As a former Quirkyalone, this New York Times article has much relevance for me. Most of my life I pursued education and other projects, focusing on living and not basing my identity on being in A Relationship. Desperation can lead to poor choices, especially in mates. Sure, being single can be lonely at times. But I’ve come to understand that by being able to stand aloneness and befriending myself, I am a more whole person, and thus healthier in my relationship choices. The article, Just Saying No to the Dating Industry, is well worth the read.
Reality television shows — “The Bachelorette,” “Average Joe” — have fed the impression that finding the right mate is as simple as being presented with a room of 10 people and picking one. Bookstores bulge: “Surrendered Single,” “Find a Husband After 35 Using What I Learned at Harvard Business School,” “Make Every Girl Want You.” That is just a sampling from the last year; the next two months will bring one manual promising to lure the love of your life in seven weeks, another in a sleeker six.
“There’s a fetishization of coupling,” said Bella DePaulo, a visiting professor of psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, who studies perceptions of singles. “It’s made the pressure that’s always been there more intense.”
Yet like Ms. Cambridge, longtime combatants in the dating wars, psychologists and those who study the lives of singles talk about increasing dating fatigue. They say more and more people are taking dating sabbaticals or declaring they will let romance happen by chance, not commerce. Once-obsessive online daters are logging off, clients of speed dating services — which offer dozens of encounters in a roomful of strangers — are slowing down. A book due out in January, “Quirkyalone,” offers “a manifesto for uncompromising romantics” –those not opposed to romance but against the compulsory dating encouraged by the barrage of books, Web sites and matchmaking services.
I sickens me to know that people are so weak that they have to have things like this spelled out for them. I think this is a matter of weakness — they can’t think for themselves. They have to be TOLD it’s okay to be single (dot com). What is going on? Why do people need other people to feel validated, or be told it’s okay to not have another person around to validate you? Why are we born with brains at all? Is this okay, am I thinking alright? Am I normal? Can someone please tell me I’m okay? Please. I don’t mean to go off here, but this kind of thing really bothers me.
You ask a number of complex questions! I’m not certain there are definitive answers, either. People value and want different things in life. The questions you pose are the type for which therapy is often useful — not to “fix” what is “broken,” but to have an objective listener focus her attention completely on helping you reflect on these questions and discover your answers, and to explore your responses. It does seem as though the topic of relationships is a passionate issue for you. You’ve commented before about how you feel outside the norm and feel negatively regarding most people’s desire to be in an exclusive relationship. These hot spots are usually fertile areas for self-growth.
I’m mostly outside the norm because I am living in a society that places so much emphasis on family and marriage and those are two things I have never been interested in. I was fine in Austin. I’ll be fine in Las Vegas or Olympia or Kerrville or wherever I eventually end up. But I am royally boned as long as I’m living in Salt Lake City. By the way, the questions I was asking near the end of that post were not ME talking, but generalized questions single people in society seem to be asking. I know I’m fine.