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

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…)