Please email all questions you would like poetry to answer via [email protected], with “Spinster’s Almanac” in the subject line.
I am a woman in my mid-30s who has never had any romantic life to speak of, though not for lack of trying. It seems that I am intrinsically unattractive to the opposite sex, though my (same-sex) friends assure me I am “cute.”
Yes, yes, revel in Glorious Solitude®, Take To The Sea™, find myself a Witch Cave© etc.
But I am miserably lonely (not for friends, for romantic companionship) all the time, and I don’t know how to resign myself to the Spinster lifestyle. I have no hope, yet I can’t seem to manage acceptance either.
What do the poets have to say, do you think?
Here we come to the meat and potatoes of what I do, dear Reader. I am a specialist in solitude, both the kind that willfully takes to the sea, and the kind that keens in the night. You feel a sense of loneliness, which is cruel enough, but it butts against something worse: the sense of failure when all your attempts at attracting romantic love come to nothing. You have friends who love you, who reassure you, and yet you write to me, because none of this is quite the thing, none of this brings somewhere to put your romantic energies, a hand to find in the dark as a party breaks up and you begin your trek home alone.
Let me offer you my patron saint of restless failure: Canadian Karen Solie, whose poems are full of characters who drift, suffer, and haunt. “Listening to The Revelator” (from her 2009 collection, Pigeon) offers a balm to these lost souls, but it also doesn’t fuck around. “Here is consequence,” begins Solie, “folding its wings / on the fence. Here are your chances.” You know that, Reader. I’m sure you’ve spend more sleepless nights than you’d prefer to discuss lying awake, considering the past: times you didn’t go for it, times you did and it went wrong. If only you’d been sluttier, smarter, more ineffably alluring. Your chickens are coming home to roost, and you can count their beady eyes on the chainlink.
But you don’t deserve that shit, and in your 30s, you’re starting to see through it. Because:
After years
of moving whatever you do
from one place to another in the manner
that constitutes your work, you have to admit
you know what you think.
This is what the poets know: that years of self-recrimination can teach you a thing or two. When you go over your past you can obsess, or with some reflection (and a good mental health professional) you can learn to see those moments when it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference if you’d waited to call, seemed less eager, and how little they had to do with you.
But the poem reminds you:
About tonight
not so much fallen as struggling to its feet, gorgeous
in spite of what it’s done to you. All
is forgiven.
Look at the way Solie breaks her lines, how the “gorgeous” and “all” hang on after the previous clause ends, pulling you quickly through, while also influencing the tone of each line. The you of the poem has been let down, and yet there is beauty in having even showed up. What has happened to you is made expansive by the all, and yet the phrase ends in forgiveness. You can be gentle with yourself.
Now Solie moves from shortish, direct sentence to a litany of symptoms, cataloguing the stuff of failure, of what requires forgiveness. The list is long, a sentence with no active verb that runs for 11 lines and includes “The loneliness composed on the road, after hours / off-shift, out of it, or left behind,” “protracted / incidents represented by lacunae in your resume,” and “making / the best of being stuck where you were.” Her language is general enough to suggest any number of personal catastrophes, but it’s always welcomed me to a club of lonely failures, the years that “single” covered a multitude of losses of nerve and brushes aside by people I desired. You are making the best—you have friends and a sense of humour, you read websites that cater to devastatingly intelligent women—but you also have this past that is full of attempt and absence, rather than lovers and war stories.
Solie describes this stuckness as “rooms now creaking in a forest of outlived rooms / recalled as eras are recalled, their outmoded fixtures / and period costumes” and I think the metaphor is an apt one. You are outgrowing the loneliness that settles around you, and you clearly want to remodel it. Tak[ing] to the Sea™ may not be for you, but you can only live in your own haunted house for so long before it’s time to take stock of what’s been neglected while you were busy getting by. The length of the 11-line litany allows it to build momentum. If you read it aloud you may find yourself forgetting to pause for breath. Breathe here.
