Every year, right around Valentine's Day, a flurry of women write articles directly addressing the large population of single women in New York.
This year, the two that I read were "Why You're Not Married" by Tracy McMillan, a "Mad Men" staff writer, in The Huffington Post, and "Dear Single Women of NYC: It's Not Them, It's You" by Jen Doll in the Village Voice.
Both articles share a message: "Women: it's your fault that you're not married, and you should stop bitching about how you can't find a good man."
These sorts of articles used to scare the ever-loving daylights out of me; now they're just infuriating.
I know it's my fault I'm not married. I know that in the future, if I don't get married, it will be my fault as well. And thanks to the advancements made by the women in the generation above me, it's my decision to make.
Because staying in a bad relationship just because it is heading towards marriage is like putting a plastic bag over your head, and just letting in enough air that you can stay alive.
So, I'd like to take a minute to directly address the women, or at least the type of woman, who are directly addressing these articles to me.
Obviously, marriage is not a fairy tale; stop telling us that.
McMillan wraps up her article with this "insight:"
Because ultimately, marriage is not about getting something -- it's about giving it. Strangely, men understand this more than we do. Probably because for them marriage involves sacrificing their most treasured possession -- a free-agent penis -- and for us, it's the culmination of a princess fantasy so universal, it built Disneyland.
But I grew up in a generation of women that literally never stopped hearing that marriage isn't a fairy tale. We were fed statistics about divorce in the same way that the Baby Boomer generation was bombarded with ICBM figures. Daily, we were told that men were not Prince Charming, that they would not vanquish a dragon to save us, rescue us from a tower or even just fight their way through a double transfer on the subway to come kiss
us goodnight.
And so we learned how to expect literally nothing from a man. And do you know what happened because of that? We learned to let men treat us like crap. We came to believe that men were doing us a favor by settling down -- because otherwise they would be out spraying the world of willing women with their abundant seed. We were taught to be grateful if a man showed interest in us, and we became fearful at all times that he would leave us once he did. Women of my generation are still the second-class citizens of
fairy tales: only now, we don't even have the chivalry or the ever-blooming roses to comfort us in our eternal boredom.
"All men want is for us to be nice to them." Do you know what men don't want? A lot of things that I really value about myself.
A few weeks ago, I was interviewing a woman who is at the top of her chosen profession. She's a single mother to her teenage daughter. She is enormously successful, well-educated, beautiful -- and never married.
Our conversation eventually -- and inevitably -- led us to the topic of why she never married, and to illustrate the point, she told me a story. "When I was younger," she said, "I was dating a man who told me: 'You're extraordinarily smart, and you're extraordinarily beautiful. You need a man who is either so strong that he can stand up to you, or so weak that you can walk all over him. I'm just a normal man. I'm not the man for you.'"
[20 years later, they met again, and she asked him why he had married his wife. "She made good sandwiches," he said.]
As I was leaving, she said to me, with a great deal of kindness: "You're pretty, and you're smart. It's a curse. You'll have a lot of difficulty finding a man."
It could have been crushing, if I wasn't aware of it already. For the first time in my life, someone openly acknowledged the dirty dark secret of my generation of women. And that is that all of the qualities we cultivate in ourselves from our first overachieving moments in elementary school to our graduation from the best universities in the nation -- confidence in our physical appearance, the ability to support ourselves, our cultured and well-read minds, the sterling pedigree of our schooling, our taste for healthy debate with our peers (both men and women) -- actually won't help us to find an equal partner. What it will do is make an "equal" man feel insecure, and what he will do with that insecurity is label us as "crazy." And crazy people aren't to be taken seriously -- they're to be medicated, dosed, tamed like "Kate," the eponymous shrew -- and made into the perfect wife. In essence, in order to participate in the ritual custom of marriage, we have to become shadows of our best selves.
