms. I eat what I please. I putter around in my house, make art, call friends, eat ice cream. I go for long walks in the park and smell the cold December air. And I enjoy myself thoroughly.

The most important thing that I do is honor myself. Every minute of Christmas Day every year is a meditation on my own capacity for bringing myself joy and happiness. If you are longing for a family to spend your holidays with, I encourage you to start your own traditions. Put up a Christmas tree. Cook a really nice Christmas dinner for yourself and top it off with eggnog and a slice of cheesecake or pie. Watch a Christmas movie. Go Christmas shopping online every Christmas morning with credit card in hand. The important thing is that you feel special because you’re giving yourself special luxuries, ones that makes YOU feel treasured.

For those of you who are lonely this Christmas, get up right now and do something that gives you pleasure. Not something that SHOULD give you pleasure, something good for you like reading (unless you actually enjoy it...). Do something that makes you feel really GOOD. Then do something else. Keep it up until the blues start to lift. Then make your bed with lots of really heavy blankets, open the window, and go to bed early. That is, if you’re not busy watching Something Borrowed, eating caramel popcorn, and laughing hysterically. You go, girl.

Getting Creative With The Aces

Today I wanted to talk more about finding peace within yourself in the midst of your single circumstances. Most of us probably never wanted to be single. Whether we’ve been single for only a few weeks or for many years, it’s a journey we often find ourselves wondering about. How did I land here? What does this mean? They’re confusing questions.

As a single woman, for years I grappled with my place in the world. It seemed to me that I was missing out on something huge, like the world was on a magic carpet ride and I was left standing somberly here on Earth, holding nothing but a scrap of tattered rug. At the end of the day, my loneliness, hurt, and anger were a constant companion to me as I went throughout my day-to-day existence, knives which dug deep into my flesh and scoured me every time I twisted my torso.

It’s funny how time heals all wounds. As I matured, it became clear to me that so many of the assumptions I had held about love and relationships were simply misguided. The hurt which pierced me so in my youth was mostly the result of my belief that male indifference to me had something to do with my own personal characteristics. As I have grown older, I have come to understand that men have their own personal preferences, just as women do, for their own personal reasons which often make little to no sense at all. I have also come to understand that I don’t receive nearly as little attention from men as I think I do, and that I am not entitled to receive attention. I am no more deserving of attention than a crippled burn victim. What matters is the quality of my heart, and the fact that I appreciate that, and surround myself with people who appreciate it.

The loneliness is still a companion of mine, but I have come to understand that companionship and kinship come from all walks of life, and that one can be single and supremely connected with the very lifeblood of human existence, or in a relationship and be the loneliest woman in the world... even if your boyfriend loves you. I derive connection from everything today - from the people I smile at on line at the drugstore, from the people I volunteer with who sometimes become new friends, from the people I have little conversations with at my local coffeehouse who sometimes become new friends or business partners as well. Even from a great plate of pad thai, or a beautiful sunset, or a particularly satisfying blog post. At these things, sometimes I just sit back and say, Wow. That was satisfying. As a Satisfied Single, I am so connected that loneliness mostly seems very far away.

The anger mostly comes from feeling like life has cheated me, like it’s passing me by. Without a boyfriend, I feel like I’m just not whole, like I’ve been robbed of something important that I needed to be happy. Which, today, I understand. As I’ve said elsewhere in my blog, I’m not a big buyer of the tired feminist truism, “Women need a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” I’m a fish out of water without a bicycle, and I’m not afraid to say so. I’ve accepted that I do need a man, and that I undoubtedly always will. But I’ve also accepted that I have no control over whether or not I have one. I can always settle for a man who isn’t good for me. I’ve done that. But it’s just not for me any more.