Some questions, Reader: “Who are you? / What of you persists?” These questions present an abrupt rhetorical shift. No longer pulled through this long list, you have to pause, to turn within. When you think of your loneliness, it can be tempting to think of it as an accumulation, but what else have you accumulated in 30-odd years? Has your singleness led you to become an excellent cook, an encyclopedia on Bollywood film, a dedicated volunteer? The neglect I mentioned earlier is also an opportunity for wild things to flourish, undomesticated, in you. And this persistence has a double meaning of course. Not only do parts of yourself persist despite your loneliness, but you persist. You say you have no hope, but you refuse to resign yourself—you know, dear Reader, that you are so loveable. That you persist because you crave love that will not settle for someone easy or contemptible. Let Solie’s pause and your asking of your question to me be also an asking inward—if the love of your life came next year, in thirty years, or not at all, who would you continue to be through the waiting, what would persist in you anyway?
Solie’s question, by the way, is not entirely rhetorical. What persists is
Your life built on intervals
the way a chord is, on changes that alter you
by thirds, by fifths, in silences the progression climbs
to where each song ends, and the next begins.
This is also a long, commaful, active-verbless sentence reminiscent of the “The loneliness…” passage above, but instead of a despondent list, this is an answer to a question, one whose clauses climb like the music metaphor it employs. Every year that passes, you get a little further, accumulating a little more of yourself. Some people might get bitter, but not you; you despair but you are hopeful too. You are moving toward something, perhaps a lover, perhaps a Witch Cave, perhaps a life that will involve a little of both. I wish the poets could alleviate the loneliness you feel in the meantime, but alas they cannot. What they can do is remind you that, lovers notwithstanding, you are never standing still. Time is an accretion and its space for experience and self-knowledge is a gift. If you wait, pay attention, and you will feel the shift.
*
Do you known what a revelator is, Reader? It is, unsurprisingly, one who reveals, usually with a Christian sensibility, revealing the will of God. But Solie is, I think, referring to the 2001 Gillian Welch album Time (The Revelator). The album is full of characters who change with hindsight. Welch sings of a shunned country girl who wonders if Heaven will grant her a gold gown, but decides she will keep her “red clay robe with the red clay wings and a red clay halo for my head,” of Elvis as “just a country boy who combed his hair, put on the suit his mother made, and went on the air.” Time does unexpected things to us, and Reader, you still have so much of it. Small changes can come from you—online dating, traveling, taking up a group activity, or Taking to the Sea. Your accumulated years of loneliness aren’t dooming you to anything—they are one particular movement in your life. Take time care for your wounded heart, but also tend the mighty things growing in you. They can make way for something unexpectedly marvellous.
Tags: advice, marika prokosh, poetry, the spinster’s almanac
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oh yeah guys let it be noted that you should only take to the sea if you are EXCITED by the prospect; sea-taking is not mandatory and I do not recommend it for the already Lonely
But my liiiife, my lady, my loverrr is the seaaaaaa
Poor Brandy. I always thought she got a raw deal.
I love Joan D Vinge’s gender swap version, “Tin Soldier”.
Loneliness
Being apart and lonely is like rain.
It climbs toward evening from the ocean plains;
from flat places, rolling and remote, it climbs
to heaven, which is its old abode.
And only when leaving heaven drops upon the city.
It rains down on us in those twittering
hours when the streets turn their faces to the dawn,
and when two bodies who have found nothing,
disappointed and depressed, roll over;
and when two people who despise each other
have to sleep together in one bed:
that is when loneliness receives the rivers…
–Rainer Maria Rilke
Which is to say, I have no advice. But witch caves hold the damp, and a shared bed in a warm room can seem irresistible, and yet it’s just as chilly and forsaken there sometimes.
Oh jeez, this is wonderful.
This column is always so, so marvelous. I shouldn’t be reading it right now because I’m at work, and this one feels like it was written specifically to me, my God.
