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Singles and Spare Time: Defying the Laws of Physics August 3, 2011

Posted by Onely in Everyday Happenings.
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9 comments

I’m single; my friend John has been married for about eight years. One day we were browsing a bookstore’s memoir shelves. I read a lot of memoirs, so I was excitedly pointing to a few books that I had either enjoyed or read about: “Ooh look, The Glass Castle! Ooh, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly!  Ooh, Autobiography of a Face! Ooh, Half a Life! Ooh, Still Hungry After All These Years: Richard Simmon’s autobiography!” (I said I read a lot; I didn’t say I read highbrow.)

“Wow, you read a lot,” said John. “I wish I had time to read as much as you. But then, you’re single.”

Eh?

As our Copious Readers are surely aware, a common stereotype of singles is that we have oodles more free time than coupled people. This implies that coupling sucks more time and energy than any other life obligations. This is obviously not true, although it can seem true, given how “intensive coupling” (where your partner is everything to you all the time) is portrayed by media and social institutions as the only acceptable kind of romantic relationship.

At first I didn’t mind John’s comment, for two reasons: One, he is about the sweetest person in the universe and I know he would never want to hurt my feelings for the world. Two, he said it with a tone that sounded as if he were jealous of, or had admiration for, my single state. I think he meant it as a kind of two-pronged compliment: first of my reading prowess, and second as praise for my singleness. (Praise built on faulty assumptions about singles, but still.)

Then later I realized something that made the comment bother me more, so I had to vent about it here on Onely:

I, the ostensibly free-to-read single person, work thirty-five hours a week, often more.  John, the ostensibly too-busy-to-read coupled person,  is unemployed due to the recession and is relying on his wife’s income. Yet because I’m single, I must have more spare time to read than he does. Somehow, I have managed to defy the laws of physics, time, and space.  (Yay me?) (more…)

First, Do No Harm: Marital Status At the Doctor’s December 14, 2010

Posted by Onely in As If!, Everyday Happenings, Food for Thought.
48 comments

I walk up to the grandmotherly office manager and explain that I have a 9:30 new patient appointment.  Betty finds my file on the computer and makes last-minute adjustments before checking me in. She looks up and asks,

“Are you married or single?”

Nine-thirty in the morning is not my best time of the day. I stare at Betty through raggedy, unwashed bangs. I’m here to see a specialist for a (knock wood) non-fatal chronic illness that is nonetheless kicking my ass, and so I’m nervous and cranky, and I really want to just answer her question and go see the doctor. But because I write a blog deconstructing single stereotypes and marriage mythology, I feel obligated to engage Betty further on this topic.

Such is my dedication to you, dear Copious Readers. (more…)

Onely Throws A Hissy Fit September 2, 2010

Posted by Onely in As If!, Everyday Happenings, Food for Thought.
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12 comments

The No. 1 villain in all of England right now is 45-year-old unmarried bank employee Mary Bale, who was caught on video approaching a cat on the street, petting it, and then, like someone who has completely lost her mind, throwing it into a lidded garbage can.

Yes, and right now the No. 1 villain in the singles’ advocacy blogosphere (or at least, in Onely) is New York Magazine, which decided that Bale’s unmarried status was relevant enough to put it in the clause describing the sort of person Bale is.

Am I overreacting? (Who me, overreact?) My mom called while I was writing this and I threw a tantrum over the phone, ranting about how no one would ever write,

The No. 1 villain in all of England right now is 45-year-old married bank employee Mary Bale, who was caught on video approaching a cat on the street. . .

My mom suggested that maybe, had Bale been married, the article would have said, “Mary Bale, married mother of three, threw a cat in the garbage. . .” Perhaps.  But if so, why is marital status pertinent to a description of a person’s actions? The same question could be asked about the relevance age and employment, but this isn’t an anti-agism or anti-jobism blog, it’s an anti-singlism blog. And I say that it’s singlist to put Bale’s unmarried status right there in the first sentence.

The placement is all wonky. “Unmarried” on the heels of “45-year-old” gears the reader up to form a judgment about Bale’s unmarried status, based on her age–usually a negative judgment, given the prevalence of the stereotype of the over-forty (or god help us, over-thirty-five) woman who has forfeited her chance to marry and therefore become desexualized or asexualized (and, by extension, forfeited some of her power in a patriarchal society).

Then almost immediately after her age and marital status, we’re told that this woman is also someone who did something insane and evil. This is just another chance for readers to subconsciously link “unmarried” with “crazy and/or deficient”.

Author Dan Amira must have just gotten confused–he forgot that unmarried women don’t throw away cats, they collect them.

–Christina

Photo credit:  Mattieb

Daily Dose of Fluff: Quotes About Relationship Status August 4, 2010

Posted by Onely in Everyday Happenings.
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5 comments

Dr. Mardy Grothe. I Never Metaphor I Didn’t Like: A comprehensive compilation of history’s greatest analogies, metaphors, and similies.  HarperCollins, New York, 2008.

Each of the below metaphors reflect truths and stereotypes in the way we view relationship status. Some are singlist, some are couplist, some are sexist, and some are just plain accurate, but they’re all great metaphors.