I’ve accepted that the difference between women who are paired and women who are not is not beauty or any other surface characteristic, but most likely simply chance and luck. Women have partners for a million different reasons. Some got lucky. Some settled. Some will be divorced in five or ten years and spend the rest of their lives as miserable, Botoxed cougars (these are mostly the shallow types who went for surface over substance). I’ve accepted that I just haven’t found my man yet, and that, for me, it’s a matter of simple luck. Some of us have legions of suitors, while some of us are a little more idiosyncratic. It doesn’t matter. No matter what your situation, it’s always a matter of luck and circumstance. Plenty of successful/beautiful/etc. people settle or get unlucky. I’ve accepted that the only thing I have control over is how I choose to live the life I have now.

“Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt represents determinism; the way you play it represents free will.” -Jawaharlal Nehru

Love Will Triumph

Sorry for the lapse in posts a couple of weeks back. I was actually in the midst of a whirlwind romance with a new guy. It was two weeks of seeing each other constantly, with the first week seeing each other every few days and the second week basically never getting out of bed except to eat and run errands. We eventually decided to just be friends, but it was a heck of an experience, let me tell you. ;)

Sometimes it's best to pull back from romantic involvements for a bit. I think that dating is an important part of the single woman's life, but some of us go about it in a really unhealthy manner. I've met a lot of women who are dating for all the wrong reasons, and, frankly, it's a little scary. Some women insist on only dating men who are really attractive physically, with all of the difficulties and complications that ensue. Some women are adamant about only dating from a particular racial group for really dysfunctional reasons. Some women are attracted to the wrong type of men - men who are arrogant, or cold, or insensitive.

I wonder sometimes if our culture has done my generation a real disservice when it comes to the dating and relationships game. We've been weaned on cultural models and mores which are totally unrealistic. Growing up idolizing models and movie stars, with TV shows and movies that promote values which are antithetical to healthy ideals, it's no wonder that we all want to marry actors and models who look a certain way, and that some of us want to marry James Dean or George Clooney. We all have different ideals, of course. But I see a lot of finickiness and unrealistic dating practices in my social circles, and it worries me.

It worries me a lot. I basically worry that it's a recipe for unhappiness. When one is fixated on superficial qualities, whether they be looks, profession, wealth, or even demeanor, it makes finding a Mr. Right that much harder. I know, easier said than done. But I know that, if I commit to working towards making myself a better person and trying to live my best life and be my best self, it will become natural for me to want the best for myself. And the best is a healthy and joyous partnership and a commitment that will stand the test of time.

At the end of the day, when I am truly my best self-loving self, I'll be so fulfilled and satisfied that I simply won't settle for less. And, at this point in time, I'd rather work towards building the career, friends, hobbies, passions, and fun times that will make that happen. I'll stumble at times, and probably get involved in some unhealthy short-term  relationships. But at the end, love will triumph.

Avoiding the Jimmy Choo Blues

As a single woman, financial security is something I think about from time to time. I have always had lofty financial goals for myself. Well, lofty for someone who came from little means. I always intended to have a well-paying professional job, to live a financially stable lifestyle, to own a home, and to have savings in the bank. In this economy, however, such goals are not so much goals as they are dreams. So many of my fellow single women are less well-off than we would like to be.

There are, I believe, several reasons for this, not all of them benign. First of all, I can say from my own personal experience that women, and single women in particular, spend more money on personal care and hygiene than any objective person might ever imagine. The amount of money that I spent at Sephora alone during the first half of my twenties probably could have funded the first few years of my retirement if it had been invested. When you add in the hair grooming, waxing, nail grooming, designer clothing and shoes... Instead of investing in stocks, women are investing in looks. This is a well-documented fact, and one that contributes negatively to our bottom line.

Another factor in single women’s financial insecurity has to do with the fact that women so rarely advocate for themselves in the realm of professional advancement. It has been well-documented that women are sometimes passive in their pursuit of financial compensation. In fact, when a woman gets hired for a job, she will often command several thousand dollars less in salary than a man being hired for the same job, not because she is less qualified or talented, but because she simply doesn’t feel comfortable asking for more. This may contribute to the well-known “gender gap” in income. Another contributing factor is the fact that women tend to enter the “helping professions” and, to make matters worse financially, shy away from financially lucrative technical professions such as engineering and banking. 

