Clarification

Anne (Fortuna) has a post up about maiden aunt-hood. And the assumptions people sometimes make (the big one - and the one that gets under my skin so much - being that a life without romantic love is somehow a life not worth having been lived).

And I posted a long and embarrassingly personal comment on there:

As a single, unpaired woman who is not in a romantic relationship (and hasn't been, not for a long time), one thing that really pisses me off is that attitude that I'm a "poor thing" because I don't have a Significant Other.

...

Maybe I just have had too many friends with seriously dysfunctional relationships, but it does piss me off when people imply that my life is somehow less worthwhile because I'm not in the throes of passion on a regular basis...
And I hate the implication that any other kind of love - the love of friends, the love of family - is somehow a lesser kind of love, that Romantic Love is the only real and true kind of love and everything else is what people content themselves with when they can't get Romantic Love.

So I don't know. I think there are some people who are constitutionally better suited to being alone.

And hell, maybe I'll become a Crazy Cat Lady in another 20 years. But for now, please don't give me the pity-face* because I'm not joined at the hip with someone.

(*generalized "you" - going out to the world - not "you" the person writing the blog or the comments)

(I snipped some of the less relevant and more ranty parts).

And you know, after I posted that seeth-y quote, I got to thinking: why the hell does it annoy me so much when I see the stereotype of the "40 year old virgin" or the "poor maiden aunt with her rosary" or the "cat lady"?

And I think I figured out partially why. I'm responding defensively because it brings up bad associations. I have one relative - thankfully not in my immediate family so I can ignore this person for years at a time - who REFUSES to believe that I am happy or in any way a success with my life because I have not married. This person is actually in a competition with my mother to see who can marry their kids off faster (she has 3/4 of her kids married off; my mom has 1/2.) Now, my mom is an intelligent woman and she "don't play that" but my relative still insists on pulling that kind of thing. And giving me the "pity face" at family gatherings because of my single state.

And you know? I've seriously considered (given some of this relative's other attitudes) showing up to a family gathering with a Large Black Man and making sheep-eyes with him and even maybe doing a little controlled necking (if he were amenable to stage-acting) with him in front of her. You know, just to do a little shock and awe on this woman. Or if I really wanted to go somewhere dangerous, show up with another woman, refer to her as my "housemate" or "companion" or something and let my relative connect the nonexistent dots.

You know, just to give her something to chew on other than "poor ricki, she's still single"

I've also been patted on the head enough times by people doing the pity-face because I don't "have a man."

It's almost as if some of those folks believe I'm not a full-fledged member of the Grown-Up Club because I've not managed to forge a stable long-term relationship with someone.

And what gets me is this: it is the presumption. It is the assumption that what is good for them is good for all of humanity. It is the presumption that I go home at night and walk into my cold silent house, look at my answering machine, see no messages, sit down and cry, then defrost some sad little Lean Cuisine dinner for myself before sitting down in front of the TV to watch the Oprah show I taped earlier in the afternoon...

and the presumption that if I were married or living with someone, I'd bounce through the door and call out a cheerful "Hi honey!" and start cooking dinner for us, and then later on in the evening be involved in the throes of passion with my Significant Other.

And the assumption that Alternate Universe Paired-Up-Me is infinitely happier than Here and Now Universe Single Me.

And I don't think that's true. I'm pretty darn happy as it is right now. And from some of the relationships I've seen, I'm not convinced that the married people (or the cohabiting couples) are automatically happier.

And I think it is the PRESUMPTION that is what makes me so angry - the insistence that being part of a pair is always better than being single. And the presumption that they can get inside my head and know what I am thinking and feeling: "Oh, honey...you're not really happy as a single. You just think you are."

(Another thing I hate? The "Non-family household" designation that the U.S. Census uses - and apparently it's not just for singles like me, it's also for gay couples, what used to be called POSSLQs, and people who are housemates without being sexually involved in any way. Again, it's the dismissal - that the conventional man-woman-having-sex-and-presumably-children pattern is seen as the only form of a "family." I wonder if they refer to households where a brother and sister live together - and I know cases of this, where one sibling moves in to care for a frail older sibling - as "non family households" as well. I will also admit in my bleaker and more pessimistic moods, I wonder if "non family household" as a term might be used as a wedge - as in "We can take this property for the new wal-mart; it's not like there's a FAMILY living there." Or use it in other ways to denigrate those who don't fit the "approved" definition of family.)

I had a friend in grad school who talked about how when she got older, she and a group of her childhood friends had a pact - everyone who was still single, they were going to buy a big house together, and live in it, and take care of each other (And I think also the married couples would be allowed to come and live there if they wanted). And it was sort of a beautiful idea - she talked about it as being like a "chosen family" - a group of brothers and sisters that self-selected and agreed to look after each other as they aged.

And I think one of the problems in our society - and perhaps it's tied in with what I was talking about yesterday - is that people see Marriage with a capital M as the main route to "happiness" in life, and if they don't get that, they can't possibly be happy. And so people try marriage maybe before they're ready, or maybe with the wrong person, or maybe when they're really not suited to marriage at all and might not necessarily be happier in a marriage. But they do it because of the relentless drumbeat of "People will think you're a freak" or "You're not totally grown up until you marry" or "The only way to be happy is to be part of a couple that regularly has sex!"

And you know? Feh. Don't tell me what I need in order to be happy. Don't impose your image of life on other people.