WILL A NEW ROMANCE INTERFERE WITH BLISSFUL SINGLEHOOD?
STORY BY Marion Winik Illustration BY Paige Vickers
After my marriage ended in 2008, the last thing I wanted was to be single. I set up profiles on dating sites, asked friends to fix me up and lurked around the corner bar in my neighborhood in highheeled boots and skinny jeans. But finding a compatible partner turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. I dated a therapist, a scientist, a photographer, a contractor and a day laborer, among others, and at least of few of them were really great guys. Still, I went three years without feeling a serious romantic spark. Actually, one time I did feel a spark, but the man in question was definitely not interested. And that was e
ven less fun.
Unsurprisingly, after three years of this, I decided to give up. Like a jalopy sputtering to a halt, I had my last few backfires. “I’m not really dating anymore,” I told a carpenter when he called, but I met him for dinner at a Fells Point tavern in Baltimore anyway. “I have my friends,” I told him earnestly, “my family. My work. I’m busy, I’m happy. I’m starting to think of being single as a way of life, not a state of emergency, an urgent problem that has to be solved.”
The carpenter looked bemused. He told me many of the women in our age group he goes out with say the same thing. He thinks it’s the men who are really driven to pair up again, while women can make do with what they have left over from their original families.
He wasn’t the only person who told me this. Perhaps the last guy I met for coffee resulting from an eleventh-hour, hopesprings- eternal online dating relapse, was a hatchet-faced cynic with the demeanor of a failed, embittered Catskills comedian. He listened to the beginning of my apologetic anti-dating speech, nodding sourly. “Oh, let me guess,” he interrupted, “you’re very close to your children? And your dog? And you have a warm, loving circle of friends? What a surprise!”
Around this time, I decided to write an account of the roller coaster ride I had been on – the often hilarious misadventures in romance that had led me to rethink what I needed to be happy. I called my memoir “Highs in the Low Fifties: How I Stumbled Through The Joys Of Single Living,” and I got the first copy hot off the press in early summer.
That same week, I got a Facebook message from a guy I’d met at a couple of parties over the winter. I remembered him well because I’d found him so attractive. Unfortunately he had a girlfriend at the time, so that was that.
But now, he said, he was single, and he would like to see me.
It is the biggest cliché in the world that once you give up completely on finding love, it comes to you. In my case, I not only gave up, I published my conclusions! Things become clichés for a reason, I suppose. So riddle me this: Do the excitement and invigoration and delight I experienced when I clicked with this new man mean I was kidding myself when I said I was happy being single? Now that I was suddenly being treated to all the joys of intimacy and passion and companionship, was my treatise simply a sham?
I am still working out the answers to this question, but here are some notes from the trenches. So far, I’m thinking I really, truly am happy being single, and in many ways I am a lot happier as single person than as a wife.
This is not because I chose the wrong partners as much as because of who I am. I have a lot of traits that don’t work well in marriage, and probably the two most problematic are that I am very controlling and I am a compulsive approval-seeker. I probably don’t have to explain why you don’t want to marry Mussolini. But let me tell you how the people-pleaser side of me is an even more insidious Achilles heel.
When you can’t tolerate being criticized or disagreed with, you will do and say things to get the strokes you want. For example, my ex-husband felt that a lot of my tops were too low cut and my dresses too short and my whole way of dressing generally immodest. What I should have done was listen calmly to his point of view and then explain equally calmly that I was a grown woman and could make my own choices about clothes. What I actually did was scream; yell; write frantic, ranting emails; and generally go crazy defending myself. Then I went ahead and retired half my wardrobe. That type of behavior wore off after about a decade, when I freaked out and rebelled like a teenager about this and many other uncomfortable compromises I had made.
Now I wonder if I can steer clear of all that. I want to drive the bus myself – be independent, live alone with my teenage daughter, manage my own finances and domestic decisions. I want to have the freedom to devote time and energy to my work without feeling selfish, and I want to continue to enjoy rich relationships with my male and female friends. Can I also have a committed, long-term relationship with a lover on those terms?
According to what I’ve read and what I already feel from the new Mr. Right, it’s not going to be easy. As Eric Klinenberg, author of the bestselling book on single living, “Going Solo,” puts it “Women are much more likely to be content being single than men. They usually have better skills for creating a high-quality, domestic life and are better at making and maintaining relationships with friends and family. Men are more likely to feel isolated.”
My new boyfriend is nothing if not a man, I’m happy to report. But this means he’s already started mentioning his need for us to spend more time together, even to move in together. I get a little frantic at this, because although I know perfectly well what I want, I also know how tempting it will be for me to thwart my convictions in order to make him happy. Otherwise, I worry, he may just get fed up and pack me in.
So there it is. Yes, I love being single. Yes, I love having a man in my life. Whether I can have both only time will tell. You can read more about these and other Marion Winik adventures and misadventures in her recently released book “Highs in the Low 50s: How I stumbled through the joys of single living.”