As a young woman, the last thing I want or have time to think about in my day-to-day life is my financial future. The daily grind of having to balance my budget on what seems like inadequate income is taxing, and it consumes much of my energy every day. With all of the expenses that pop up, saving money is the last thing on my mind. And yet I know that my undisciplined spending is a problem. When I see all around me evidence of friends, coworkers, and acquaintances living beyond their means and spending money profligately, it becomes easy to pretend that my experience is the norm and that there’s nothing wrong with “living well.” It becomes easy to ignore the ramifications of what I am doing. And yet this is a mistake.

It is imperative for all women to become mindful of the financial consequences of the choices they’re making. While both men and women make irresponsible financial decisions, it is usually women who end up raising the children of illegitimate unions, women who bear the brunt of the punishment in hostile divorces, and women who are less susceptible to lung cancer and motorcycle accidents and end up living longer. The vulnerable social position that women find themselves in compels us to ensure that our well-being is safeguarded. 

Making sound financial decisions such as saving 10% of our monthly income, ensuring that we have well-funded retirement plans if they are available, investing in health, life and car/renters/home insurance if they are available, and being assertive in the workplace as regards our salaries and promotion paths help create a stability and sense of prosperity in our lives which not only provides a secure basis for our futures, but also affords us more than a small measure of peace. Knowing that your finances are taken care of is a luxury we all should invest in more. It gives you at least as much of a high as a new Ferrari or pair of Jimmy Choos.

A Response to a Blog Post on Marriage

This is a response I posted to an article online by a woman describing her frustration with being the only single woman among all her married friends and her single friends who never wanted to be married. She describes feeling ashamed about her longing for a husband. Here it is:

One of the saddest things about the women’s movement has been its inability to separate women’s autonomy from women’s inclinations. In my opinion, one of its greatest achievements was to liberate women from the shackles of stereotyped gender roles and responsibilities and to open up opportunities for women to live their best lives. Today, we women have the opportunity to follow our dreams in any way we please, from living in an ashram in India to running a Fortune 500 corporation to leading the next great cultural revolution. This freedom is our birthright, and is long overdue.

However, freedom from gender roles is not the same as freedom from human nature. The great failing of the feminist revolution is that it neglected to consider the consequences of extending the freedom of breaking social rules to breaking gender norms with legitimate foundations. In order to buttress its position that women should have equal opportunities, the feminist movement asserted that there were no psychological differences between women and men and that both could pursue similar aims in similar ways with little fallout. This, in my opinion, was patently false.

In my experience, women are indeed different from men in elemental ways. Although there are, as always, many exceptions, many women have a propensity for passion and intensity and hunger for intimacy. In my experience, connection is an essential feminine need which often does not get met in our society. This is, I believe, one of the reasons women are not inclined to sleep around like men – we simply do not derive the same rewards, as the passion and intensity we crave from our intimate relations are missing in promiscuous sex. This is also, I believe, why we are more drawn to and more desirous of marital relations.

It is unfortunate that the women’s movement has neglected to address these essential aspects of the feminine experience. I completely understand how you felt, Elizabeth. Tens of millions of women are in the same position, wondering if something is wrong with them because they don’t feel like they “need a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” A marriage is one of the most intimate relationships a woman can have, and that’s why so many of us crave one. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Marriage Abstractionism

Growing up, I always assumed I’d be married in what I imagined would be a timely fashion. I thought my romantic life would follow an established pattern. I would go to high school and have lots of boyfriends, go to college and do the same, have live-in boyfriends in my twenties and then get married somewhere in there. While I never pictured boyfriends and husbands as being very important parts of my life - I kind of pictured them as silent sidekick Kens to my center-of-attention Doctor-dressed Barbie - I always thought they’d be there, omnipresent, supporting me as I took on the world.

