(On some browsers you'll need to refresh this page in order to see the comment you just left.)
amatt - 2004-10-01 10:19:10
(nice legs? hmmm...she must be talking about me)
--Well said P, here's to the future!
-------------------------------
I wombat - 2004-10-01 11:32:01
Hey andy, I don't think I've ever seen you in shorts, you holding out on us?
Go Kerry !
-------------------------------
Sharps - 2004-10-01 12:41:57
"...should you ever find yourself separated from your spouse, and feeling like crap, I promise I will never advise you to 'enjoy being single and really get to know yourself!'"
Yeah, I could see how that advice could seem gratuitous and irritating, but speaking for myself - in the aftermath of a major breakup I've found myself casting about (obsessing?) for the next relationship, and I've ended up in a couple of foolish rebound situations. I now try to tell myself to relax, to enjoy the scenery of the single life while it lasts. "Specially if, like me, you've spent the major portion of your adult life in committed relationships, then I think the down time is essential! The "getting to know yourself" part really is crap though, I agree.
-------------------------------
Baby Party - 2004-10-01 13:13:13
You may feel differently, Paula, but When I was single, I also didn't like hearing, "you'll meet someone! I know you will!" It felt patronizing. I think coupled people sometimes say that stuff because they feel guilty that they might not be as unhappy as their single friends. Don't get me wrong, I know some people truly love being single, but I wasn't one of them. The "getting to know yourself stuff"...like you can't do that in a relationship? If you're not, you're not doing your job.
I do miss one thing about being single, though: having my own room. This is actually a pretty big deal to me at the moment. So I would say, enjoy having your own room. Sing at the top of your lungs, watch tv in the middle of the night in bed, hog the covers, play lots of air guitar. While it lasts.
-------------------------------
Paula - 2004-10-01 13:15:17
Yeah, it's the "getting to know yourself" part that irks, not the "enjoy your single years" part, although I also notice it's never single people telling me to enjoy my single years, it's married people who say that. Hmm.
-------------------------------
Paula - 2004-10-01 13:18:44
Baby Party:
OK, I confess the one thing I can do single that I couldn't do married: reading while I eat. Or watching TV while I eat. Or all 3 at once.
-------------------------------
Baby Party - 2004-10-01 13:39:28
Well, if you had married Mr. Baby Party, you would be eating dinner in front of the TV every night! Sometimes I read while he watches TV (and we both eat). I cannot, however, watch Gilmore Girls, or or Girlfriends, or Style Star. So watch all the girly shows you can, while you can.
-------------------------------
Paula - 2004-10-01 13:56:20
I guess there's one TV-eater in every family.
-------------------------------
Janet - 2004-10-01 14:17:23
I was heading up the front walk with a friend last night when Didymus (one of the felines here) streaked across our path. "Oh, that's the bad cat", I said to Steve - as Andy (my spouse) opened the door.
Anyway, my husband/bad cat and I frequently eat supper and read in what I believe is companionable silence. Then one or the other of us will come across an elegant turn of phrase or witty anecdote and insist on sharing it, thereby breaking the other's concentration and allowing all hell to break loose.
It's really not very healthy to read or watch TV while eating, I guess someone ought to point out.
-------------------------------
Baby Party - 2004-10-01 14:53:29
Janet, does Didymus read while he eats, too? What a cat!
If the two of us go out to breakfast, Mr. Party likes to get a Times to read; I have broken him of the anti-social habit of doing this when we meet friends for brunch. That's where I draw the line.
-------------------------------
Sharps - 2004-10-01 14:58:13
No, no - I told you the other night to enjoy being single, and I was saying that as someone who truly enjoys being single. I think you also need to get to know yourself. Honestly, you are so clueless on all things Paula. Is there some kind of course you could take?
-------------------------------
Paula - 2004-10-01 15:30:19
OK, before this spins out of control, and I sound like some kind of crazed Rhoda Morgenstern type who desperately wants to be married: I enjoyed my pre-marriage single yrs plenty! I anticipate enjoying some aspects of my post-marriage single years, too. Of course. Life is always good, and there's always cause to shine and celebrate and thank God.
But the admonishment to enjoy being single often strikes me as a little contrived, or nostalgic, or whistling-in-the-dark on the part of the admonisher. (The Admonisher--this would be a good comic book character.)
What is it that I can now do that I couldn't do when I was married? It's not as if I was wearin' a burkha.
By the way, I hope I'm not bumming out any single folks out there! I'm just trying to get to the bottom of a piece of (oft-unsolicited) advice I have heard 1,000 times since June, and which seems like the received wisdom of our culture, and yet which makes little sense to me.
