This article was really useful in helping me discern just what it is that I want when a lonely mood hits me. I’m more than happy living in my room alone; it’s the support system that I need to concentrate on developing more fully. This may require me to stop leaving so many people behind every time I relocate myself. It may also require letting more people in. Food for introspective thought, certainly.
Ayyy there is so much to unpack in this article (which I think, for what it’s worth, is about 50 times more magnanimous and evenhanded than I normally expect from the But I’m Upper Middle Class and White, What Could Possibly Be Wrong With My Choices? genre of essay writing). But my first thought is that all this rhetoric pitting marriage against community is going to create a generation of sociopaths who are both unmarried/childless and unmoored from the traditional bonds of extended family and community (hey, the second part is a demographic phenomenon that has been happening for decades whether we like it or not). Are educated, ambitious, independent women really lukewarm on the idea of marriage because we believe our other ties to family and friends are strong and more than sufficient? Or are we lukewarm on marriage because we were raised to pursue our own success above all else? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with pursuing success, but after examining my own feelings on marriage over the past couple of years, I can say that for me it was the latter. I love my friends and family, but over the past few years I’ve realized that I was not raised to sacrifice for others, including a romantic partner. I also realized that life will entail sacrifices whether I’m ready for them or not. I have been unlearning, learning, and relearning a lot of things since I decided to get married. …
Okay, so I posted this for trash dick and then ran off to teach undergrads at America’s second-most prestigious college about kinship and marriage alliances through the Kardashians, so maybe the level of irreverence/clearly self-directed ambition with which I’m living my personal and professional lives means I’m not qualified to say anything, but I do want to say this: The worst three years of my life were the worst three years of my life because of the men I was convinced I could stay committed to and, in the end, I think I got through them my fucking self, by deciding each time to leave and living with those decisions. And honestly, at least right now, many of those departures look to me to be some of the most selfless things I’ve ever done because it was always the selfish, unimaginative and small part of myself telling me to stay, to stick it out not for the sake of the other person, but to prove something to myself, to get what I needed to still feel like I was the me I wanted to be. And what a horrible thing to do another human being, what a vast and unforgivable misrecognition if carried out over the course of a life. There are way worse things than choosing caution or even reckless optimism over commitment, is all I am saying, and I am so fucking tired of people who don’t couple off being confused with the fucking sociopaths I’m trying to avoid by NOT being careless in love. My parents have been married for 35 years or something; they’re fucking lucky. Most people whose marriages last aren’t just christ-like saints; they’re fucking lucky. They’re fucking lucky or they’ve had to make some tough decisions (but don’t we all!), and it would be nice to see them acknowledge that every once in a while instead of being smug or defensive or worse both of those and then derisive of their partner in private (this is real! It happens all the time here and it makes me hate people so so much). It is incredibly difficult to meet someone who you can live with and accept on a real level no matter what social class you’re in or race you are. Like, I don’t care if this bitch was upper middleclass and white, maybe I am on the inside too, but mostly I’m just wiser than I used to be and I’m fucking done living up to everyone’s fucking expectations because this is how you institutionalize relationships or whatever. Eat a dick, social expectations, at least I’m less than kin and more than kind to as many people as possible, which is more than I can say for most of the married people I know.
Yikes, I’m sorry. I tend to think that leaving a relationship is not any more or less selfless or selfish than staying in one (unless kids are involved, ahh!) but I respect that it requires a great deal of bravery. Leaving is probably harder than staying, even if staying means marriage, because duh marriage is not forever (as you said and as I’ve tried to say on this blog before, you don’t know if they’ll work until they do so stfu). I’m sorry that your relationships were the worst thing that happened to you but for me it was other shit. Some people have great families, some have great jobs, some have great marriages, some have money or success; whatever, no one gets everything and certainly not all at once.
I don’t think I made it clear that I do not think single people are sociopaths, but I did worry I would become one. (I think my gears are set a little closer to “sociopath” than most people’s to begin with but perhaps I’m just paranoid.) Obviously the insularity of marriage or a long-term partnership can lend itself to self-absorbed behavior, too, and glorifying that relationship above all others isn’t going to help you be less of a dick. And I probably was getting a little too gung-ho on the institution there, but all I meant was that I used the decision as a jumping-off point to hopefully make more decisions like it in the future, to allow people to get under my skin and figure out how to still be myself and be someone I can respect. I guess I could have done it alone, too, but I didn’t, and fuck it, I’m about as over second-guessing it (or having others second-guess it to my face, because I had the audacity to make a life decision before 30) as you are with people treating you like a single pariah (which is lame as hell, but I’m not naive and I know it happens to people).
And lastly, I do care that she was upper-middle-class and white, because the support network she describes for herself is in no way comparable to four single black women living in Pittsburgh raising kids. She says she’s not romanticizing their situation or saying it’s like her own, but by focusing her argument on two polar-opposite situations (in terms of socioeconomic mobility and stability) she is kind of implicitly comparing them. Maybe it’s because I’ve been fangirling too hard after seeing Kathy Edin speak recently, but I am sick to death of people who have the luxury of being able to be highly selective with their partners and life plans comparing themselves to people with very few options if any. Especially when they ignore the demographic evidence—that college-educated women like the author are now more likely to report satisfying and lasting marriages than less-educated women. Say what you will about the adaptive social fabric of these underprivileged communities, but they’re not becoming any less poor—if anything, they are suffering more now than ever. It’s a troubling trend and the answer is definitely not “marriages for all!” but it just seems awful to link singlehood by choice to women who were abandoned by their babies’ fathers to navigate a fucked-up system on their own. I’m not going to hold up a poor, marginalized social network as a shining example because it makes the writer feel good.
Also, that Susan Walsh lady is crazy and “trash dick” is hilarious and of COURSE BU is referenced in that story.
-
summerstaycation reblogged this from unshared and added:
Yikes, I’m sorry. I tend to think that leaving a relationship is not any more or less selfless or selfish than staying...
-
unshared reblogged this from summerstaycation and added:
Okay, so I posted this for trash dick and then ran off to teach undergrads at America’s second-most prestigious college...
-
indiemaiden reblogged this from unshared and added:
This article was really useful in helping me discern just what it is that I want when a lonely mood hits me. I’m more...
-
unshared posted this
