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Better than a Pub Crawl: National Singles’ Week Blog Crawl! September 18, 2009

Posted by Onely in Guest Bloggers, Guest Posts, single and happy, Singles Resource, Some Like It Single.
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5 comments

Happy National Singles’ Week!!

To celebrate, we’re thrilled to be participating in a first-ever blog crawl! For the next six days, when you hit us here, we’ll redirect you elsewhere (details below). And next Saturday, September 26th, to conclude the crawl, we’ll be hosting Singles-Advocate Extraordinaire, Dr. Bella DePaulo here at Onely!

So, Copious Readers: Pull up a chair, pour a glass of wine, and let’s get our READ on!

***

Join millions of people as they crawl the web’s most popular blogs for singles, during the first SingleWomenRule.com’s Blog Crawl for National Singles Week. In the virtual world, a blog crawl works like a pub crawl, or museum crawl in the real world; each day, you’ll visit a designated blog to read featured blog posts from our favorite voices in the singles community.

“The Blog Crawl is an excellent example of the strength and connectivity of the online singles community,” said Terry Hernon MacDonald of SingleWomenRule.com.  Hernon MacDonald, author of the e-book, How to Attract and Marry the Man of Your Dreams, co-founded SingleWomenRule.com last August.

Featured guest bloggers include Dr. Bella DePaulo, notable psychologist and author of Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After; author of the novel The Divorce Party, Laura Dave; dating/relationship writer and author of The Real Reasons Men Commit, Kimberly Dawn Neumann, writer Simone Grant of Sex, Lies and Dating, dating coach Ronnie Ann Ryan of NeverTooLate.biz, and Maryanne Comaroto, author of Hindsight: What You Need to Know Before You Drop Your Drawers.

“We hand-picked the guest bloggers and host blogs for their tenacious spirit and voice,” said Hernon MacDonald.  “Guiding readers from blog to blog in a crawl helps each blog build their readership, while bringing a fresh perspective and new audience via the guest bloggers, each day.” (more…)

Funny Friday: Rescuemarriage.com September 18, 2009

Posted by Onely in Reviews, We like. . ..
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8 comments

 John Marcotte, 37, (why do these kinds of articles always put the person’s age?) very sensibly realized that if Californians truly want to rescue the hallowed institution of marriage from less-hallowed people like gays, as indicated by the passage of Prop 8, then “a logical extension of Prop 8” should be to ban divorce. Of course! Check out his initiative’s website and see the logical and rhetorical brilliance of Marcotte, 37:

Jesus still loves you if you get divorced–just not as much as before. 

Hell is eternal — just like your marriage was supposed to be

The funniest part are the commenters, who range from religious conservatives like Patti:

protecting traditional marriage is the first step to keeping our children pure and protecting them from the demons of hell.

To liberals like Ariel: 

Really. So rampant abuse, whether physical, sexual, or emotional, of either spouse or children, wouldn’t be grounds for divorce.

The scariest part is the high percentage of commenters who seem to have damage to the right ventromedial areas of their prefontal lobes, resulting in an inability to understand sarcasm.  Given the large number of thus disabled readers out there, could Marcotte’s website actually be inadvertently presenting propaganda against the gay marriage movement? 

–Christina

Here Are The All Single Men! September 16, 2009

Posted by Onely in Food for Thought.
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9 comments

Ok, well *one* single man, anyway. Onely received the following thoughts from Matt when we called for input from single men. I am reposting Matt’s comments here because they segue nicely with our preceding QuirkyAlone post.

Single, 29-year-old man from Ohio here. I appreciate the consideration in asking for our input. Like many here, I’ve long found being single the most natural state for me, despite social pressures otherwise. I think part of it is that I’m very independent, and I find it hard to really be my own person in a committed, monogamous relationship. Trying to squeeze myself into the mold of 1/2-of-a-couple has always made me feel quite claustrophobic and contorted. Not that I don’t respect those who enjoy it… in fact I’ve spent most of my life trying to force myself to want that coupled state which society considers ‘healthy,’ despite the fact that it’s never felt right. Rather than initiating relationships and then dealing with drama, I generally just remain single.