-------------------------------
Janet - 2004-10-01 15:44:00
Baby Party: we have another cat, Humbean, who lies down to eat, curled around the cat food bowl as comfortably as his pudginess allows (i.e. very comfortably). Thankfully, neither Andy nor our kids have picked up the habit. The third cat, Moxie, reads our minds while she eats. And don't tell Mr. P, but my dad does crossword puzzles during Christmas dinner.
-------------------------------
Flasshe - 2004-10-01 15:53:20
I've been single for a long time. I really get to know myself every day. And twice on weekends!
-------------------------------
Baby Party - 2004-10-01 15:56:16
It's hard to imagine the opposite admonishment: "Well, you're married, it's true, but you may as well enjoy it, and get to know your partner." I just remember how annoying it was when a married friend said to me, "Be glad you're single because sex gets really dull when you're married." As if my life was one big orgy. I also remember a married (male) friend advising me that if I was really serious about wanting a partner, I should just settle for the next nice man that came along, and stop complaining.
-------------------------------
Sharps - 2004-10-01 17:50:47
And that's what you did, didn't you!? Uh-oh, I just hope Davy Party doesn't read this page...
-------------------------------
Miles - 2004-10-01 17:53:55
Everyone's single life wasn't one big orgy? I am *shocked,* I tell you, *shocked.* Maybe y'all were watching TV or reading (or both at once) and didn't happen to notice that you were in an orgy.
-------------------------------
2fs - 2004-10-01 19:26:10
Isn't "getting to know yourself" some sort of euphemism? (Oh wait - shoulda guessed Rog would beat me to that joke.) And BP: so is the married friend who complained about dull post-marriage sex still married? Cuz why the hell so then?
-------------------------------
Dan - 2004-10-02 00:06:58
We seem to have a loose social mythology, according to which the married have the gift of happiness, and the single receive the compensatory gift of clarity and perspective. But you could just as easily turn it around: married people are often wistful for their singleness, but maybe they are being thrust toward wisdom by having to grapple on a daily basis with the discomfort of otherness.
My impression is that people sometimes talk about past relationships as if they couldn't see straight back then. And I always think, "Well, we have an epistomological problem here, how do you know you're seeing straight now? Maybe it's backwards: maybe you saw clearly during the relationship, and now the scales are upon your eyes." But we tend to believe in progress.
-------------------------------
Paula - 2004-10-02 05:24:05
Right said, Dan. And although I am one of those people who tends to believe in progress--because I believe most of us do become more aware of own patterns and desires over time--I am also wary of "situation A was all wrong, thank God I am in Situation B now..."
One of the other social myths around marriage: "Well, it's better to break up than to be with the wrong person."
But the problem with that is "the wrong person" is only the person you break up with--it's a tautology. They're not wrong til slightly before and then after you've parted. Before that, they are your spouse, and you're having both good times and bad** with them, and getting through your lives together, enjoying breakfasts and movies and subway rides together.
**this excludes truly heinous couplings, violent situations, and celebrities
-------------------------------
Bob - 2004-10-02 15:25:04
In this vein, what are we to make of "staunchly conservative father of nine" Antonin Scalia's joking about orgies, in several speaches lately? (Though I guess personally I believe we are not to touch that.)
-------------------------------
Dan - 2004-10-03 10:06:39
By the way, I didn't mean to be critical of that tendency to revise people downward after breaking up with them. It alleviates pain, and maybe it's necessary. But I don't think it's always the dawning of wisdom. Loving people may be the only real way to understand them in any comprehensive sense, to get a perspective similar to theirs. And I definitely feel that having contempt for people is essentially giving up on the idea of understanding them.
A good book about this is Lolita.
Bob: it always seems to me that there's this incredibly marked tendency on the part of aging men to start saying sexually inappropriate things all the time! I'm getting to that age, and I'm watching myself like a hawk.
-------------------------------
Baby Party - 2004-10-03 15:54:30
7Sharps: no, Mr Party doesn't read this page. And the great thing about him is, he's nice, but not TOO nice, if ya know what I mean.
What annoyed be particularly about that piece of advice was the the person who delivered it was and is very happily married to his true love, and he didn't meet and marry her til he was nearly 40; before that, he had literally dozens of failed romantic entanglements, and had never lived with anyone. So it felt like he was allowed to be "picky," but I was not.
2fs: Yes, she's still married, and complaining, and worse, having affairs, and worse, they have two kids.
Dan: Very very well put.
I think some married or otherwise coupled people find it frightening to listen to single people complain, because it makes them think, "I could be back there at any moment, divorced, alone! It could happen to me!" So they try to get the single person to admit that it's really not so bad, what with all the clarity and perspective and getting to know oneself.
-------------------------------
add your comment:
back to the entry - Diaryland