–Christina

I want to get married but I look at husbands the same way I look at tattoos. I want one, but I can’t decide what I want, and I don’t want to be stuck with something I’d grow to hate and have surgically removed. —Margaret Cho

Relationships are hard. It’s like a full-time job, and we should treat it like one. If your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to leave you, they should give you two weeks’ notice. There should be severance pay, and before they leave you, they should have to find you a temp.  –Bob Ettinger

I always compare marriage to communism. They’re both institutions that don’t conform to human nature, so you’re going to end up with lying and hypocrisy.  —Bill Maher (more…)

Even Coupled, You Can Still Die Alone June 16, 2010

Posted by Onely in Bad Onely Activities, Everyday Happenings, Food for Thought.
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5 comments

This is a follow-up post to Lisa’s piece about the importance of support networks in old age. We’ve all heard the stereotype that if you’re single, you risk dying “alone” in a small apartment and being eaten by your pets. I just wanted to point out that even if you are happily married after almost forty years, you can still die alone.

My parents have been married for thirty-seven years and still love each others’ company. They enjoy relatively good health and we’re a fortunate family all around. That said, recently on my first day back home for vacation, my mom fell off the attic stairs and broke her knee in quite a dramatic fashion. She couldn’t even sit up, the pain was so nauseating and intense. I was there to call 911 and, per the operator’s instructions, shut Charlie the cat in the bathroom where he wouldn’t be underfoot for the paramedics (or eat my mom).

(more…)

Honorary Onelers: Corporate Version! June 9, 2010

Posted by Onely in Everyday Happenings, Honorary Onely Awards.
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3 comments

Today Onely would like to honor Morgan Stanley. After some hefty research involving a happy hour with friends at a sushi restaurant, I learned that Morgan Stanley provides (at least in some circumstances) health insurance benefits to non-married couples. My friend’s friend “Monique” is moving to Budapest to join her British boyfriend “Kurtis”, who works there for Morgan Stanley. She quit her steady government job to do this, so she’s taking a bit of a risk (and all the more so because Hungarian is a very difficult language–after all, they spell my name Chrisztina!).  Kudos to Morgan Stanley for making things a little bit easier for her as she embarks on this adventure.

Copious Readers, what other firms are singles-friendly? (And we’ll also take snarky stories about couple-crazed companies as well!)

–Christina

Why My Friend Thought I Was Gay April 30, 2010

Posted by Onely in Dating, Everyday Happenings.
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9 comments

My friend at work told me the other day that he used to wonder if I was gay (I’m not). Why did he start to think that? Because he heard me tell a story where I said, “My friend and I were driving around the other day and happened to find this great Thai restaurant.”

Um. Sounds pretty gay, right? Yeah.

My coworker is a very intelligent, funny, kind person who just happens to get wierd ideas in his head sometimes. In this case, his thought process went like this:

Hm. Christina and ‘her friend’ were ‘driving around’. You don’t usually ‘drive around’ with someone unless you have enough time to spend together to do something totally innocuous and timewasting like ‘driving around’, and that would only happen if you were in a romantic relationship with them. And if she were in a romantic relationship with a man, she would have said ‘my boyfriend’, but because she just said ‘my friend’, her partner must be a woman.

I was interested in his assumption that someone wouldn’t just “drive around” with a platonic friend. Since when did driving around become an exclusive habit for couples?

I don’t actually remember where or with whom I was driving on the fateful day of the Thai restaurant. My mystery friend and I might have not actually been driving around aimlessly at all–I may have just misspoken when telling the story to my colleague. Or perhaps we were driving aimlessly. All carbon footprint discussion aside, I do have some friends with whom I could imagine myself ending up “driving around”. Probably it would have to be a pretty good friend, to be with in such a spontaneous and undirected environment.

Do people tend to think that friendships are not strong enough for such “driving around”, but romantic relationships are? My coworker seemed to feel that way. What other activities do people think are fine for couples, but unusual for friends to do together?

I’ll answer my own question: getting tickets together. Apparently this same coworker became further convinced I might be gay because I sent out an email to some friends inviting them to the D.C. Improv, and I told everyone to get their own tickets, because “Susan and I already have our tickets”.  This was because Susan and I regularly go to the Improv–it’s Our Thing. We get our tickets, and then ask other people if they want to come. But somehow the way I worded the email made my coworker–who really is a lovely person and I feel bad blogging about him behind his back–think that Susan and I were a couple.

My theory is that so many couples overuse the “we” construction that they have effectively co-opted it exclusively for couples’ use, and therefore we single people can’t even use “we” without being presumed to be part of a couple (gay or otherwise).

Christina

Photo credit: Philippe Leroyer

Worldwide Onelers: The Arabs April 3, 2010

Posted by Onely in Everyday Happenings, Food for Thought.
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7 comments

Is the Onely mindset inborn or acquired? My Arabic language teacher and another professor giving a lecture on Arab culture each separately made this statement about life in the Middle East:

It’s considered weird and inappropriate to spend time alone. If you’re in a household, don’t shut yourself up in your room unless you’re studying.

