Flying
Solo
Page
1 | 2
In many
cases, women who choose the single life have looked at those around them and
vowed not to make their mistakes. "My mother married her first boyfriend.
All my relatives stayed in marriages that are really tough," says Pam Henneberry,
31, an accountant who lives in Manhattan. "When I looked at the unhappiness
that was in my parents' marriage, I said, ŒI can't do that.'" If Cynthia
Rowe, 43, a Los Angeles area store manager and divorcé, gets depressed, she
thinks of her five closest girlfriends. "They are all just existing in
their marriages," she says. "Two of them got married when they were
young. Twenty years later, they had outgrown each other. One has not got over
her husband's affair. Two friends aren't even sleeping in the same bedroom with
their husband anymore. Their personal happiness is placed last, and their kids
know they are miserable."
Some women,
of course, have learned from their own life. "At 28, I was terrified of the
world," says Mary Lou Parsons, a Raleigh, N.C., professional fund raiser, recalling
her 1980 divorce. "I'd been raised a Southern woman, sheltered and protected
by my family, then by my husband." In the ensuing 20 years she learned to raise
her kids on her own--and how to start her own business, buy a town house, move
to Alaska and back and, most of all, relish life on her own. "I had to get beyond
that thinking in a lot of women's minds that aloneness is not O.K. But now I
find solitude exhilarating." Marcelle Clements, author of The Improvised Woman:
Single Women Reinventing the Single Life, notes that there are many women, like
Parsons, who were "taken by surprise. They were in relationships that broke
up, hit what they thought was catastrophe, only to find that they were O.K.,
and [they] adopt an attitude that said, I'm fine, I don't need to be with anyone
else."
Not surprisingly,
many conservatives are disturbed at this growing acceptance of singlehood and
its implied rejection of marriage. Danielle Crittenden, author of What Our Mothers
Didn't Tell Us, argues that women have set themselves up for disappointment,
putting off marriage until their 30s only to find themselves unskilled in the
art of compatibility and surrounded by male peers looking over their Chardonnays
at women in their 20s. "Modern people approach marriage like it's a Bosnia-Serbia
negotiation. Marriage is no longer as attractive to men," she says. "No one's
telling college girls it's easier to have kids in your 20s than in your 30s."
Women who
have chosen the single life sometimes have their own qualms. Singlehood does
not yield itself to a simple, blithe embrace. It's complicated, messy terrain
because not needing a man is not the same as not wanting one. For all the laughs
on Sex and the City, one can feel the ache that comes when yet another episode
ends with the heart still a lonely hunter. And if you think being a single woman
is all fun and games, just listen to star Parker, who is married to actor Matthew
Broderick. Even as she's become a mascot for the feisty new single woman, Parker
says she often stands on the set in her spike Jimmy Choo open-toes and see-through
shirts, worried that she isn't being a good traditional wife. "I know he doesn't
have his laundry done, that he hasn't had a hot meal in days," she says of her
husband. "That stuff weighs on my mind." Parker regales single friends with
tales of how boring married life is and how much luckier they are to have freedom
and fun. Does she really believe it? "Well, no," she admits. "It's just a fun
thing to say to make single people feel better."
Even women
who generally reflect on their choices with assurance find themselves sometimes
in the valley of what-ifs: What if I made the wrong choice to walk away? What
if singlehood turns out to be not a temporary choice but an enforced state?
"My sister knows that I'm good for a call every couple of months just crying,
ŒWhat's wrong with me?'" says Henneberry. "I'm not willing to accept someone
who's going to make me unhappy. But there are days when I have a physical need
to go to sleep and wake up with someone there." Mary Mayotte, 49, has a successful
bicoastal career as a public-speaking coach. But she admits the occasional pang
of regret. "There was a point where I had men coming out of my ears," she says.
"I don't think I was so nice to some of them. Every now and then I wonder if
God is punishing me. Sometimes I look back and say, ŒI wish I had made a different
decision there.'"