I can’t start crying at work, I can’t start crying at work, I can’t start sobbing at work.
Right? right. I just had one of those days *yesterday* for God’s sake I don’t need another one.
I’ve been lonely for the last five years, on and off.
Sometimes you just you just have to hold the pain. Sometimes there’s nothing else for it.
The pain is a forge, burning away the dross to reveal the pure You. Welcome it, respect it, and allow it to cleanse and simplify.
No, pain is your body telling you to stop doing something because its bad.
Everyone does what they need to do for them. I found loneliness to be a crucible that helped me become my best self (or maybe that was getting older + loneliness?). You can dwell, or you can use your circumstances as a tool. Feel the pain, but don’t seek it or wallow. Let it show you the shape of yourself, then let it go.
This series is gorgeous. It’s my absolute favourite on The Toast, and it has some serious competition (dirtbags! Monks! Women in Art History!).
I want to print them all out and put them on my wall. Thank you, Marika, for writing them.
…. how do you know the most perfect songs for these posts? Time: The Revelator is one of those albums, like most literature, that I took a long time to come to understand, and which I feel weirdly grown-up about. It goes so well with The Sadies’ Darker Circles and I caught them both off the same person, along with the ability to read poetry at all. Thank you.
Another wonderful song on Time (The Revelator) is I think particularly applicable to this situation (one I also find myself in): Dear Someone. Lyrics below:
I want to go all over the world
And start living free
I know that there’s somebody who
Is waiting for me
I’ll build a boat, steady and true
As soon as it’s done
I’m going to sail along in the dreams
Of my dear someone
One little star, smiling tonight
Knows where you are
Stay, little star, steady and bright
To guide me afar
Blow, little wind, over the deep
For now I’ve begun
Hurry and take me straight into the arms
Of my dear someone
… from which I take the message that after all, we may wish to Take to the Sea. Someone else may be out there sailing too.
Pardon me, I have a book of poetry to get from the library…
Argh. Deleted a long comment.
I wanted to say…being loved isn’t a stable thing. I know what it feels like to feel like everyone else has reached the summit and you never even got invited on the ski trip, but it’s always climbing, no matter what. It’s a very rare person who reaches the top of the mountain and goes in the ski lodge for hot chocolate and never comes out. Most of us end up sliding back down it or seeing another mountain just beyond. I have never felt lonelier than being helplessly in love with someone I know I can’t stop from hurting me because they don’t love me back as much as they used and are on their way out the door. I’ve been in two horrible ski accidents, and I’m still in a partial body cast from trip two.
Whats interesting about this is that you and I are both 30 and both single and you would probably say, “at least you have been loved! I’ve never even had that!” and I would probably say, “At least you haven’t been excruciatingly dumped TWICE by men you wanted to marry!” and we’d both be right and we’d both be jerks. Look at your friends who are in relationships. Are they happy? Would you marry their husbands or boyfriends or girlfriends or wives if they fell madly in love with you? What percentage of those people could you stand to see every day before coffee? A friend of mine’s husband cheated on her a year ago. A year ago I was planning a perfect halloween with my boyfriend and we were talking about marriage and when that would happen. My friend and her husband went to therapy and are together and I don’t know how happy she is, she says she’s happy and it’s been better, but I wouldn’t marry him and I wouldn’t have stayed, thats for sure. Meanwhile, I’m single and sad and lonely, after a really rough summer of slow breakup tilt-a-whirl. But on the other hand, I’m energized to do things for myself, and I’m closer than ever before to meeting the true love of my life, since I’m not now in a relationship with the not furture Mr. Eegghh and I’m free to date so meeting the new person is a possibility.
And what’s nuts about life is you and I have the same chances. We’re the same age, and its a coin toss, you could be in love a month from now, and I could die alone. We could both find love, or neither. I think the beautiful thing is not to give up on the wistful part. Be lonely, feel lonely, long for that kind of stable, love you till you die thing, because it is rare and hard to find and fragile and even so, worth looking for. But just know, if you find love, you won’t necessarily stop longing for things, or be protected from feeling this same way about other things. Children, careers, friends.
