Sara Eckel's Blog, page 6

‘What If I DON’T Have a Rockin’ Career or Tons of Friends?

Dear Sara: I read an article you wrote [about being single for a very long time] last year while house-sitting a married friend’s cats–as only a single girl can do! Then I ordered your book. I have read EVERY SINGLE book on the market on “What was wrong with me?” Well no more! Your book made me realize for the first time in my life that I am fine as I am.

I was just wondering though–what about those of us unmarried girls who DON’T have a career as such or tons of great girlfriends? I related to everything you said, except when you talked about your career (which sounds so good!) and you have ALL those nice friends to have dinner with AND they listen to you! The few friends I have, I DO NOT share anything about ‘my situation’ with because they just pity me (or plainly just don’t care). So that’s a whole other level of failure for me to think about! No man AND no career or many friends!  Have you heard from many of ‘these’ girls? —C

Dear C: Yes! I hear from many, many women and men in your situation. When you’re single, there is so much pressure to assure everyone around you that you’re okay that it’s easy to fall into the reflex of saying “My career is amazing!” and “I’m having such a blast with my friends!”

But the truth is, most people—married and single—don’t have that. A few years ago, a Gallup poll found that 70% of Americans aren’t engaged at work—they are either sleepwalking through their days or actively dislike their jobs. And a Cornell University study found that nearly half of U.S. adults (again married and single) reported having only one person that they discussed important matters with, and only 29 percent said they had more than two close friends.

So if you don’t love your job or have tons of friends, you’re not an outlier—you’re a member of a substantial majority.

The problem of course is that many of us measure our lives against the sit-com fantasy, rather than reality.

I hope I wasn’t perpetuating the myth of the ‘fabulous’ singleton in my book. I’m lucky to have several close friends, but that wasn’t always the case. When I first moved to New York City in my twenties, I actually used to dread the weekends, and mostly spent them wandering around the city by myself, looking at the people hanging out with friends in cafes and parks, wondering if I’d ever get to be like them.

It took a long time, but I did manage to build an active social life. I did this by joining a few groups that met on a regular basis—a book club, an acting class, a summer-house share, etc. Gradually, I got to know the friends of my friends. I also started throwing parties and organizing small outings so that my new friends could meet each other.

As for my career—well, it has had its ups and downs, but it has almost always been engaging. But paid work is not the only source of engagement, so if switching careers isn’t plausible for you I’d suggest brainstorming other ways to bring meaning to your life.

This is another blind spot in our culture. We mostly talk about “meaning” as a product of either work or family. But there are countless ways to contribute, and countless good people and organizations that could really use our help.

I’m not saying you have to work at a soup kitchen. I’m suggesting you find something to do that interests and challenges you—something that will feel like time well spent. This might help you find some of the other things you’re seeking—friendships, interesting work, a relationship—but of course there is no guarantee. You can never know where any one experience will lead, but I do believe that if you consistently take steps to make your life as rich and meaningful as possible, then you can’t help but be headed to a good place. If you meet some nice people along the way, all the better.

One final thing: You joked about cat-sitting for your married friend as being a classic single-woman situation. I used to regard myself in a similarly self-deprecating way, and that’s something I now regret. It’s hard enough that our culture often regards single people as the subordinates to marrieds, but it’s even worse when we buy into it. If you’re being asked to do things that make you feel like a teenager or a servant, just politely say no. As you say, oftentimes friends in different situations don’t understand what we’re going through. That doesn’t make them bad people—it just means they don’t understand. It’s your job to quietly show them how to treat you. Not by arguing or complaining (believe me, I’ve tried that) but by simply by responding with dignity to whatever condescension comes your way. If a friend makes your feel slighted, try giving her a quizzical look and changing the subject. When you demand respect, you don’t necessarily change the other person’s opinion or behavior, but you do slowly start to change the way you regard yourself. Yours, Sara

 

Sara Eckel is the author of It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single. You can get a free bonus chapter of her book at saraeckel.com. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.

This article first appeared on eHarmony.com.

What does it mean to be a ‘Spinster’?

Until recently, the image we associated with the word “spinster” was fairly universal: a bottled-up woman in a high-neck shirt, hair pulled into a tight bun. So it was a good sign of progress when the term was discarded and replaced with “single woman.” With an interesting career, great apartment and lots of cocktail-party invitations, this new archetype enjoyed a life of freedom and fun, even if she sometimes imbibed a few too many cosmo-tinis.