Funny how life has a habit of making hamburger meat of your best plans. Established pattern has been about the furthest thing from what my romantic life has been. The haphazard and indifferent nature of my dating history has been a constant source of curiosity for me. Why, I wondered, did my romantic life look so much different from everybody else’s? I often questioned whether there was something wrong with me personally, or with the lifestyle I led. It just didn’t make sense to me that the media seemed to promote a certain type of romantic lifestyle while my life differed so dramatically.

Eventually, as I grew older, I began to talk to other women and realize that my experience really wasn’t so different from so many others. The sporadic dates and occasionally dysfunctional relationships weren’t the idiosyncratic experiences of me alone; instead, they were quite common among many of the women I encountered. Eventually, I realized that the model I had grown up with, the model the media perpetuated, was actually only lived out by a minority of women. Eccentric dating histories were the rule, not the exception.

I think we single women can take heart from this fact when we think about the institution of marriage as well. As singles, we often think our romantic existences should follow a certain pattern or scheme. We may not be as rigid as I was, but, at some point, most of us believe that there’s something wrong with us because things in our romantic lives aren’t going the way we think they should. For most of us, we start getting marriage fever in our 20’s, and it just gets worse as we get older. We wonder why our dating lives are so crazy, why we haven’t found a boyfriend yet, why we’re still virgins, why we’ve never had a long-term relationship or a good long-term relationship, or - yes - why we’re still not married (or married again). 

Honestly, girls, in reality, this is just the way it goes. Romance is a b****. There’s no two ways about it. I could be looking at the beautiful woman walking down the street with her hot husband and be absolutely insane with jealousy, never imagining that they fight every night over his workaholic tendencies and that she’s on the verge of leaving him, developing bipolar disorder and being single for the next 15 years. This unfolds in a million different ways. On the outside looking in, it seems like so many people are married, and that those married people are happy, and that most people have normal romantic histories. Not true, sisters. For every woman, there’s a different story, and those stories can include - among other things - sociopathic boyfriends, chemical dependency, mental illness, abortions, domestic violence, eating disorders, inability to commit, psycho in-laws, and so forth. 

Being a virgin, never having had a boyfriend or a husband or a good one, are just pieces of a much larger romantic picture. Everyone’s romantic tapestry is different, and striking in its own way. Composed of patches and scraps of varying colors and textures - souvenirs of where we’ve been, who we’ve seen, what we’ve learned - it is what makes us unique. Very few people are Michelangelos when it comes to romance. Most of us are more like Picasso. Or Jackson Pollock. You can’t try to analyze it, or process it. In the end, you just have to sit back, let it all sink in, and enjoy the ride.

Marriage For Our Generation

According to modern media sources, there is a large population - perhaps even a majority - of modern women who do not want to get married. Such pundits say that modern women, because of their unprecedented freedom, financial security, and independence, simply don’t find the concept of marriage appealing. This is, they say, the source of the increasing trend towards single womanhood.

It’s interesting to look at the huge spectrum of single womanhood out there and explore what our varied attitudes are towards the institution of marriage. One thing I see a lot of is cynicism and jadedness. For example, my generation, Generation X, is the first generation to really be, I suppose, the “divorce generation,” as broken homes became de rigeur for the first time pretty much in our generation. I believe that has really taken a toll on our and subsequent generations’ attitudes towards marriage. 

As I have said before, I feel this is especially true of men. Kids who are the products of broken homes mostly grow up with single mothers, and I would imagine that this would hit little boys especially hard. Little boys who grow up without father figures in the home, especially those who watched their mothers struggle with loneliness and financial difficulties, probably grow up confused and afraid of commitment, never wanting to inflict that kind of pain on any woman. 

I know a lot of women who want to get married. But I’m just one person. I can’t speak for the multitudes of single women out there. But I think the trend away from marriage is more a reflection of our generation’s fear of it than of our animosity towards it. Even women I’ve spoken to who “don’t believe in marriage” fantasize about it. I wish the media would reflect the diversity of opinion and experience in the lives of modern single women, and stop promoting this tired old trope about the “liberated single woman.” That's true for many of us. But, as usual, our experiences are diverse and varied.