So when you say to me, Tracy McMillan, that I have to work around a "man's fear and insecurity in order to get married," I say to you, why aren't you telling me that I should be going out to look for the men who wants a woman like me? (They do exist; some of them are my friends.) Instead of being told I need to medicate my "craziness" to pander to a man's itty-bitty oh-so-witty ego, I want a man who is every bit my match, and is not scared off by that. I want a man who appreciates that I enjoy sex. I want a man who loves that I can fire back a sassy comment like Katharine Hepburn on one of her lazy days.
I have a pedigree like an Arabian thoroughbred -- double Ivy League degrees in art history, the ability to speak in five languages, a resume full of prestigious jobs in the art world, a history of international travel that even Bruce Chatwin would gape at -- and it's come to the point that if a man doesn't immediately identify me as crazy, I question if he's even listening to me when I open my mouth.
When are women going to start telling women not to be afraid of raising children by themselves?
I'm a woman who both knows that she wants to have children, and who also knows that she'd like to have a few more opportunities to really, really fall in love. Because even though I know that the clock is ticking on my middle-aged ovaries, and even though I know that marriage isn't a fairy tale, I'd still like to actually be madly in love with the person I'm going to do all of this sacrificing and fighting and laughing and struggling with. I've been in love before, with men who were arguably (and endearingly) more troll than Prince Charming, and I know it can happen again.
In her article Doll quotes a friend as saying: "'If you could have babies easily into your 50s, I think you'd go on being single forever.'" She then follows the quote with the maxim: "But we can't. This is just a biological fact."
But it's clearly not a biological fact that a woman needs to be in a relationship to have a child. A decade from now, I know that I'll be making a more-than-decent living, and so, assuming I don't ask a friend to knock me up (hey, best friends make the best lovers, right?), I'll have plenty of money to pay for in vitro fertilization. I have many, many good friends, five siblings, relatively young parents, and over 20 aunts and uncles who would help me to raise that baby. I enjoy the perks of a thriving, enormous Irish Catholic family, but even if I didn't have over 50 immediate biological relatives, I still have the family that I've created from friends, mentors, lovers and co-workers in New York. And so do most women that I know. It might not be easy for us to be single mothers, but it would surely be workable, just another way of doing things that would have the same balance of happiness, sadness, and hardship as any other life I may choose to live.
All that I'm trying to say, ladies, is stop trying to frighten me; make me feel empowered. Speak to me like I can make my own decisions, and don't demean the difficulties I may be having finding a guy who I think is worth my time and energy. Marriage is a rapidly-changing institution. Let's discuss how it can be molded to fit our rising status, rather than trying to
jam ourselves into some outdated ideal.
Meanwhile, leave me a little room for my fantasies and my fairy tales. If I don't dream of the occasional miracle, the found glass slipper, the kiss that awakens me from my slumber, how do you expect me to make it through the drudgery of life?
Follow Brienne Walsh on Twitter: www.twitter.com/briennewalsh
Tracy McMillan: Why You're Not Married
Single People – It's Not Them, It's You
Why I'm not married (and it's not because I'm an angry slut) - CNN
A man might be doing himself a disfavor by settling down -- with the wrong woman.
I think women try to marry within their socio-economic class or above. I don't see many women marrying down. Oprah won't be dating a cab driver. She might date a guy who was the CEO of a multibillion dollar nationwide cab company. Ms. Ivy League is probably self-limiting in this regard. Would she date a dude who graduated from Long Island University and ran a small five man, er, five person construction business? I doubt it.
As far as spraying abundant seed with willing women, I wish it was as easy and the women as willing as she implies. I'm not a cabbie, so that can't be my problem. Maybe I'm living in the wrong city.
Ah, but that's not true. Your generation may have been told that men were garbage, but only MOST men. You were also led to believe that you would someday find your Prince Charming, through any number of books, TV shows, and movies. The plot has been re-done so many times it's amazing people still patronize these things: woman gets treated badly by husband/boyfriend/whatever and finds new guy who is just perfect, and they live happily ever after. This results in generations of overly picky women who think that being with someone who isn't perfect is equivalent to "settling."
Smart woman. If you need confirmation of your wisdom, Rachel, take a stroll over to the board on Divorce and read the horror stories there. A matrimonial motivation killer.
