I made a weird tangent thread on here on a night when I was on no sleep and promptly deleted it from mortification later when I realized it made no sense at all. Insomnia'll do that to ya. But I did want to talk about single life, only with less confused, brain fuzzy ranting. I've been single for some time now and I feel that it's the only place I can be at the moment. I've had a few bad relationships that have left me with "emotional baggage" and whatever other relationship euphemisms there are that basically just means...at the moment I'm undateable.
I think I need to work on myself and be purely selfish for the time being before I can feel ready to try to devote myself to someone again. I find that when I get into relationships I become too focused on making the other person happy...generally with little success because I end up denying myself in an attempt to appease them and keep them comfortable. Relationships don't come easily to me, I've never felt natural and myself in relationships. I always feel like I'm playing this part, the part of the doting girlfriend turned bored girlfriend turned resentful girlfriend. It's all very tiring and melodramatic so I'm taking a big break.
When I break from relationships I don't date at all, no casual dating, because I find that I'm not good at casual dating. When I date casually it always ends up that I get into a relationship, I can't keep it neutral. I go straight from "well, I'm just going to date casually" to "this is my new boyfriend!" My last relationship was exhausting and so I don't have anything to give right now. Also, it seems that when I decide to be in a relationship, it's never because I met someone I really want to be with. I just suddenly feel like I want to be in a relationship and then jump headfirst into one with whoever is decent that comes along then.
Hmmm...the thread I deleted was me talking jibberish...and somehow this one doesn't seem any different. I'm just tired of trying so hard to feel these things that are supposed to come naturally. It always feels forced. Anyway, that's why I'm single.
So, anyone else single here and want to talk about single life?
I've been single for ten years. It's definitely a lifestyle choice and not that "I can't get a boyfriend" or "I'm too picky" or all those stupid things people say. It's exactly like being CF... it's a choice, and you will hear bingo after bingo after bingo because we live in a very couply world and people think that's the ONLY way to be and if you don't have a partner there is something wrong with you.
I had a series of boyfriends in my 20s, and I realized that I was not myself when I was with them. I spent a lot of time 'reacting' instead of 'acting'. I didn't know who I was or what I wanted, just that my life tended to revolve around the guy and what he wanted and who he was. Usually he was a drug addict or alcoholic, because I'm attracted to guys like that, having been born and raised in an alcoholic family. Adult children of alcoholics (ACOA) typically 'confuse pity with love, love those they pity and pity those they love' and that was TOTALLY true for me. I found that it was exhausting being someone's caretaker and feeling constantly like I had to 'be there' for some troubled guy who couldn't live without me.
I remember the day I realized that it was not true. My then BF (who was a gambling, drug, alchohol and sex addict) would gamble away the mortgage and work two full time jobs to make up the money. He would come to my apartment (I'd long moved out... couldn't live with the violence) and sleep for like an hour on my couch and ask me to wake him up for night shift. He was MURDER to wake up and he'd blame me if he slept in, even though I couldn't get him up. So I finally told him I wasn't doing it anymore. He screamed and cried and told me he was going to lose his job if he was late again and he needed me and blah blah blah.
Guess what happened? He realized he had to get up, so he set four alarms or whatever, and got up. It was all a mindfuck and he was using me because I LET him use me, thinking I was needed.
The kind of person I am now is TOTALLY different... self-sufficient, large and in charge (HA) of my own life, active insted of reactive, and generally much calmer and more stable. I have chosen to never live like that again, and because ACOA issues run pretty deep, I still find myself attracted to train wrecks, I just choose not to date them. I need to learn how to be attractive to healthy people first, and I don't know that I ever will be, but I do know that this life is a thousand times more preferable to one where I'm cowtowing to an addict, so this is the life I choose.
About six years ago, I wrote an article about this that got published in the Globe and Mail (Canada's national paper). I'll reprint it here:
Say Hello to Spinstrrr Living
By Jo
I have been single for four years. If you'd have asked me, say, three years and 10 months ago where I would be in four years' time, I don't think I'd have said here. I was just coming out of a three and a half year relationship, and although I'd never been 'the marrying kind', I liked relationships, and having a boyfriend seemed normal enough. I wasn't one of those women who hopped from one boyfriend to another, but nor was he my first serious boyfriend. I did well on my own, but having someone special in my life was nice too.
But oh how things change.
Today, I proudly call myself 'spinstrrr'. Yes. Three Rs. Purposefully misspelled to take back the meaning, and add a bit of feirrrceness to my resolve to redefine the word.
A spinster, by definition, is simply an unmarried woman, but over the years, common usage indicates it's an unmarried woman who has no desire to be married, or likely never will marry. Or have a boyfriend. Or get in the game. There is a negative feel to this word, and it's still bandied about as an insult, or worse, a term of pity. People who are 'the marrying kind' think that their unmarried sisters just haven't met Mr. Right yet, or they are being too picky. Never is it even considered that maybe this is the life she's chosen for herself. If she says this is the case, it's understood that she's only saying that because, hey, she hasn't found Mr. Right and she's being too picky. So she's pretending it's her choice.
In eras gone by, before birth control, women who didn't want a life of servitude to a husband or children or both, frequently took to the nunnery for a life of socially sanctioned solitude. Some of these women were likely lesbians, but some sacrificed heterosexual love because they wanted an education or an opportunity to think or write or be. For whatever reason, they didn't think this was possible as a wife and mother. A lot of early feminists who did marry stopped writing or being activists, because childrearing was just too exhausting. Or it interfered with married life.