The two professors did not know each other, and their classes had nothing to do with each other. Yet they both took pains to point out this cultural phenomena, and they both used the same example of not holing up in one’s room. I began to think that being Onely in the Arab world might be a very different experience and mission than being Onely in Northern Virginia–aleast, if you’re a Oneler who needs private time to recharge.   I’m a Gregarious Introvert, which means that although I enjoy being with people, I get my best recharging done when I am alone lying on the carpet, staring at the ceiling and singing “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” while the cats walk on my stomach.

If I were an Arab version of myself, would I still need to decompress by sitting alone in my room? Or would I be accustomed to spending my downtime in the living room with my extended family and friends, only retreating to my private quarters to sleep?

Copious readers, is it easier to be Onely in some parts of the world than in other parts?

–Christina

Photo credit: Sam and Ian

The Promised Butt-Post March 18, 2010

Posted by Onely in Bad Onely Activities, Everyday Happenings, Food for Thought.
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17 comments

Yay, it’s so good to be writing again! I have missed Onely and our little blogger community! In my last post I promised to write about butts, and now I am. But I have to be careful how I tag this post, in order to avoid creating the kind of accidental pornography that has warped our Most Popular Posts lists, for example: “Hard Core Oneler: Dick Proenneke” and “Animal Sex.”

But this post isn’t about sexy airbrushed porn butts. It’s about my butt, and no amount of airbrushing will get the lumps out of these cheeks. Why? Because my butt has been getting shots of antibiotics. Thick cold serum. From needles the size of cocktail straws.  Administered slow as molasses to mitigate the pain of pressurized tissues.  Every third day. But the problem is (no, we still haven’t gotten to the problem yet) I cannot give these shots to myself, and sometimes the third day falls on a weekend when the doctor’s office is closed.

Before beginning the treatment, my doctor asked me, “Do you have a friend you can ask to give you the shots?” My question to you, Copious Readers, is do you have a friend whom you could ask to give you shots in the butt? Because my answer to the doctor was, “Hell no I don’t have any friend I can ask to give me a shot in the butt!”

I’m not sure whether I meant, “Hell no; I’m not close enough to any of my friends for that”, or “Hell no, I love my friends but wouldn’t trust them not to sever a nerve or burst an artery”, or “Hell no, I’m not showing my stretch marks to anyone who hasn’t had Gross Anatomy 101”.  But in any case, the result was the same: I had to scrounge around to figure out how to get my weekend shots.

“Sometimes,” said the doctor’s office manager Maura (short for Mauron), “Our patients who don’t have anyone can find an Urgent Care facility that will administer the shot for them.” Oh no, I thought, I don’t have anyone.

If I had a significant other, I would be expected to ask him to give me the shot, and he would be expected to give it. Gladly. With no embarrassment or hem-hawing. Regardless of how solid, or not solid, the relationship might be in daily life. But in any other relationship the request “Please can you stick this needle in my heinie?” would be fraught with overtones–do I expect my friend to come to my house? Do I go to their house? Do they feel comfortable punching a needle through my skin and tissue? Seeing my stretch marks? My stretched-out undies? No, no, no, no, and no.

Turns out, my mom came to visit and administered my first weekend injection, making sure to stab me right where I’d asked the doctor to draw with a sharpie: X marks the spot and, subsequently, the golfball-sized lump of liquid and tissue. Moms are on tap for dirty work even more than significant others. But my mom returned to Michigan and I, because I don’t have anyone, found an Urgent Care facility to give me my other weekend shots. Problem solved? Well, mostly, except every now and then I worry who I will call if I fall and break my face.

Still, despite the occasional inconvenience, I like being single. I’m not going to cultivate a relationship just so I can have a shot buddy, just as I won’t install a sprinkler system on the off chance that my house will catch fire. Or something.

–Christina

photo credit: Steven Depolo

Onely on Change.org: Single? Rent a Date! February 26, 2010

Posted by Onely in As If!, blog reviews, Everyday Happenings, Reviews, We like. . ..
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3 comments

This is a lazy woman’s post! Here is a link to my Change.org post about Chinese singles paying people to pose as their significant others. At first glance, it’s a bad idea. It concedes and caters to the maladjusted majority opinion that people need to pair up. (Apparently I have alliteration disease tonight.)  At second glance—haven’t you ever wanted to have a boyfriend or girlfriend for one particular event, like that time you were going to the Oscars and didn’t feel like walking down the red carpet alone under the scrutiny of all those pairing-obsessed paparazzi?

Or if date-renting singles aren’t your bag, you can go to the Take Action page on Change.org and find all sorts of petitions and letters you can add your name to. If anyone has an idea for a singles’-rights-themed petition, please let me know. Or go and create your own!

Lisa and I are sort of bumming because we’ve put a couple interesting links up on our Facebook pages, including the NYT article about how there are fewer men available to college women and a Change.org petition against American Apparel’s “best bottoms” contest, and no one really comments on them (except for my friend Nicole, yay Nicole!).  But if someone changes their “status” to “in a relationship” then OMG EVERYONE COMMENTS RIGHT AWAY HOW EXCITING CONGRATULATIONS!

–Christina

Photo: AMagill