Some feel
women are on an impossible search for the perfect man, the one who not only
makes you feel, as Julia Roberts said of meeting Benjamin Bratt, "hit in the
head with a bat," but also better for it. "Marriage is not what it used to be,
getting stability or economic help," says the National Marriage Project's Whitehead.
"Marriage has become this spiritualized thing, with labels like Œbest friend'
and Œsoul mate'" Some sociologists say these lofty standards make sense at a
time when the high divorce rate hisses in the background like Darth Vader. But
others suggest the marriage pendulum has swung from the hollowly pragmatic to
an unhealthy romantic ideal.
Michael Broder,
a Philadelphia psychotherapist and author of The Art of Living Single, decries
what he calls the "perfect-person problem," in which women refuse to engage
unless they're immediately taken with a man, failing to give a relationship
a chance to develop. "Few women can't tell you about someone they turned down,
and I'm not talking about some grotesque monster," he says. "But there's the
idea that there has to be this great degree of passion to get involved, which
isn't always functional. So you have people saying things like, ŒIf I can't
have my soul mate, I'd rather be alone.' And after that, I say, ŒWell, you got
your second choice.'"
Single women
are used to hearing this complaint, and most don't buy it. "Some in my family
think I'm not stopping till I find perfection," says Henneberry. "I don't feel
like that. I just want the one who makes me go, ŒFinally.'" Harvard sociologist
Carol Gilligan notes, "There's now a pressure to create relationships that both
men and women want to be in, and that's great. This is revolutionary." Even
Ellen Fein, co-author of the notorious 1996 dating guide The Rules, says her
man-chasing disciples don't settle for just anyone. "Most of my clients have
jobs; they can pay the rent; they can take themselves out to dinner," says Fein.
"They want men to value them." Many women can tell the story of a friend or
relative who looked at her and said, "If you really wanted to be married, you'd
be married." The comment can sometimes slap like a wet towel, in part because
it is true and in part because of its implicit message: You could have compromised,
perhaps settled, and been among the married. And so, the logic follows, you
have no one to blame but yourself.
But these
women have fought for years to be themselves--self-reliant, successful, clever,
funny, willful, spirited--and for all the angst that the single life can bring,
they're not willing to give it up for any arrangement that would stifle them.
"It would be great if I found a relationship that allowed me to be as I am and
added something to that," says documentary producer Pam Wolfe, 33, sitting in
her one-bedroom condo in New York City. "But I'm not going to do anything to
attract a person that means changing. I've worked long and hard to be myself."
--With reporting
by Tammerlin Drummond/New York, Elizabeth Kaufman/Nashville, Anne Moffett/Washington,
Jacqueline Savaiano/Los Angeles and Maggie Sieger/Chicago
|
|
|
September 11,
2000 | NO. 36
C
O V E R
COVER: Why Marry
When You Can Stay Single?
Once, women who were still "on the shelf" at 35 resigned themselves
to a life of bleak solitude. For today's young women, staying single seems
not only bearable but increasingly desirable.
Sex
and the City: The hit series, and why men are dogs
Mom
on her own: Deciding to have a child is one thing. Raising
one is another
A
S I A
THE
PHILIPPINES: Web of Frustration
As one group of hostages nears freedom, a new hostage is taken
E
U R O P E
FRANCE:
Jospin's Minefield
Protests and a walkout put the Prime Minister on the defensive
A
F RI C A
SOUTH
AFRICA:
A Fistful of Troubles
President Thabo Mbeki discusses the continent's challenges
U
S A
CAMPAIGN 2000:
Can Dubya Get Serious?
As Gore surges, Bush has to prove he can compete on the issues
S
PO R T
ATHLETICS:
Meet Mrs. Jones
America's queen of track and field is ready for her close-up
T
H E A R T S
BOOKS:
Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas spins his own version of the story of Bill
and Monica and Ken and Linda
CINEMA:
Richard Corliss goes on a film bender in Toronto
MUSIC:
Elastica ends a five-year silence with The Menace
TRAVELER'S
ADVISORY
|
|
