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Christina and Lisa Pledge to Grow Old Together June 6, 2010

Posted by Onely in Food for Thought, Your Responses Requested!.
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Although the title of this post may suggest otherwise, no, we are not getting married! Christina and I currently live about 1,000 miles apart, and it’s unlikely that we’ll be neighbors anytime soon. But last month, after I made a trip to Kansas City to help my grandparents move from their home of 30+ years to a one-bedroom apartment in an assisted living facility, we decided that we need a plan for the future so we won’t grow old alone.

There is nothing wrong with growing old all by oneself, but I have been deeply moved by the experience of watching both sets of my grandparents age. This has made me think long and hard about how I’ll be able to maintain a high quality of life even as I age, especially since I plan to remain child-free (and probably partner-free). Presumably, having no children and no partner means that there won’t be anyone to help me if I fall and break my face, and no one will tell me when I start going crazy — which seems likely, given my gene pool. If I am destined for a ripe old age (which my heritage also suggests), I would like to lose it as gracefully and painlessly as possible.

Let me tell you about the experiences that have brought me to this reflection: (more…)

Guest Post: A Pill for Oneliness? May 17, 2010

Posted by Onely in Food for Thought, Guest Posts.
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Onely likes to post guest pieces by other writers who think about singles’ issues. The views expressed in our guest posts may or may not reflect Onely’s views, but we are always interested to hear from other singles advocates. Today’s post is by our loyal reader Steve, who asks a very intriguing question:
Several years ago, I read an editorial that compared the happiness level of people based on their gender, age, and marital status.  The study had a couple surprises:  the happiest group, it was reported, might surprise some people: unmarried women in their 40s.  The unhappiest group: unmarried men in their 30s.  As a 33 year old never married man, I wonder if there is something to this study.  A few months ago, a series of stressful events, combined with my own feelings of despair over what I hadn’t accomplished in life, led to a “nervous breakdown” of sorts.  When I then started having panic attacks, I knew I needed help.  I went to my doctor and was given anti-depressant medication.
Within a few weeks, I started feeling grounded in a way I hadn’t felt in an extremely long time.  “Why couldn’t I have felt like this when I was younger?” I wondered.  I also noticed something else: for the first time, I didn’t feel really bad over the fact that I was still single.  While I haven’t felt like this every day since I started taking the medication four months ago, I have certainly noticed a shift in my attitude.
Helen Fisher, an evolutionary anthropologist at Rutgers University, thinks there might be something to the idea that anti-depressants might actually suppress feelings of romantic love.  You can read more about it here from Wired magazine back from February 2009:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/antidepressants/
I have to ask myself: is it worth the trade-off?  For married couples, these issues can raise all sorts of relationship problems, but for a “chronically single” man such as myself, I actually think it’s a pretty good deal to lose some of these feelings in exchange for greater happiness.  What do you think?

–Steve

Photo credit: ClawzCTR

Does Being Coupled Make Other Losses Easier? May 15, 2010

Posted by Onely in Food for Thought.
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My friend Jane and I were discussing our mutual friend Patricia, whose father had just died after a long, nasty bout with cancer. “Well,” said Jane as we hiked along, “At least she has (her boyfriend) Bob”.  Does anyone find this a strange non-sequitor? I was so struck I still remember it seven years later.  Would having a boyfriend mitigate in any way the pain of losing a father? If so, how and why?  Or was Jane’s comment a manifestation of the mythological powers we imbue upon the state of couplehood–that it makes everything better, even the loss of someone else close to you.

–Christina

Isn’t it sad that some people are surprised that you can be happily single? April 6, 2010

Posted by Onely in "Against Love"...?, Food for Thought, Heteronormativity, Secret Lives of the Happily Single, single and happy.
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16 comments

Kudos to Contented Single, who (inadvertently) titled this post thanks to her comment at the end of this discussion about whether or not being Onely has made me clueless. In answer to her question, YES I DO think it’s sad that some people are surprised that you (we) can be happily single! In fact, running this blog has spoiled me; I’ve clearly forgotten how unusual the Onely mindset seems in the public’s eyes.

Having my friend Jenny in town last month reminded me of that. We don’t know each other all that well, and I offered to let her stay with me since our national annual conference was here in Louisville. I wasn’t sure how things would go, since we only ever see each other in academic contexts — and since I try to keep my academic life separate from this blog, she doesn’t know anything about Onely. She stayed with me for five days, and during that time, not only did she insist that my friend George was “in love” with me — she also kept mentioning how “happy” I seemed being single.

Her surprise was as great as mine! The second night she was in town, she told me how different I was from most of her single friends back home, who she described as strangely “resentful” when she got married last summer. And a couple nights later, after she met George and couldn’t help trying to pair us up — and I kept resisting her compulsion, she finally “admitted” that if I was really happy being single, then (she supposed) there wasn’t anything wrong with that.

I almost told her about Onely, but then I decided against it because I was just so fascinated by her surprise that I wanted to see if it would last through the whole visit. And it did. So when I saw her off, I felt pretty satisfied, knowing I’d made a good impression on her as a happily single person. I think she’ll carry it with her — I guess we need more Onelers to represent!

Copious Readers, have you had experiences like I had with Jenny, when someone expressed surprise by your happy-and-single status?