Now author Kate Bolick is attempting to revive the more antiquated term. In her new book, Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own, Bolick writes of her “spinster wish” that was inspired by five strong-willed women writers of the past, including poet Edna St. Vincent Millay and New Yorker columnist Maeve Brennan. Though none were lifelong spinsters, their lives are characterized by both gravitas and independence, making them an inspiring contrast to all the old stereotypes.

Bolick writes about spinsterdom as a firm choice. She and her muses not only have interesting careers and the means to support themselves, they also have the power of refusal with men—these women could have married, but they chose a different path. But for many singles, it’s a bit more complicated than that.

Television writer Gina Fattore also chose spinsterhood, as she recounts in a terrific TED talk she gave earlier this year. Some of her reasons are similar to Bolick’s—she wanted to focus on her career and it worked; Fattore has written scripts for many popular shows such as Dawson’s Creek, Californication, Gilmore Girls, Masters of Sex and Parenthood.

But she also had another reason: She didn’t think the more conventional narrative—get married, have kids—was available to her.

Since she was a young girl, Fattore loved analyzing stories, and when she was in junior high she noticed that love stories had a constant:

It occurred to me that all stories about falling in love had the same catalyst: the girl’s prettiness. Now there was some wiggle room here: the pretty girl in a falling-in-love story could a blonde with a hot body or a she could be brunette with a hot body, but on TV and in the movies and even in most books the pretty part was not negotiable.

For various reasons, Fattore didn’t see herself meeting this standard, and while I’m sure Fattore has since noticed that in real life women who don’t conform to Hollywood beauty ideals get married all the time, the point is the revelation didn’t cause her to despair. Instead, she simply chose a different story—one that had worked out nicely for a lot of women she admired, such as Jane Austen, Florence Nightingale and Oprah. “In every way that mattered at the time, the prospect of growing up to be a spinster actually held a lot of hope and promise. It didn’t seem like a tragic story or a pitiful one. It seemed like the key to a better life,” she said.

Of course, many single women and men don’t consciously decide to live on their own—it’s just how things have worked out. When this is a case, it can be more difficult to feel empowered by your situation. After all, if it’s not a choice, aren’t you just a hapless victim, a slave to the universe’s whims?

No. A recent essay by Briallen Hopper explains this distinction beautifully. In the Los Angeles Review of Books, she describes how three African-American women, ten to twenty years her senior, taught her how to be a single woman. Her mentors, she explains, face demographic realities that make longtime spinsterhood a fairly common occurrence in their community—and thus not something they took too personally:

These women taught me to question my own entitled white-girl assumptions about relationships and marital status: that marriage (or spinsterhood) is a simple matter of figuring out what you want and waiting for it to happen, or making it happen. They taught me not to self-dramatize or presume, and not to project my own experiences onto others. I remember one of them telling me, clear-eyed and matter-of-fact, ‘If I’d met someone when I was younger and we’d had kids together, that would have been my life, and I would have had those experiences. But I didn’t, so this is my life instead, and now looking back it’s hard to imagine it any other way.’ For them, marital status was less about chasing wishes or fulfilling a destiny and more about making something meaningful with the life you have.

In my own writing, I’ve often made distinctions between people who are single by choice and those who are not. But I sometimes wonder if this is a false comparison. Most people who are seeking a relationship have chosen their singlehood at some point—by ending a relationship or by simply not pursuing a particular one. And I suspect there are very few in the single-by-choice camp who aren’t at least open to the idea that they might one day happen upon someone who is worth the effort.

In every area of our life—work, health, family–we’re all masters of our destinies, and we’re all victims of circumstance. Singlehood doesn’t have to be a choice or a curse. It can simply be what is happening now: a good life, but one that is also subject to change.

ES LIEGT NICHT AN DIR! is in German bookstores today

Today is the pub date for the German edition of IT’S NOT YOU. Happy to see it has Brian Rea‘s beautiful cover illustration.

‘Modern Romance': Why Finding Love Was Easier For Your Grandparents

In his new book, Modern Romance, comedian Aziz Ansari describes texting a woman named Tanya and asking her for a date. A few minutes later, the software shows she read it. Then he sees the little dots that indicate she’s typing a reply. Then the dots vanish. Several hours pass and no word. A day goes by—still nothing. At this point, Ansari is beside himself.

“What has happened?I I know she had my words in her hand!! Did Tanya’s phone fall into a river/trash compactor/volcano?? Oh no, Tanya has died, and I’m selfishly worried about our date. I’m a bad person,” he writes in his delightful and very informative guide to contemporary dating.

Of course, Tanya didn’t die and she wasn’t “just busy”; her Facebook and Instagram accounts showed she was alive and posting.

