UN-PARTNERED--A LIFE OF PASSIONATE SOLITUDE OR EVENTUAL REGRET?

Photo Credit:  "I Love U" by Brittany on Photobucket 

 

Women—and men too!—you tell me.

I have been thinking lately about what it means to be “un-partnered”—which isn’t the same thing as being celibate.  Women writing to Auntie Sue must have the same subject on their minds, because they want to know:  Why doesn’t he call after we spent a great night together?  Why am I the hook-up/one-night-stand?  Why did he marry someone else six months after the break-up of our long relationship when he wouldn’t marry me?  (Susan McNabb, Jerry Seinfeld’s ex-lover of eight years duration, is writing a book on being the one not chosen.  Wince.)

Some women still tell one another:  He’s just scared of the intense feelings he has for you.  (Oh, ha.)  More and more women are acknowledging, however, that they are un-partnered—and not only asking why but examining what that means for the long term.  Lovers, we have.  Flowers and designer chocolates, we get. If you see us dining out with a man, you probably note that he is more attentive than the average man to his woman.  But the man is not ours.

A few weeks ago I heard the talented and beautiful Arie Thompson sing at Freia Gallery in Harlem.  She has a rich sexy voice and a way with tunes from Billie Holiday’s moody “Left Alone” to a better up-tempo version of “Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover” than Paul Simon sang.   The theme of her show and the title of the new CD “Passionate Solitude” grew out of her realization that she was the only one of her friends who was and always had been “un-partnered” whether she was with a man or not.

She talked the talk of the young and bravely romantic: 

“When you are not with one man, you get to be with many.” 

“You can appreciate intimacy on so many levels.”

She told a poignant story of a hook-up that was a “soul connection”.  (He didn’t call.  She called him.  “I’m in a relationship,” he said, “but you’re right—we really connected.”)

And she asked, “Do we lack such imagination that longevity is the only measure of success in a relationship?”

She’s not thirty yet.  How will she feel if, ten, twenty years later, she remains un-partnered, doing everything that needs to be done on her own?   An acquaintance in her fifties told me about the responses of married friends to her financial plight:  “Every one of them is comfortable because she is married.  Yet they all gave me judgmental ‘advice’ that, in varying degrees of subtlety, placed the blame on me for the loss of my job.”

The new book Marry Him:  The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough by Lori Gotlieb –the one causing such an uproar—speaks to her.  Now she wishes she had married Mr. Not Quite Right.  In her twenties and thirties and even into her forties, she romanticized the life of the urban single woman.  She proudly would not “settle.”  Ironically, I hear from unmarried men in their forties expressing regret at letting the “perfect girl” go in their twenties because they weren’t ready “to settle down” and also resentment at the women in their thirties now who won’t “settle” for them.

I wonder how "settling" has worked out for the women who did.

 

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Comments

[kaykay]

"She told a poignant story of a hook-up that was a “soul connection”. (He didn’t call. She called him."
I talk to so many women (and men) who mistake the call of the wild for a soul connection. I'm not saying that's Arie's deal, so Arie, this is not about you! But it seems like a lot of people feel, perhaps from cultural expectations, perhaps from religious teaching, that when two people feel deep lust for each other and they have a few life details in common, it's some kind of other-worldly, written in the stars, meant-to-be, one-of-a-kind connection. I'm not saying that it isn't, but I see a lot of women lose their common sense and throw all logic out the window for this very tenuous, mostly in their own minds connection. And then they fall into despair when he doesn't call, because he knows it for what it was - a majorly fantastic, earth-shattering hookup where the magic was created precisely BECAUSE one person was essentially unavailable.
Romance to so many people, women especially, means all the happy sappy good feelings of love and lust. And while those things are legit, what those people either forget or don't know, is that an essential part of true romance is tragedy. And it's an unfortunately heady, high emotional feeling, and it can be almost addictive for some, helping them create the same mistakes over and over because it just feels so good!
I like Arie's comment about longevity not being the only measure of a relationship. I'm with you there. There are all sorts of great relationships, and the length of them is not the measure. But if the person in that alternately-measured relationship is using longevity, there is going to be heartbreak instead of exulatation, which is unfortunate.

[kaykay]

As for settling - If ANYONE is holding out for another person to be PERFECT for him or her, they're deluded. In America, we grow up with this whole, "You complete me" and the Disney "the prince saved her, married her and they lived happily ever after" crap.

So many people don't know how to make themselves happy. It's insane for anyone, but ESPECIALLY those people, to think that someone else in this world can MAKE them happy. All those people out there who think that just finding the "right" person is what's missing from their lives, they need to stop and figure out that once they fill that supposed hole in their lives themselves, that's when they'll truly be ready to SHARE lives with someone else. Not share A LIFE, but blend their own with another person's.

[Susan Crain Bakos]

I understand what you are saying. As someone who was married, I can see it from both sides. in defense of single women everywhere, the angst about being un-partnered is not as simple as you paint it. For single mothers desperately trying to cope, for example, it is not looking for deluded perfection--but help in putting meals on the table. I am not implying that was my lot in life....because it wasn't,
but as a journalist who covered women's issues before I started writing about orgasms, I have seen a lot of unpartnered women caught in bad places...
Wives, don't be so judgmental, especially if you have never really been on your own!! Yeah, yeah, yeah nobody can MAKE you happy....but a partner can help in hard times.

Re. your comments on reading a soul connection into a sexual encouter: Yes, that happens all too often. But I don't think it happened with Arie. She is not inclined to think that way.