— Lisa

PS: Jenny also told me that she felt that after she got married and started wearing a wedding ring all the time, she’d noticed a big change in the way men treated her (less as an object). Made me think that I should start wearing a fake wedding ring on errands or when traveling — as a social experiment! If you have thoughts about this, please share. 🙂

Worldwide Onelers: The Arabs April 3, 2010

Posted by Onely in Everyday Happenings, Food for Thought.
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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

The Anti-Valentine: Death Bear to the Rescue! February 14, 2010

Posted by Onely in Food for Thought, single and happy, We like. . ., Your Responses Requested!.
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11 comments

One issue that we rarely discuss here on Onely is the fact that, no matter how single-and-happy we are today, there was probably once a time when we were coupled. And then there was that time when we broke up.

And no matter how self-confident and happy you are, in or outside of a relationship, breakups inevitably suck.

But for many of us (myself included), it’s breakups that lead us Onelers to draw in our first (or second, or third) breaths of the fresh air of being single — and happy!

But moving from coupled-to-single status inevitably means experiencing pain and loss, and to ignore or deny that fact would be naive at best, and inhumane at worst. Enter Death Bear, who was recently featured on MSNBC. His real name is Nate Hill, and he’s a performance artist in Brooklyn who created Death Bear to collect and carry away people’s memories of the past, which manifest themselves as physical objects and elicit pain and loss in unexpected and sometimes debilitating ways. In his words:

Death Bear will take things from you that trigger painful memories and stow them away in his cave where they will remain forever allowing you to move on with your life.

In my mind, not only does Death Bear’s costume ROCK (Christina thinks he’s hot!), he is doing incredibly important, honest, pro-Onely work. He’s helping people confront the past while enabling them to move forward with their hopefully happy-and-single lives.

There are three breakups in my past that projected me meaningfully toward my current single-and-happy state: (more…)

Pop Culture, Scourge of the Onelys: This is … news? February 9, 2010

Posted by Onely in "Against Love"...?, Food for Thought, Pop Culture: Scourge of the Onelys, Singled Out.
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12 comments

This just in via the New York Times: Women outnumber men in college, and it’s affecting their dating lives.

Thank God for good reporting! Because without it, we wouldn’t know that women in college these days “often find it harder than expected to find a date on a Friday night” and must instead choose between “assert[ing] themselves romantically or be[ing] left alone on Valentine’s Day, staring down a George Clooney movie over a half-empty pizza box.”

Nevermind that “women are primarily in college not because they are looking for men, but because they want to earn a degree,” or that “Many women eagerly hit the library on Saturday night. And most would prefer to go out with friends, rather than date a campus brute.”

Nope, all that matters is our nostalgia for what used to be:

The loneliness can be made all the more bitter by the knowledge that it wasn’t always this way.

“My roommate’s parents met here,” said Mitali Dayal, a freshman at North Carolina. “She has this nice little picture of them in their Carolina sweatshirts. Must be nice.”

And please don’t concern yourselves with the fact all students at the University of North Carolina appear to be straight and white, and that the male students can’t seem to help their misogyny…! If anyone ever doubted that the media perpetuates stereotypes about gender, race, and sexuality, this story should shatter those doubts.

Copious Readers, what else irks you about this story?

— L

photo credit: Inju

single. academic. female. January 26, 2010

Posted by Onely in "Against Love"...?, Food for Thought, single and happy, Your Responses Requested!.
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7 comments

Over the weekend, I took a walk with my friends B & A, and B — who is male, pursuing a PhD in my program, and married to A — asked me about how I felt about something he had heard: That women who begin pursuing their PhDs while single are less likely to find partners or be married in the long run when compared with men (my apologies to B if I’ve paraphrased incorrectly, but this is what I remembered). B sounded pretty stunned about what he had heard, but I was not.

So although I have not found any statistics to verify whether what B heard was true or not, I want to go over the reasons why this fact seems relatively unsurprising to me (as a single academic female myself) and to see what you, Copious Readers, have to add to the conversation (especially if you have access to any useful statistics or personal experiences related to this issue!): (more…)

Martin Luther King Day Post! (Better late than never!) January 20, 2010

Posted by Onely in Food for Thought.
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Happy retroactive MLK day everyone! I’ve unfortunately been hearing about Martin Luther King being a philanderer who betrayed his wife on numerous occasions. I don’t know enough to be able to say whether this is credible information or not. Do any of our Copious Readers have the facts?

However, what I do think is interesting is how the celeration of his work toward racial equality almost always prevails over the stories of his infidelity.  This bodes well for those of us who want to disassemble the marriage mythology. When the populace chooses to honor MLK’s “Dream” instead of his Dalliances, that says we honor racial equality (a human right) more than we honor marriage (a relatively arbitrary legal and social institution).

Yay!

–Christina

P.S. There’s also the issue of whether extra-marital infidelity is inherently bad. The couple could have had any number of personal “arrangements” that would allow for sex outside the relationship. Coretta Scott King could have had her own affairs, who knows.  But in either case, my point in the above paragraph remains the same.

P.P.S. But if he and Coretta did *not* have an “understanding” and he did cheat on her, then when I pass over to the other side, I am going to find him, and I am going to kick his loving and dreaming ass.

Photo credit: New York World-Telegram & Sun.