One important thing about marriage, at least for those of us who have a tendency toward isolation and general flakiness, is its grounding.
I have no problem being alone. What happens though is the world tends to fade out for me. I stop paying attention to a lot of things. I stop interacting. I start living in a bubble. The world passes me by because I’m reading a book instead of having a conversation.
My husband’s very existence pulls me out of that bubble. And he’s knowledgeable and aware to boot, so we spur each other to engage in the world. And we try out our wacky ideas on one another instead of assuming our wacky ideas are somehow not wacky.
For the same reason, I would not want to be independently wealthy and not work. I want to get up in the morning and go to work and interact with people. I have way too much potential of being a hermit if I didn’t.
There are times that I am jealous of my brother, who has a beautiful wife and two wonderful kids. There are also many times my brother is seriously jealous of me, though, since I can pretty much do whatever I want whenever I want.
From my experiences with relationships, and witnessing others relationships, as well as my long periods of remaining single, my opinion is that it really doesn’t matter. I will be happy either way. There are advantages and disadvantages to both lifestyles, so while I don’t go out of my way to find a woman to be with, I also don’t shy away from it if the opportunity presents itself.
Thank god my brother had kids though… Got me off the hook with the parents and grandparents.
My sex drive is way too high for me to get within several light-years of “happy” (or even “content”) without it.
One of my most basic, fundamental needs is emotional intimacy, to love and be loved. I’m seriously baffled by anyone who doesn’t need this (or claims not to).
This. I have lived alone for 8 years. I am well and truly sick of it.
At the blackest, bleakest times of my single life for the past 14 years, the overwhelming depressing thought was that there was not a single person on the planet at that moment…not my siblings, or children, or friends, or even a parent…who was thinking about me, or worrying about me, or smiling at the thought of me. That thought is sometimes too much too bear.
I’m smart enough not to seek out flimsy relationships and jump too quickly into something just for comfort, (and really, no one has wanted to do that with me until recently). But all this time alone has only taught me that I am a much better person when I am part of a couple, and that my natural tendency is to care for someone else. I love my alone time, and I can be selfish as hell…but I also don’t think being part of a couple means you have to give up those things entirely…not if you pick wisely. I like feeling connected, and loved, and cared for…and I like caring for someone else.
This. I love being single and there are a lot of parts to relationships I love as well. But I also like my own space and being myself. I think it comes down to which is worse for you - occasional loneliness or occasional compromise. My parents fought all the time when I was a kid - we’re talking screaming, throwing things and locking each other out of the house - and it took them literally about 25 years to learn to compromise and live with each other.
I know not all relationships are like that, but I’d rather be on my own and feel occasionally lonely, than be in a relationship and feel occasionally compromised or disrespected. I don’t mind compromising when there is mutual love and respect, but I’ve seen too many relationships where it’s one-sided, and I’d rather be on my own for the rest of my life than be like that.
I’ve had a couple of friends that seemed compelled to be in relationships. Within weeks of one ending, the next would begin. They all seemed to me to be judging their selfworth based on if there was someone in the world that wanted to be with them.
Ok, that sentence has way to many pronouns in it. Since these friends all reacted very similarly, I’m going to narrow this down to the single tense. These friends are female and male, so I’m just picking a gender.
My friend seems to judge her selfworth based on if there is a man that feels she is worthy of being part of a couple. While dating or married to someone, she is perfectly fine spending time on her own, or with friends/activities not including Mr Right, and living in her own place. But just knowing that Mr Right is in the picture seems to confer a validation of her selfworth. During some of the relationships, there was the knowledge that this wasn’t a long term thing, but even knowing that there would be eventual pain (and there was) during the break up doesn’t outweigh the need to be in a relationship anyway.
Yes, I can understand this. Now imagine feeling like this but not being able to find a relationship anyway, even one with a person you know you won’t be with for a very long time.
I generally liked living alone, but there is that double-edged sword feeling of no one giving a shit if you come home drunk at 4am and watch the Cartoon Network while eating a tub of ice cream. Sure no one tells you not to. On the other hand, you sometimes become painfully aware of the fact.
I never much cared for Sunday evening though. No matter how busy you are all weekend, Sunday evening is pretty much always spent by yourself. You can party it up all Saturday night, but come Sunday, you’re sitting there nursing a hangover, ordering pizza for one. Coupled with the fact that Monday is the start of a brand new work week, it makes for a really crappy day if you’re by yourself.
This, and for me an awareness of the fact that if I for some reason keeled over dead tomorrow, it could actually be a fairly long time before anyone noticed. I could be one of those people who are only discovered when the neighbors start complaining about the smell.
Any evening, lying in bed, waiting to fall asleep. There’s always a point where you can’t distract yourself with casual acquaintances anymore. Or worse, long holiday weekends… everyone else is off doing family barbecues, you’ve got a solid three days of nothing to do but go to the movies by yourself.
OTOH if you’re the 50-year-old who IS picking up all the 22-year-olds…
Me, I just have enough neuroses to deal with all by my lonesome to complicate things by making it a two-person team
This is the sole reason why I want a roommate. Sure it would be nice to have someone to pay half the bills and to watch a movie with you if you are both home for the night, but honestly one of my biggest fears is that I will slip in the shower and hit my head, causing me to drown and bloat up and be half eaten by my cats. I have a boyfriend who would notice I wasn’t answering my phone and such but it would probably take 3 or 4 days of worried phone calls before he thought I might be dead and at that point I would have already become cat food.
It’s less about pragmatism, though (although I’d prefer my cats not to starve to death in the interim). For me it’s more that I just wish there was someone who cared enough to pick up the phone and say hello and/or invite me to do something every once in a while, and who would notice and actually worry if I wasn’t returning calls.
I think that’s fear of change, at least in part, and of responsibility. I’ve gotten the same from people who were unhappy in their jobs - they hated every minute but when I asked “are you looking for another job? is it the specific company you dislike, or the line of work? are there other lines of work you might like better?” the response is “oh but what if I start looking for a job and don’t find one? What if I find one and I don’t like it either?” uhnnnn… ok, so what if you do find one and you do like it, would that be the end of your world? do you enjoy being miserable so much? have you seen a doctor to make sure you’re not depressed?
Both of my brothers have always wanted to get married. One is married, one isn’t; both are in their early 30s. I never wanted to get married (to me marriage involves the intent to have kids - yes I know it’s not like that for everybody, I’m talking about “me”, not about what other people should do, and I was terrifed of motherhood until very recently). We’re all reasonably happy, I think.
OTOH I had some high school classmates who couldn’t conceive life without being able to introduce themselves as “someone’s girl” and 25 years later they’re the ones who had the teen pregnancies, the ones whose daughters are also having teen pregnancies, the ones who have divorced (none of the classmates who didn’t have that much urgency have divorces, and I’m talking about some 12 “need a man” girls and about 500 “would be nice to have a man” ones)…
Believe it or not you can be content single (I was) and then decide that this person you know is worth dating and then worth spending the rest of your life with - without compromising yourself as a person, giving up a lot of freedom, etc. The KIDS, they were the point where I started having to make serious compromises. There are compromises, but with the right someone, they aren’t compromises you really notice or are painful to make.
As to the rush, if you do want children, there is a time limit on these things. As a woman who went through years of infertility treatment the whole “women have kids into their 40s, I have plenty of time” logic I hear from women in their late 20s drives me batty. They do, but a lot of them have trouble, and do you want to be 60 when your kid starts college? If you are content living your life childless, then there isn’t any rush at all.
