Sara Eckel's Blog, page 12

Boston event: Trident Booksellers on Feb. 11

If you live in the Boston area, or know anyone who does, I’ll be doing a reading and discussion at Trident Booksellers and Cafe from 7 to 9 pm on Feb. 11. 338 Newbury St., Boston.

 

On trusting your gut, not fixing yourself and being here now

I’ve been doing a bit of blogging. Here’s the latest:

eHarmony, Jan. 21, 2014: Accept That Second Date … or Trust Your Gut

The Frisky, Jan. 17, 2014: 3 Things You Don’t Need To Fix About Yourself To Find Love (From Someone Who Tried)

Huffington Post Dec. 31, 2013: Single on New Year’s Eve: Are We There Yet?

IT’S NOT YOU readings and NY Times essay

I’m getting excited for the publication of IT’S NOT YOU next week, and have two readings coming up. If you’re in the neighborhood, pop by!

BookCourt, Jan 9., 7p.m. 163 Court St. Brooklyn, N.Y.

The Golden Notebook, Jan. 11, 4 pm. 29 Tinker Street, Woodstock, NY.

I also have an essay in this week’s Sunday New York Times “Modern Love” column. It’s basically Part 2 of a “Modern Love” essay I published a couple of years ago, which is what got the whole book project rolling.

My interview with Publishers Weekly

 

I had a really nice chat with Julie Naughton at Publishers Weekly a few weeks ago. Here’s the interview:

 

Modern Love Guide: PW Talks with Sara Eckel

By Julie Naughton |

Dec 13, 2013

In her upcoming book, It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single, Sara Eckel debunks the conventional wisdom as to why women of a certain age are still single. Along the way she shares her own story, giving women still looking for their special loved one a hopefully outlook.

What inspired to you write the book?

I was single for most of my adult life. I met my husband when I was 39 and during those preceding 20 years, I’d had one boyfriend for about three years, so most of the time I was unattached. And I spent a lot of time wondering why that was. At the same time, I was writing a lot of magazine articles on relationships and personal growth. I really got into this idea that I was this project and I could somehow fix myself and figure out what was wrong with me. I thought there was a reason I didn’t have a relationship so by putting myself through self-improvement I would find someone. And then I met my husband, and I still had all the same problems—I was still kind of anxious, I was an insomniac, but he loved me anyway. So when I started sharing that and started writing about that, I noticed the world has really opened up.

I wrote a piece [that was a forerunner for the book] for the New York Times Modern Love column in September of 2011. I’d been a freelance writer for about 15 years at that point, and nothing I’d ever written about had gotten that kind of response, so it was something that I wanted to explore more deeply. It may be strange for a married person to write a book about being single, but I remember that feeling of being single and looking at all these married couples and thinking they had some secret quality. When I met and married Mark, I realized I was exactly the same person I was before then.

Too many women buy into these seeming truisms, such as being more positive or loving yourself more—how would you suggest women react to that? It’s a hard state of mind to shake.

What was really transformational for me personally was realizing that I was buying into it. I was always trying to get people to say to me, “Sara, you’re fine. You just haven’t met the right person. Don’t worry.” At a certain point, no one was—I was the one who needed to realize that this was the case, that it didn’t matter what others were saying. I think that for the most part, friends are just trying to help. Most people aren’t trying to be mean. They’re into this idea of “Let’s solve the problem of you.” You have to realize that you don’t have to be perfect to find somebody. You just have to find the right fit.

How do you feel about self-help books and dating services?

I’m not against self-improvement or self-help or any of that. It’s just this idea of needing to fix yourself to be ready for a relationship that I have a problem with. Getting out there can be a drag but I think it becomes a lot easier if you don’t make it personal, don’t think every time you go out, “Once again, I didn’t meet somebody” as opposed to “Well, I gave it a shot.” It’s a subtle difference, but I think that’s important. There’s only so much control we have over making that the magical meeting of this person who you can share a life with happen. But I do think if you can remove all of that self-blame and self-criticism and the idea “I’m not okay, I’m not good enough”—and say “Well, let’s try this” and just go on the date or do the speed dating event or whatever it is without this sense of “Oh God, this better work because if it doesn’t I’ll feel bad about myself.” I’m hoping people will be able to shed all of the self-judgment and self-blame that goes on top of trying to meet people.

Is it harder to meet people you want to date in big cities like New York and San Francisco, as many believe?

I think there are demographic realities to cities, and some places there are a lot more single women than single men. The most helpful thing I found about being a single woman in a New York was looking at my friends and seeing all of these really lovely women who were having the same problems I was. Even if I couldn’t think for myself that I was okay, I could look at them and say, “Well, they’re all right. Anybody would be lucky to be with them.” I also think, if you really feel a city is not providing the opportunities, there isn’t any shame in moving. You’d move to another place for a job—why not a relationship?

What’s the most important lesson you hope women will learn from your book?

