Results tagged “being single” from iVillage - Sex on My Desk
But, as the ladies in the Lipstick Lounge decided, let's pretend it's international...
This holiday (holiweek?) is intended to celebrate "the lives and contributions of unmarried and single [people]." And the iVillage community agrees! Member showtime07 says, "I'm going to pour a glass of chianti and relish in complete domination of the remote control." Member solush80 adds, "Here's to being able to dance foolishly around my apartment to my girly music whenever I want." Amen to that!
What are you going to do?
I just received a press package from a new publication geared towards "single adults age 30 plus who live in Los Angeles" called Singular magazine. Sounds interesting, right? ...Except that, when my single friends come to mind, the fact that they don't have boyfriends or husbands is an afterthought. First I think about their successful careers, hobbies, families, where they live and so on. And if you said, "Tell me about yourself" to any one of them, I can't imagine that "single" would make the first paragraph. Being single simply doesn't define their interests.
On the other hand, when I was single, I didn't enjoy Redbook as much as I do now. There was too much "married talk." I couldn't relate.
So, single readers, I'm curious:
Six or so years ago, before I met F, my friend Liz I.M.-ed me that she wanted to set me up on a blind date. I declined. "Why?" she asked. "What are you looking for?" And I began to list what I considered my criteria: one item, another, three more, another one, two more. She didn't respond. I could only imagine her looking quizzically at this very long list.
Suddenly I began looking at it differently myself.
I typed, "And that's why I'm single."
This morning F's former intern "A" sent me a link via Facebook: Marry Him! The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough and asked for my thoughts on this very long, but poignant article. The author is an over-40 woman who—single in her late 30s—had a child through a sperm donor for fear of missing out on being a biological mom because she didn't have a husband. She talks about how her definition of marriage has shifted through the years, from romance to partnership. She says she broke up with guys in her early 30s because, the older she got, the more determined she became to find what she'd spent so many years seeking. But she wonders now if that was a mistake:
"It’s not that I’ve become jaded to the point that I don’t believe in, or even crave, romantic connection. It’s that my understanding of it has changed. In my formative years, romance was John Cusack and Ione Skye in Say Anything. But when I think about marriage nowadays, my role models are the television characters Will and Grace, who, though Will was gay and his relationship with Grace was platonic, were one of the most romantic couples I can think of. What I long for in a marriage is that sense of having a partner in crime. Someone who knows your day-to-day trivia. Someone who both calls you on your bullshit and puts up with your quirks. So what if Will and Grace weren’t having sex with each other? How many long- married couples are having much sex anyway?"
I told "A" that I'm not sure I even understood that their might be some validity behind the notion of settling until my late 20s (and I'm a woman, roar), when I started noticing the constant media references to the "biological clock." The term may be cliche, but it's also a fact of life.
In a conversation about the frustrations of her dating life, my early-30 single friend Lara recently told me, point blank, "You don't understand." I was single for a very long time. I remain fiercely independent after several years of dating and a year of marriage. But one day in my mid-20s, I was in the right place at the right time and I met F. He meet all the, frankly, mostly superficial criteria on my ridiculous list; lucky for me—and luck is a huge factor—he had much more important qualities that had never even occurred to me. So, as offended as I was at Lara's comment at first, maybe she's right. Maybe I don't.