Technology has provided great new ways for single people to meet and date each other, but it has come at a psychological price. All that information can seriously mess you up. It makes silences more aggressive and gives rejections an extra sting—as the heartbroken now routinely endure photographic evidence of their crushes enjoying full lives without them.

In this precarious emotional environment, it’s easy to become nostalgic for a simpler time—the days before smartphones or even computers, when men wore ties and arrived at doorsteps with bouquets of flowers, and couples held hands and sipped lemonade on front porches.

Ansari wondered if things were better in his grandparents’ day, so he and his co-author, sociologist Eric Klinenberg, visited a Manhattan retirement community and asked the residents how they met their husbands and wives. The authors discovered that fourteen of the thirty-six seniors they interviewed had married someone within walking distance of their childhood home. They weren’t anomalies—a University of Pennsylvania study, they later learned, found that in 1932 one-third of couples who married in Philadelphia that year lived within a five-block radius of each other before tying the knot; one in eight had actually lived in the same building.

So what’s the deal? Why do people in the 21st century have to work so much harder to find a spouse? Why can’t we just marry the guy or girl who lives down the street?

The answer is simple: Because most of us don’t want to. When Ansari and Klinenberg asked the seniors how they chose their spouses they said things like “he had a good job” or “she was a nice girl.”

The younger married couples they queried were far more poetic. They wrote about how their partners make them the best versions of themselves, how they make them laugh and feel beautiful. “’He is stunning and I’m amazed by him every single day. He’s made me a better person for having known and loved him,’” wrote one woman.

In other words, we have different standards today. We want to fall deeply in love. We want to find a soulmate. And that simply takes more time and effort than picking someone because they’re reasonably pleasant or employed.

While most of the older folks the authors spoke with were satisfied with their marriages, the women in particular didn’t romanticize the old methods of mate selection and wanted their daughters and granddaughters to take a different approach. “They wanted the young women they knew to date a lot of men and experience different relationships before they took a husband,” the authors wrote.

Do contemporary dating standards and methods sometimes make people nuts? Sure. But for most younger people, the potential reward—falling deeply in love—is worth the heartbreak and hassle. It’s nice to know many of their elders agree.

Sara Eckel is the author of It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single. You can get a free bonus chapter of her book at saraeckel.com. You can also find her onTwitter and Facebook.

This post first appeared on eHarmony.com.

Single-Shaming and The Supreme Court

In American politics, the married heterosexual couple with children has been the gold standard of normalcy and virtue. They’re the people politicians address in their speeches, the ones they vow to fight for. If you exist outside this model, the nearly exclusive focus on these particular citizens can be profoundly alienating.

So it was exciting last week to see the Supreme Court recognize marriage equality for all. It seems we’re slowly moving past the one-size-fits-all model of family and adulthood.

But as The Washington Post’s Lisa Bonos and New York Magazine’s Rebecca Traister quickly noticed, the language Justice Kennedy used in the majority opinion also reveals that many old stereotypes persist:

“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family,” writes Kennedy.

Did you hear that single soldiers and veterans? The court thanks you for your service, but those tours in Afghanistan and Iraq don’t quite measure up to the noble efforts of your neighbors who got hitched in Cancun last year. Unmarried schoolteachers, doctors, nurses, firefighters, ETMs and social workers should also take note. No matter how much devotion and sacrifice you exhibit in your work and personal life, you’ll still fall short of your friends who put a ring on it.

“In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.”

You have to wonder how Kennedy’s colleague Elena Kagan or former colleague David Souter took the news that while they and other prominent singles—such at Janet Reno, Condoleezza Rice, Janet Napolitano and Ralph Nader—may have accomplished great things, they could still be … better. After all, have any of these people ever asked their friends to purchase them a $200 casserole dish or wear matching fuchsia dresses? Doubtful.

“[The petitioners’] hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions.”

Yes, those are the choices. Get married or sentence yourself to a lifetime of wretchedness.

I’m sure Justice Kennedy didn’t intend to insult singles in his praise of marriage.

His remarks reflect a knee-jerk bias that is so steeped in our culture most people don’t even recognize it.

Frankly, it’s exhausting. This attitude puts single people ever on the defensive, having to assure friends and family that they’re happy and capable while their married peers are simply assumed to be. This bias is the reason Lindsey Graham, a man who has been a U.S. senator for more than a decade, must explain to reporters that his unmarried state does not affect his ability to be president.