I hope to help women and men tap into their own instincts and trust themselves to realize who’s a good fit for them and to realize that the fact they’re single doesn’t necessarily mean that they have some big problem. Instead of approaching your life the way that I had done for so many years—which was “what’s wrong with me?”—I want them to approach it from the standpoint of “I’m not a perfect human being, but I think I’m worthy of love and I hope I find it. But in the meantime, I’m all right. I don’t have to be this perfectly self-actualized person to be worthy of love. Until that time, I can relax into the way my life is now.” I think most people have many more things that are right about them than wrong about them. It’s really just a matter of finding that connection with the person that enjoys you despite the fact that you’re disorganized or don’t like to go to parties or whatever your thing is.

How did you meet your husband?

I met him at work. I’d been freelancing for about 15 years and I got a phone call from my old job at a newswire service and they needed someone to fill in for a bit. And there he was. We flirted for about a month and we started going to lunch and then we started dating.

 

 

Why older women are NOT at a disadvantage in the dating market

I’ve never really liked analysis that equate dating and relationships with market economics–to me, love is far too mysterious and weird to examine the way we would home sales or oil prices.  However, I LOVE the way economist Marina Adshade turns the conventional wisdom on its head.

Marina Ashade on why older women have the upper hand in the dating market

If there are so many needy women, why hasn’t this psychologist met one?

Man, I wish I had known Dr. Rebecca Kennedy while I was writing my book. She just posted a brilliant piece on the Huffington Post bashing the myth of That Girl–you know, that nutty chick who can’t stop texting her guy, who is so needy that she demands exclusivity on the second date.

My patients talk a lot about That Girl, and she’s only been described in pretty awful ways. But things just don’t add up, because I’ve never had a new patient come into my office telling me, I am That Girl. Help me! I asked some of my colleagues, and they confirm that while they’ve heard a lot about her, they haven’t met her, either. If That Girl is such a social pariah, how come she never shows up in our offices to talk about how miserable she is?

Dr. Kennedy’s take is that most of the women worrying themselves to death over whether they are That Girl are actually just fine.

Maybe That Girl isn’t so crazy after all. When it comes to guys, she texts because she knows what she wants. She asks to be exclusive because she knows what she deserves.

Slow clap.

40% of Americans are lonely

If you’re one of them, you’re not alone. Illuminating story in the The Globe and Mail by @lizrenzetti.

First review of It’s Not You

So far so good … from Publishers Weekly

In this comforting love letter to single women, journalist Eckel tackles 27 common criticisms trotted out to unmarried ladies of a certain age—and sets each of those chestnuts on its ear. Advocating for the women who want to marry but haven’t yet found their match, the author picks apart clichéd observations such as “you’re too picky,” “you should have married that guy,” “you have low self-esteem,” and “you’re too desperate,” offering sensible responses for when these questions inevitably come up. Eckel sagely points out that “when you stop picking apart your personality and endlessly replaying the game tapes of your previous relationships, you clear a lot of mental space,” and she rationally discusses why each of these “truisms” are utterly wrong, funneling many through a Buddhist viewpoint while sharing her adventures with meditation and her own stories about dates gone wrong. Eckel also encourages women to examine what’s right with their lives, rather than what’s wrong—something very difficult to do when society is passing judgment, she acknowledges, but a necessary step nonetheless. A must for any single woman’s personal library, this book will lend hope to the millions of unattached women who want to believe love is on the horizon.

How to unravel insulting gender stereotypes—talk to a few guys

You know how dating guides and … everything else portray woman as being obsessed with getting married and having kids, while men care mainly about their careers and their cars? You know, how the “having it all” debate has been nearly exclusively focused around women?

Well, someone finally got the brilliant idea to ask men how they feel about marriage and family, and this yielded some interesting results. This is the third year that Citi and LinkedIn have published the Today’s Professional Woman’s Report, but the first year they surveyed men, too. Here’s what they found:

When it comes to defining success, men place more emphasis on marriage and children: 79% of men equate “having it all” with being in a “strong, loving marriage” vs. only 66% of women who feel the same. And when it comes to kids, 86% of men factor children into their definition of success vs. 73% of women.

Women are more likely to say that marriage is not a necessary part of the equation: 25% of women think that being in a “strong, loving relationship” is all they need to have it all; marriage is not necessary. Only 14% of men agree.

Women are more concerned about work-life balance—flex time, family leave—which of course suggests that “having it all” is merely something men take for granted. “Maybe it’s not that men actually ‘want’ more, but that they expect more,” wrote Amanda Hess at Slate.

I agree. But I also hope that by bringing men into this conversation, we can start to unravel the stereotypes that insult both women and men—the ring-obsessed girlfriend, the commitment-adverse cad. Maybe we can start to see that, all things being equal, men and women want pretty much the same things—a good job, someone nice to come home to.

Of course, it could be true that women care less about marriage and family than men do. “All things being equal” is a pretty big caveat, so that’s something to work on, too.

 

 

Coming Soon: A Book

It’s Not You will be published by Perigee in 2014. Details to come.