Single, 35-year-old woman here. I identify with every single sentence, which speaks to the fact that the “satisfied single” experience is not necessarily all that different between men and women, even though men are underrepresented in public dialogs on the subject. I too find it hard to be my own person in a relationship–not necessarily because the relationship constricts me, but because I constrict myself. I am a giving person by nature, and I tend to give too much and not even realize I’m doing that, until I’ve bled out some key parts of myself and made some compromises I should not have made. Your standard committed romantic relationship brings out this tendency in me if I’m not careful. And usually, I am not careful.

I get mixed reactions. I face a lot of pressure from my family, as I am the youngest of 5 children, and all of the rest are married. No matter how clear I try to make it that I’m happy as I am, they seem to see it as simply a matter of time (and by now, I’m very tardy!) My good guy-friends, though relationship-cravers themselves, seem to be fairly accepting. For the most part I don’t really know what others think, because I generally don’t bring it up! (more…)

Dear Quirkyalone: Where are all the Quirkyalone men? September 14, 2009

Posted by Onely in quirkyalone.
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6 comments

“Dear Quirkyalone: Advice for QuirkyLiving” is a weekly guest column by Lisa and Christina (crossposted at Quirkyalone). It appears every Monday. When you’re making up your own road map for (quirky)living, you need thoughtful advice. We’re here for you. Quirkyalone and Onely welcome your questions; send them on to onely AT onely.org.

Dear Quirkyalone,

Why are there so many more Quirkyalone women than Quirkyalone men? –Cynthia

Dear Cynthia,

Let me start by saying that the Quirkyalone movement–and the singles’ advocacy movement in general–needs and wants more men. More men! More single men’s blogs! More single men commenting on blogs! More single men writing about, talking about, thinking about, and waving a banner for Quirkyaloneness. The concept of being happily single and not settling is not unique to women.

While not unique to women, the experience of being able to hold out for one’s dream man or woman (and being ok if that person never comes) is a relatively new experience for them. For most of this history of the human race, females were usually forced to settle. What choice did they have? They were not fully allowed into the workforce or given control over their own finances, inheritances, birth control, etc. Sometimes they even did more than settle: they connived, competed, and prostrated in order to snag a man, any man, who: wanted them; could feed and clothe them; could care for the children the woman would inevitably conceive. If the woman had luck, she married someone who refrained from abusing her out of his own moral sense, so she didn’t have to rely on the vagaries of a patriarchal law system to protect her. (more…)

What’s in Your Bed? September 11, 2009

Posted by Onely in Just Saying..
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19 comments

I read somewhere that if you’re single, you should always sleep in the middle of the bed. This is good feng shui because it represents that you’re complete in yourself. By sleeping in the middle of the bed, you distract the universe from the pooling vortex of singlehood angst and thwarted couplehood that an empty half of the bed attracts (and God help you if you sleep next to an unused pillow).

So I sometimes feel guilty for sleeping on the side of my bed, as if I am not an enlightened single.

I have three beds: single, full, and a king-sized.  If I sleep in the middle of the full one, how am I supposed to reach the nightstand light? If I sleep in the middle of the king, then getting up in the darl to pee becomes like a fouled-up arctic expedition as I stumble on all fours over lumps of chilled comforter wondering, “Which way is the bathroom?”

But I manage to fool the universe and quiet the vortex by filling that empty space beside me with other things. At various times, and sometimes simultaneously, I have had in my bed the following pleasure items (yeah, all you readers who found this blog via searches for “nut sucking” wish it were going to be that kind of post): (more…)

The Privilege of Living Alone September 9, 2009

Posted by Onely in Food for Thought, Just Saying., single and happy.
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31 comments

To our regular readers, it is obvious that one of the main reasons why Christina and I started this blog was to resist and subvert cultural stereotypes that flatten (in mostly negative ways) what it means to be single. Most of our concerns run in either one of two directions — either providing positive examples of people (ourselves or others) who are happily single, or providing examples (and then rebutting them) that illustrate the (dismaying) prevalence of negative assumptions about single people that continue to abound in our everyday lives.