“Shifts in hearts and minds are possible,” President Obama said after the ruling. “Today we can say in no uncertain terms that we have made our union a little more perfect.”

I agree, but Kennedy’s remarks shows we still have a long way to go.

Sara Eckel is the author of It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single. You can get a free bonus chapter of her book at saraeckel.com. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.

Navigating the Joys and Sorrows of Single Life

Recently, Singular City editor Kim Calvert commented on the negative tone that many people take when writing about the single life, noting my work in particular. Calvert cited a recent newsletter of mine, in which I expressed my belief that our positive-thinking culture often makes people feel worse because it pressures them to deny their genuine feelings and paper them over with something more socially palatable. The newsletter also included links to some eHarmony Q&As about breakups and couple envy, as well as the Strangers podcast series “Love Hurts.”

In a Psychology Today post, Calvert said she thought I was encouraging singles to wallow in their misery. The fact that I answered questions from distressed readers suggested to Calvert that I was courting the attention of unhappy singles while ignoring the satisfied ones.

“I have the uncomfortable feeling that providing a platform for single women to console and obsess on the negative, rather than consider more difficult options like changing thought habits into something positive, totters into a place we need to avoid, even if misery does love company,” wrote Calvert, who is happily single by choice.

Encouraging negativity and self-pity was certainly not my intention, but I can see how the contents of that particular newsletter could lead someone to this conclusion, so I’ll clarify.

The first part is logistical. I have a job blogging for eHarmony, so by definition I’m addressing people who are making an effort to not be single. I like responding directly to readers’ letters because it connects me with the issues people are thinking about and struggling with. But again, I’m working with a self-defining group. People don’t write to advice columnists when they’re feeling happy and content—they write when they have a problem.

The meatier issue that Calvert raises is something I have contemplated myself: What is the difference between being honest and kind to yourself—that is, accepting your feelings—and just plain wallowing? This was one of the first questions I asked my meditation teacher after I started learning to sit with unpleasant feelings.

It’s a fine line, and obviously not one confined to the challenges of singledom. Again, I generally focus on the problems of singles because that’s my job, but today I’ll use an example that’s unrelated to relationship status: money.

When I’ve had money problems, I’ve dealt with them in both productive and unproductive ways. When I’m being productive, I contact editors about work, brainstorm ideas for future income, and trim my budget. When I’m being unproductive, I stew about how this shouldn’t be happening to me. Because I work hard! And I’m frugal! And I’m good at what I do!

When my mind starts spinning like this, I have found that the best way to reclaim my sanity is to take few breaths, sit very still, and connect with the underlying hurt: feeling undervalued. I drop the mental speeches about how unfair it is and instead connect with my body—the clench in my jaw, the hollowness in my chest.

Sitting with these sensations is very uncomfortable, but in my experience it doesn’t encourage self-pity or perpetuate negativity. Instead, it’s a way of dealing with the pain head on. When I stay with the raw emotion, what I discover is … it’s not that bad. I can handle it. That doesn’t solve the financial problem, but it does clear my head and get me back to managing it in a productive way, whether it’s looking for more work (for example, a terrific gig with eHarmony) or a new recipe for rice and beans.

When you genuinely feel bad, denying those feelings won’t work. But when you allow them to be there, when you aren’t afraid or ashamed of them, they lose their power. That’s the point where I can collect my wits and remember that I live in a nice house and have never gone to bed hungry. That’s when I can just get back to work.

So when I tell readers to allow themselves to feel sad after, say, a bad date or the umpteenth wedding invitation, I’m not suggesting they drown themselves in woeful ruminations. I’m suggesting they dive into those difficult emotions so that, paradoxically, they lose their grip. I’m suggesting that they don’t waste another second feeling ashamed of their pain—because that only escalates it—that they instead acknowledge it so that can they eventually move on and return to enjoying their lives.

But perhaps I don’t stress that last part enough—the enjoyment, the gratitude.

So help me out. Write and tell me what you love about the single life—and what information or insights would help make it even better. I won’t stop talking about the challenges of singledom, but if readers think this column needs more joy, I’m happy to oblige.

Sara Eckel is the author of It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single. You can get a free bonus chapter of her book at saraeckel.com. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.

‘Should I Take Her Back?’

Dear Sara: I was involved with my ex-companion from 2007 to 2014. I loved her whole-heartedly the entire time. (She had acknowledged by telling me a few years back that she was lucky to have me). In June 2013 she wanted to end our relationship (not that she has someone else, nor had I cheated on her) due to us growing apart due to her insecurity. Her reason for splitting up was “irreconcilable differences.” Years ago I had been reminding her that all relationships involve “give and take,” not just one-sided. I practiced what I had been telling her: “She is No. 1 in my life and all others do not matter as much.” She was the opposite. She cares what others think and as a result, she would bend over backwards to please and make people love her. To balance her life, I was taken for granted and my feelings meant little to her.

