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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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10 comments

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…)

Beating a Dead Horse: Or, More on Elena Kagan’s Gay/Single/Unmarried/Lonely Status May 21, 2010

Posted by Onely in "Against Love"...?, Heteronormativity, Singled Out.
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3 comments

Thanks to Copious Reader Rachel A. for calling our attention to this op-ed in The New York Times by one of my favorite columnists, Maureen Dowd. In it, Dowd astutely questions the (gendered) implications of calling a woman (in this case, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan) “single” versus “unmarried.” She writes:

Single carries a connotation of eligibility and possibility, while unmarried has that dreaded over-the-hill, out-of-luck, you-are-finished, no-chance implication. An aroma of mothballs and perpetual aunt.

Men, generally more favored by nature as they age, can be single at all ages. But often, for women, once you’re 40 or 50, or simply beyond childbearing age, you’re no longer single. You’re unmarried — meaning it isn’t your choice to be alone.

Intriguing as this analysis is, Dowd’s primary argument — that calling Kagan “unmarried” instead of “single” carries stereotypically sexist negative connotations — is grounded on the decidedly singlist premise that in order for Kagan to be seen as “young” and “fun,” she must also be seen as “datable” and, more importantly, looking for a romantic relationship. Here’s how Dowd puts it:

Why is there this underlying assumption that Kagan has missed the boat? Why couldn’t she be eager to come to Washington to check out the Obama-era geek-chic bachelors, maybe get set up on a date by Michelle Obama, maybe host some single ladies fiestas with Sonia Sotomayor, maybe even sign up for JDate with a new and improved job status?

(For a more expansive review of similar problems on the media’s “debate” about Elena Kagan’s gay/single/lonely status, you should also check out Bella DePaulo’s posts here and here).

Copious Readers, I’m eager to hear your thoughts!

— Lisa

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

Posted by Onely in Food for Thought, Guest Posts.
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7 comments

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.
10 comments

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

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

Alternet Explains Why Marriage Doesn’t Matter April 18, 2010

Posted by Onely in As If!, blog reviews, Reviews.
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22 comments

I heart this hilarious and insightful Alternet article about Why Marriage Doesn’t Matter. It points out that:

Women are carpet-bombed with the idea that marriage is their happy ending from their first viewing of Cinderella to the last potboiler Rom Com they saw starring Sarah Jessica Jennifer Kate Meg Julia Whatsherhair.

True and straightforward, right? But I’m astounded at how many Alternet readers–normally a pretty progressive bunch, doncha think?–went all right-wing-family-values on author Liz Langley. Several long-married people shrieked that she’d offended them by disparaging their life choice–a life choice that endowed them with special wisdom and compassion for others that the author supposedly doesn’t share, as well as legal privileges that the author would be wise to avail herself of. For example:

. . . I am newly married. I was engaged for love. I married quickly because I needed health insurance. I think that if people choose not to get married, or don’t find that love that’s fine. I understand that Alternet is not often here to play nice to both sides, and usually I appreciate that. I do, however, feel offended by this article. There are a lot of benefits to marriage both emotional and practical. All I read here is “Oh, you got married? hag.”

If this were the Daily Mail or some other trash news outlet, I wouldn’t be surprised at the caliber of commenters. But it’s Alternet! Hence my manic quest to comment on the other commenter’s comments.  (Which you can see if you go to the article.)

The discussion is yet another example of how marriage is so disproportionately revered.  Even an intelligent, open-minded readership such as Alternet’s freaks out when someone challenges the Marriage Myth, the way people freak out when they see someone kick a puppy.

–Christina

photo credit: Toomas & Marit Hinnosaar

Right-Wingers: Idiots, or Assholes? April 17, 2010

Posted by Onely in As If!.
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5 comments

I was walking past the giant TV in my office cafeteria and heard some newswoman say, “Conservatives are angry over President Obama’s decision to allow gay couples visitation rights in hospitals. They say it provides rights to gay couples that are not provided to everyone else.”

Sooooo. . . . how about we provide “everyone else” with the right to choose who sees them with tubes in their noses? “Everyone else” including singles?  The newsanchor and the conservative didn’t even bother to follow up with this thought. They just stopped right at “that’s giving gays extra rights”. This just shows how *ensconced* the notion is that  you deserve rights if you’re married (according to liberals and conservatives) OR if you’re in any sort of couple (according to liberals), but not if you’re single.

Just a quick pissy post because I’m in a hurry but felt like venting.

Christina

Great Onelers in History: Abigail Adams April 13, 2010

Posted by Onely in Honorary Onely Awards.
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1 comment so far

Ok, technically Abigail Adams was married. But Lisa and I believe that married people can be Onely too–they just have to work a little harder at it maintaining their independence. Abigail Adams paid her Onely dues, at a time when Onely just wasn’t done.

Her husband John was one of the U.S.’ “Founding Fathers”, the second president, and generally a busy statesman who was away on business–sometimes across the Atlantic ocean–for much of their marriage, while Abigail ran the estate and managed their finances. They seem to have had a respectful and affectionate union, and John trusted her investment sense, which turned out to be far more acute than his.

Even though she had no legal right to John’s money or property, she put aside funds for her own use/payment, telling him she was doing so, as if it were the most natural thing in the world–at a time when such actions were not at all natural. She accumulated a good amount of wealth that she willed to a number of her female friends and descendants, even though she had no legal right to compose such a document. Her husband honored the will, even though he didn’t have to. Therefore, we decree that John Adams is an Honorary Oneler as well.

I got all this info from a great article by Woody Holton in American History magazine.

Copious Readers, do you know married people who defied the conventions of their time (past or present) and should be named Honorary Onelers?

Christina

Photo credit: Adams National Historic Park; Gilbert Stuart

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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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