What if someone was vandalizing your house every month or so? Would you blame yourself or the vandal?
I'm just throwing out a hypothetical for laughs, so you don't have to answer. On the other hand, you shouldn't have to move or build a moat to protect your crib.
I liked this article. Telling a woman to find the one is akin to telling an old lady to walk across the street faster.
I got the educated part down cold, but here in sunny Southern California I usually wear shorts instead of trousers.
Do I still meet the standard?
Not to be too unkind, but by decent man you mean one who will happily invest his time and money raising another man's children? In other contexts this is known as cuckoldry etc.
If you are in the presence of a really kind person, it can melt those hard edges in a minute and make you a better person.
I think you should grab whatever happiness you can. You sound like you have an excellent support system. I think you should go ahead and have a child. Go for it. And don't forget that you can be a single mom and and find love afterwards. Yes, it might be harder but it does happen.
You're right, jf, that came through pretty loud and clear.
I'm fairly sure she has a pretty high opinion of herself. And maybe, just maybe, a pretty low opinion of most men she meets?
thank you thank you thank you.
We are now facing many changes that challenge the idea of gender roles. Women are pursuing demanding careers. Men have grown comfortable with the idea of bachelorhood. The act of raising a family, though never an easy task, does not operate as a well-oiled machine anymore.
I consider myself a closet housewife. I bake brownies from scratch, can sort laundry with my eyes closed, and have an obsession with eco-friendly cleaning. Some days, I even fantasize about having a family of my own one day. But then I take a look at my aging parents with no retirement savings and my physically-disabled baby brother, and realize that without a stable career they won't be taken care of. And if my wanting a career and my reasons for having one intimidates a potential mate, then he obviously will not be right for me.
What two large countries in the world in the last 50 years had long periods of virtually compulsory work requirements for women? Communist Russia and communist China.
Was this happening because these countries wished to help their citizens "self-actualize", or was this happening because these countries needed every able-bodied and able-minded person working to be working in order for their economies and citizens to survive?
One imagines the latter.
I know I'm not only speaking for myself when I say that I have a job, not a career. I like doing well at my job because I enjoy what I do, but I also do not have the option of not working. Most of what does not go to rent or bills I save, and I try to minimize stray expenses as much as possible because I want as much of my earnings to go toward my future family as possible (partly so I can afford to stay at home and be a mother).
I don't know much about the Scandinavian welfare-state democracies - maybe stay-at-home women are given major government subsidies there so they can spend more time at home with their kids. Would like to know the stats on these.
-THANK YOU for this
I''m late 40's, happily divorced, no children, and love my life. My experience is this: "the best men" get snapped up in their 20's, physically the best time for women to have children. Get into your 30's, and the odds of even finding a terrific guy get smaller each year as the chance of having children decreases.
Odds are if you can't find a good man to marry, you waited too long.
And yes you can have a child without having a relationship. If you're emotionally,physically and financially equipped to do that it's probably the best option. If the terrific guy also shows up it's icing on the cake.
Does anybody ever really feel sorry for anyone who's lifetime of questionable or bad decisions leads them to a place they don't like? Not really.
I agree that people who blow off otherwise great people for being "too this" or "not enough that" will find themselves single, perhaps unhappily so. But men are just as guilty of this as women. Men have a bit longer of a shelf life, but not so much so.
Buy her roses? Occasionally. Load the dishwasher? On my way in a few minutes. Hoover the floor? Yes I can do that.
But, you know, if someone thinks that's all there is then...I dunno...might they have missed something?
Yes, my wife makes good sandwiches - but so do I. You know, I looked after myself for years before we got together and I could still manage it now. That isn't why we got together, why we stayed together and why we are still together now. Or maybe the fact that I wasn't looking for a domestic servant IS part of the reason we're still together now. How long? 27 years married, fyi. 30 years altogether. NB - if I said we never argued, that would be an indication that we don't talk at all. We do, both.
Some of the points made in the article and some of the comments make my jaw drop, tbh.