We now have been separated for almost a year. (I moved to a different state.) She has been acting a lot warmer and more caring. The truth is she is really a good person, kind-hearted in many ways and deep inside I still love her a great deal. Right after [she sent me a card], I emailed her a heartfelt (and a little hard-nosed) letter. I told her it wasn’t the “irreconcilable differences” that drove us apart; it was her unwillingness to work on the difference (unwilling to give and take). Her insecurity has gotten the best of her. I also admitted to her that I was mostly to blame for loving and spoiling her too much, by letting her slide all the time. However, I said I would someday be in another relationship but whoever it would be, her included, has to have a commitment for give-and-take and it has to be two-sided love because I am worthy of love.

What is your take on my situation, and do you think an insecure person can change? And if she wants to give us a second try and is willing to try to change, how should I react and how can I help her change? – J



Dear J: Let’s start with the good news. You recognize that your ex is good person who is capable of being kind-hearted, and that part of you still loves her very much. While you were together, she acknowledged that she was lucky to have you—frankly, we should all say that to our partners, all the time.

The question is: Do you think you were lucky to have her—and if so, did you ever tell her that? By your telling, you have patiently loved and cherished your ex, and she took you for granted and gave little in return. If that is true, then I’m not sure why you’d want to take her back.

But since you’re considering the idea, I think you need to ask yourself if it’s really true that all of your relationship’s problems began and ended with her? Is it really true that you have been perfect and have never done anything that might compromise it (like, say, acting a bit superior at times)? Your contention that your only mistake was loving her and spoiling her too much does not count as taking blame. That is akin to those non-apology apologies (“I’m sorry you feel that way”) and baloney answers to job-interview questions (“I guess my worst quality is that I care too much about work”). It’s not taking responsibility; it’s finding another way to bolster your position.

You can’t have a happy relationship if one of you is the “good one” and one of you is the “bad one.” If she truly offered you nothing while you gave and gave and gave, then it seems doubtful that she’d change. But if you can work together and discuss the ways that you both need to adjust your behavior and attitudes, then I think you have a shot. But that means that you need to a) recognize what she has offered the relationship and b) admit that you have your own stuff to work on. As you say, it’s a two-way street.

Different people have different needs. Some people can get all of their emotional sustenance from their romantic partnerships and don’t need to spend time with other people. Others need a wider social circle. Neither of these things is right or wrong—both temperaments should be respected. Your partner is entitled to have a life outside of your relationship—provided she doesn’t date or flirt excessively with other people, of course.

If you do get back together, she needs to find a way to make you feel loved and not neglected. And you need to find a way to give her not just love, but also respect, appreciation, and the space she needs.

Here’s the main question: Does she love you the way that you need to be loved? If your gut instinct says no, that doesn’t make her a bad person, but it does mean you should probably hold out for the woman who does.

Yours,

Sara

Sara Eckel is the author of It’s Not You: 27 (Wrong) Reasons You’re Single. You can get a free bonus chapter of her book at saraeckel.com. You can also find her onTwitter and Facebook.

This post first appeared on eHarmony.com.

The Problem With “Cool” Single Women

Do we only respect single women who have the power of refusal? Is it necessary for the single woman to prove her solo state is entirely a choice–in other words, that guys dig her? I contemplate these questions in a Dame Magazine essay, The Problem with “Cool” Single Women, which was also posted on Salon.

My essay on the single-woman conversation in Dame Magazine

Do we only respect single women who have the power of refusal? Is it necessary for the single woman to prove her solo state is entirely a choice–in other words, that guys dig her? I contemplate these questions Dame Magazine today.

Thanks, Los Angeles Review of Books and Flare

It was a good week. Minda Honey wrote a lovely essay in The Los Angeles Review of Books called Empty Beds, Empty Wombs: Life Beyond The Blueprint, and I was delighted to see It’s Not You included, along with Kate Bolick’s Spinster and my good pal Meghan Daum’s anthology Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed.

Also, Briony Smith at FLARE published a smart and raw piece about being single called Why Being Single Sucks: What No One Wants to Talk About. I loved talking to Briony a couple of months ago was glad to find out she’s as charming in print as she is in person–and to see my friend Melanie Notkin, author of Otherhood, in the piece, too!