Rarely, however, do Christina and I write about how being single might be understood as a privilege. The reason we rarely describe our lives in this way is because this would promote a value-system that suggests that people who prefer coupling are somehow less valuable than people who are single. We hope it’s clear that our point on Onely is not to promote single living to the detriment or exclusion of others — rather, we simply want to point out that our lives are valuable too — against all the negative stereotyping that goes on around (and about) us.

But I’ve got to admit: I really do think that living alone is a privilege.

(more…)

Dear Quirkyalone: Why am I less remarkable to sober people? September 7, 2009

Posted by Onely in quirkyalone.
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“Dear Quirkyalone: Advice for QuirkyLiving” is a weekly guest column by Lisa and Christina (crossposted at Quirkyalone). It appears every Monday. When you’re making up your own road map for (quirky)living, you need thoughtful advice. We’re here for you. Quirkyalone and Onely welcome your questions; send them on to onely AT onely.org.

Dear Quirkyalone: I’m a Quirkyalone from SF, kinda floating between school and not school right now, and I was wondering: I often feel like the rest of my generation of college aged folks is only interested in interacting with one another while drunk. In recent exchanges at parties, I find that I am remarkable to my drunk acquaintances, yet less so on days after when they become sober. Why do you suppose that is? — Gian

Dear Gian,

In order to answer your question, I’m going to make two assumptions:

1) that your new acquaintances were not simply too drunk to remember you afterward; and

2) that when you say “in days after” you’re not talking about “the morning after.”

I think you already know that you can’t use a person’s drunk personality as a barometer for how they’ll treat you in the sober times. Now with that caveat out of the way, let’s look a little deeper:

Drunk people are likely to be more interested in anyone and everything. That’s why people drink–to see the world in new ways. Or maybe that’s LSD. But in any case, when your drunk interlocutor told you, “Gee, your worm farm sounds just fascinating,” he (we’ll assume he’s a he) may very well have meant it. Alcohol suppresses activity in the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain responsible for planning and decision making. So at the time of your conversation, his impaired prefrontal cortex caused him to “forget” or overlook how much worms remind him of some unfortunate experiments on the playground in middle school, or the fact that dirt in his fingernails gives him the willies. But when his brain sobered up, the realization that he’s not really that into mulch and compost came blasting back into his consciousness, along with the headache. Hence his decision, “I guess I won’t call that nice worm girl after all.” (more…)

Hard Core Onelers: Dick Proenneke (part 2) September 3, 2009

Posted by Onely in Great Onelies in Real Time, Great Onely Activities, Profiles.
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45 comments

Welcome to the Hard-Core Edition of our series, Great Onelers In Real Time. Today we are talking about back-to-nature afficionado extraodinaire, Mr. Dick Proenneke. We’ve covered him before, but he’s so hard-core he needs a second post. 

I just finished reading the book about Proenneke’s first year in the Alaskan wilderness, where he built his own cabin using only hand tools and white spruce trees (ok, with some polypropylene and tar paper flown in for a roof). One Man’s Wilderness is a collection of Proenneke’s journals compiled and edited by his longtime friend Sam Keith. In his journals, Proenneke reveals his respect for and enjoyment of his fellow man. In this post, I want to emphasize that even though he spent most of his last thirty years living by himself in a cabin next to a remote mountain lake, he didn’t do it because he disliked people. Sometimes loners or singles’ rights activists are viewed as asocial or even anti-social. Dick Proenneke was neither. 