Some years ago, when I was living with my then-boyfriend, I found myself in the basement one day doing our laundry while he was outside fixing my car. I remember blinking a few times, looking at the whitewashed walls, confounded that I was in this place. This was the place I never thought I would be... doing women's work in exchange for his men's work, and we were like the stereotypical heterosexual couple that I used to mock. I thought I was different. I thought we were different. But we weren't. I didn't know how to fix the car, and he was useless with laundry. And I made 66 cents to his dollar and when we went somewhere, we took his car, and he drove.
In the ensuing single years, I have discovered so much about myself. For one thing, I don't feel as if I am between boyfriends. I feel like those boyfriends led me to this place. I don't feel deprived or lonely or lacking. This feels very right. In retrospect, being in a relationship felt a bit off... as if compromise was the word of the day, and it wasn't what I wanted. I tried to make it work, but something was always just... off.
Since then, I also got into a male dominated industry and started making decent money. Men’s wages. And driving myself places. And I have a maid, because hell, I can afford it, and I deserve it.
In these years, I have deduced that I was the common denominator in all my failed relationships, and that Mr. Right doesn't exist unless I'm Mrs. Right, and I am not and likely never will be that. I joke sometimes that I met the right person, and her name is Jo, and I have to spend the rest of my life with her 24-7, and I *better* love her and like her and respect her. Because I can't leave her, and I must live with the mistakes she makes. And yes, I get to live with her successes too, and they are manyfold these days.
Once I decided to 'get out of the game' it was a liberation of sorts. I don't look at men as potential anythings... they are just people. Women are not my rivals and gender is irrelevant in the friendships I choose. I don't look at what could be... I look at what is. There are no hidden meanings in the words I choose and I don't play games with people or feelings. I have evolved into a very sure and resolved person. I know what I like and what I don't. I remember in the boyfriend days, I was nebulous. I tended to react instead of act. I tended to think what he wanted was more important than what I wanted. No more.
I still get crushes on guys, but it's kind of like the feeling you feel towards a celebrity. It's not real, and it doesn't amount to anything. It's just a fun fantasy. I don't feel deprived, because it's not like there is some hard and fast rule about any of this... it's just what feels right. If some guy came along and we clicked, I am sure there would be room in my life for a new person. The nature of that relationship would be defined by something completely different than 'boyfriend' though.
_________________
Although I am an old married lady now, I was single a long time. Why? Because I didn't want kids and I didn't see myself as property or an appendage. I was willing to wait for someone like me, and the wait was well worth it. Never settle.
The right one has not come along.
(03-23-2010 06:58 AM)Lulu Belle Wrote: [ -> ]I've been single for some time now and I feel that it's the only place I can be at the moment. I've had a few bad relationships that have left me with "emotional baggage" and whatever other relationship euphemisms there are that basically just means...at the moment I'm undateable.
I think I need to work on myself and be purely selfish for the time being before I can feel ready to try to devote myself to someone again. I find that when I get into relationships I become too focused on making the other person happy...generally with little success because I end up denying myself in an attempt to appease them and keep them comfortable. Relationships don't come easily to me, I've never felt natural and myself in relationships. I always feel like I'm playing this part, the part of the doting girlfriend turned bored girlfriend turned resentful girlfriend. It's all very tiring and melodramatic so I'm taking a big break.
When I break from relationships I don't date at all, no casual dating, because I find that I'm not good at casual dating. When I date casually it always ends up that I get into a relationship, I can't keep it neutral. I go straight from "well, I'm just going to date casually" to "this is my new boyfriend!" My last relationship was exhausting and so I don't have anything to give right now. Also, it seems that when I decide to be in a relationship, it's never because I met someone I really want to be with. I just suddenly feel like I want to be in a relationship and then jump headfirst into one with whoever is decent that comes along then.
I'm just tired of trying so hard to feel these things that are supposed to come naturally. It always feels forced. Anyway, that's why I'm single.
Lulu Belle - I couldn't agree more with everything you said. I got divorced last year after 2 years in what could be called a 'so-so' marriage. My husband had issues with depression and anxiety that he refused to deal with, and that left me extremely lonely and emotionally neglected in the relationship. The whole thing was exhausting. Rather than looking for the right relationship, I just tend to find myself in them without a lot of thought. Well...no more. I'm taking some time for myself and trying to work out why it is that I let myself get into these things when I know they aren't really want I want or what I'm looking for and they're not fulfilling in any way.
I've been seeing a therapist for the last couple of months (my girlfriends swear by theirs and so I thought I'd give it a try...couldn't hurt). I do think it's been helping a little. I'm starting to see some of my patterns and work through why I've made the decisions I've made and what I want to do differently in the future. (And how to make those changes.) I've never spent a lot of time working on myself, and I've never been self sufficient. For the first time in my life, I live alone, I support myself, and I have no one to answer to or 'take care of' (well...other than my cat, lol!). It's been very freeing. I still get lonely sometimes, but I know that I want to hold out for something special, so that helps.
Vanessa
^Good luck with your therapy, it sounds like you're making a lot of positive changes in your life! It's hard to break a pattern, and the pattern of just slipping into relationships for no rhyme or reason is definitely a tricky one to break. Half the time I don't even realize I'm doing it, that I'm just slipping into a relationship with someone without really wanting to be with them or seeing a future with them. I just sort of do it and then I'm shocked later (but I think secretly I always knew) that it wasn't meant to be.
@Jo: I feel you on dating addicts, been there too many times myself. Seems like most of the men I've dated have been addicted to one thing or another. Usually I had blinders on in the beginning and it slowly dawned on me.