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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
This article (and the book it's written about, presumably) amount to nothing more than cheerleading intended to make women feel better about the fact that they haven't found partners yet, by putting forward the premise that they want to be alone. I'm here to speak the shameful truth that not all of us are happy to be alone.
I'm saying this irrespective of the fact that there are some women who sit at home watching dating shows on TV, or are pressured by family to hurry up and get married, and that most of us are bombarded 24/7 by images of happy couples walking on the beach or curling up on couches or snuggling infants. I'm speaking from the personal, sociological, psychological perspective of a woman who has been without a partner (I don't use the word "soulmate", either) for much of her adult life.
Let's be realistic for once and forget the political ramifications of speaking about single women in their 30s: humans are social animals, and it doesn't befit (most of) us to spend our lives alone and without companionship, emotional support, a shared vision for the future, someone who will ask us how our day was, etc. Of course you can get many of these things from trusted friends and close family members, but you'd be lying if you said it wasn't qualitatively deeper and infinitely sweeter, coming from someone with whom you shared a private, romantic love.
I understand that relationships are hard work, and that some people do prefer to be alone, but I am tired of being made to feel ashamed of the very natural emotion of loneliness. I don't need to be told not to feel this way, that someday I'll find someone. I no longer believe I will, and now I'm reconciling myself to that. If you scratch the surface of this article, it appears that many of the research subjects are struggling with the same conclusion. It's not triumphant - it's tragic.
Yes, I do have friends and a support network and have done meaningful things with my life, and pursue passions that keep my mind off my perpetual singlehood, and I'm a reasonably fun/intelligent/attractive person, but regardless of whatever circumstances have led up to me being here (past hurts, bad timing, personal faults), I remain pessimistic.
I am so delighted to read about a book finally addressing
the reality of women's lives today. As a therapist and a
woman, it is so disheartening to constantly hear women
bemoan and society demean the status of single women.
Women waste so much of their time feeling inadequate and
socially inferior because they have not redeemed themselves
through the blessing of a man's proposal. And because of
the change in women's economic status, because of their
increased independence, they are no longer forced to marry
simply to survive. But the ideology that buttressed that
constriction of women's lives still lives on; there remains
a potent stigma against women remaining single. Moreover,
most women's ideals of who they are supposed to
marry are patently unrealistic. They look for some
idealized form of a man, someone larger than life to
transform them as if marrying an ordinary man will consign
them to further ridicule, if not pity. Back when women's
lives were thoroughly controlled by men, when women were
cloistered, dependent, uneducated, it didn't take much for
a man to be impressive. His superior level of freedom and
power alone gave him an aura of glamour. Now, as women
gain more freedom and power, men are revealed as no less
and no more than human. The only way for a man to maintain
his mystique is to remain aloof and rejecting. And so
many women fall for that, clinging to the unavailable, non-
committal man as if there's something special about him,
and, in their terror of "settling”, dismiss any man that
actually can engage them in a loving, reciprocal
relationship. This phenomena is not only about sexism and
changing sex roles. It's also about our culture
of narcissism. So many women want Daddy's, they don't
want husbands. They want someone to magically grant them
self esteem, free them from financial and other adult
responsibilities, and fill all of their emotional needs.
So I am delighted to hear of a book that finally admits
that the emperor has no clothes. When more than half of
all American women are single, being single is no longer
a failure, it is in fact the norm. If women (and men)
want to find a partner, if they want sex, if they want
love and intimacy in their life, they're going to have to
accept the reality of modern life and make their choices
accordingly.
I suppose there's something to be said for transforming the dreary and tragic into an uplifting narrative about progress. On that count you've got to admire Trimberger for her single-minded, so to speak, resourcefulness.
What's absent from this particular progress-narrative, however, is the blood and guts of day-to-day human life as most of us know it.
(Was anyone else spooked by how pleased Trimberger seemed to announce that in the absence of regular sexual contact we might lose sexual desire?)
People fall in love. People desire each other. People have "unrealistic" hopes. People pair-up with "inappropriate" partners. This is all part of being human. And it's why, by and large, we have things like opera, poetry, and literature.
The world Trimberger conjures is chilly and antiseptic. You can't imagine it as a place that would admit rock 'n' roll, or, much less, the blues.
Deborah, in her late 50s, has never married, but "she has been in a monogamous coupled relationship with Jim for more than 10 years." Angie "has been in a relationship for twenty years with a married man." Dorothy was married at 22 for five years and again at 35, for 10. During the 13 years since her second divorce, "she had averaged about one affair a year."
In other words, one has a man who makes no committment, one is dating another woman's husband, and one can only mange short-term serial relationships. Is this the kind of behavior we want to exhort? Lacking committment, respect, or loyalty?
You know what this leads to? The rise of the Conservative Christian movement. Just the same way marrying gays illegaly in San Fran got Bush elected.
* Note: Such anectodal popular works are worthless from a scientific standpoint. In California we could find two dozen movie stars cohabitating with cheetas and extrapolate a new national movement from it. Salon ought to have higher standards to backup its femi-nazi agenda.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
Salon headlines in your mailbox