In one journal entry, he decides to build bunk beds instead of a single bed because he “might have company”. Remember, he’s forty miles and a float plane ride from the nearest town. But he still wanted to be prepared for guests. He muses how he’d like his brother to come stay for a few weeks and see the beauty of Twin Lakes. When the supply pilot Babe arrives every few weeks, Proenneke looks forward to the letters he receives from friends and family back home. In turn, he writes long letters back to civilization–that is, when he isn’t working on his understated, quietly joyful journal entries that describe how thrilled he is to be making his own way in the wilderness with his own two hands. The following essay excerpt is taken from One Man’s Wilderness and unlike the journal entries in the book, may have been composed by Sam Keith using his ample knowledge of Proenneke’s outlook and writing style. Keith was friends with Proenneke  for over 40 years, ever since they worked together at Kodiak Naval Base in Alaska. He also spent two weeks at the hand-hewn cabin (presumably that extra bunk came in handy after all). So we can assume that the Dick would concur with the below “Reflections” as related by Keith: (more…)

Dear Quirkyalone: Am I Too Picky? August 31, 2009

Posted by Onely in quirkyalone.
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
8 comments

“Dear Quirkyalone: Advice for QuirkyLiving” is a weekly guest column by Lisa and Christina (crossposted at Quirkyalone). It appears every Monday. When you’re making up your own road map for (quirky)living, you need thoughtful advice. We’re here for you. Quirkyalone and Onely welcome your questions; send them on to onely AT onely.org.

Dear Quirkyalone: Are single people over a certain age too picky? Is that so wrong? — Special K
Dear Special K,

Here’s my short answer: No, and No.

But to be more specific:

First, I’d like to consider the phrase “too picky.” The way I see it, being “picky” is not in and of itself a “bad” thing, though our culture often seems to say so. Let’s say we’re talking about food: If you order the specialty burger at your favorite restaurant that comes loaded with toppings – in this case bacon, blue cheese, arugula, avocado, and mushrooms – but the taste and texture of mushrooms make you want to puke, it’s pretty reasonable to ask for the burger without the mushrooms. If you are too shy, uncertain, or simply unaware to articulate this taste, you’ll likely leave the restaurant dissatisfied and/or hungry. (more…)

What if Married People Were Treated Like Singles? August 30, 2009

Posted by Onely in Food for Thought.
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5 comments

A previous version of this post originally ran on the excellent site Professor What If (PWI).  The Professor is now writing a different (but equally thought-provoking) blog analyzing the Twilight cultural phenomenon from a feminist perspective.  Check it out! You don’t have to be a Twilight fan to understand and enjoy it. And now, back to the music:

Lisa and Christina both identify as white, middle-class, heterosexual women who don’t mind being single. We’re tired of cultural stereotypes that suggest we’re not supposed to be happy with our “relationship status”. Really the only thing we’re unhappy about is that we don’t have all the same rights as married couples.  This discrimination is just plain silly when you consider that in the U.S., a majority of households are now headed by unmarried people. 

Therefore, below we’ve asked (and answered) a few “what if” questions to highlight the material, social, and legal restrictions habitually placed on adult singles, more often than not in favor of those who are married.

Note: We define “single” as anyone who is unmarried, including: coupled-but-not-married and domestic partners; anyone who identifies as GLBT and are either legally unable to marry or refuse the institution of marriage altogether; those who identify as polyamorous or asexual; divorcees and widowers; single parents; and, of course, anyone else who is just plain single. (When we refer to the social [as opposed to legal] stigmatization of singles below, we’re referring more specifically to anyone who is uncoupled.) And with all that said, now back to the music: 

What if married people were treated by the media, friends, and family like singles (in this case, uncoupled singles)? They would encounter statements such as:

  • “Don’t worry, you’ll get a divorce someday!”
  • “Oh, you’re married? I’m so sorry!”
  • “You’re so great – how come you’re still married?”
  • “It’s okay to be married for a while, but eventually you need to grow up and become single.”
  • “You’re so lucky to be married and not have as much responsibility.”
  • “But don’t you feel bad not having a life, seeing as you’re married?”
  • “When are you going to get a divorce?”
  • “It’s so sad having to come home to a house with someone in it all the time.”
  • “Well, I would’ve invited you to book group, except you’re married and I thought you wouldn’t want to be around all those happily single people.”
  • “What’s a beautiful woman like you doing married?”

What if married people were treated by the government as singles? They would have to: (more…)