Dude, this is far from the first time on this site I’ve started reading a comment without looking at the poster and been like ‘wowwww this is an amazing comment, oh it’s eeggh duh’. This is brilliant and I’m bookmarking it.
What struck me the most when I read this was that I completely relate to seeing my history as ‘attempt and absence instead of lovers and war stories’ even though I DO have lovers and war stories– I’ve just decided somehow in my head that they don’t count because they weren’t long enough, or the person didn’t really care about me enough, or something was wrong with them that made them barely count as a person. I’ve realized that I’m constantly trying to prove to myself that I’m good enough by getting attractive and interesting men to sleep with or date me, and at this point I have a huge list (literally, in my iphone) of attractive men I’ve slept with and it’s still not enough– and I’m finally starting to get that it will never be enough until I am actually fully enough for myself, alone.
::blushes happily:: Thank you!
I’m with you on the “attempt and absence” versus full rich stories thing. I spent 4.5 years of my life with the recent ex-dude. Maybe that was smart or maybe that was REALLY DUMB (right now it feels pretty really dumb). On the one hand, they were mostly good years, uneventful. On the other hand, maybe I missed my chance to sleep with a lot of interesting dudes or would have used that energy to get a fulbright. I realized that I spent my 20s mostly in relationships and it ate up a lot of my momentum, because I was always working on the relationship and spending time with the guy or hunting for my next relationship.
That’s a lot of nights not at my house polishing the resume, a lot of weekends not at my studio, a lot of un-painted paintings. I decided that I’m taking a break from being on the hunt, from expending that energy. I’m a good hunter- too good for my own good, and I’ll use all my creative energy on keeping the wrong guy around for YEARS, and it’s wasted on them, and wastes my time. I have a little internal list of things I need to accomplish before I get out on the dating circuit again (I’m sure I’ll slip up, but I’m trying to have a very high standard for those mistakes). I want to nondeliberately run into dating again- have it sneak up on me as a part of my full, active out-of-the-house life.
I think clever accomplished women can spend a lot of time looking for a partner to stand back and admire them- that’s what we’re socialized to be motivated by- praise and admiration and love. But I have spent so many hours working so damn hard on things that I hate doing because it makes my parents happy or makes me seem loveable to the person I love. I’m trying to ask myself: if you commited to being fully alone, without the audience of a romantic partner, without asking for the permission or approval of your family and friends, how would your priorities shift? Its a bit startling.
PPPS, while I am easing back on asking for input into how I spend my time, I am leaning into actually doing things like replying to emails and remembering birthdays and thinking about not me and appreciating relationships that are not romantic.
It’s so good for me to read this because I fall soooo easily into the ‘well at least other people have had long relationships’ trap. Even though when I’m honest, I’ve been really blessed that a lot of these dudes lost interest in me quickly because I would have wasted years clinging to them like grim death even though they were wrong for me.
I think that’s a brilliant way to approach it– I’ve been thinking about the ‘what things would flourish in you’ question since yesterday and I feel like maybe I’m starting to be able to answer it. Ask Polly’s been telling me to come up with a vision of a life alone for a long time, and I’m starting to finally get one I like! (it involves babies and dogs and a big backyard, though I worry my vision of single motherhood is being twisted by my Gilmore Girls addiction) And leaning into platonic relationships is so important too– I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat around feeling lonely and sorry for myself when there were like 5 people I needed to call back or make skype dates with.
Anyways, we should totally keep checking in about this stuff on the open thread and stuff cause it feels like we’re in very similar lifeplaces 🙂
I feel like as people we always want to flip to the last page and be like, “see, there’s the ending! The moral! I get the point of this story!” If we fall in love we want it to be because love lasts and validates people, or because that person was a villian teaching us a lesson. We like things to be solved and pinned down, we like to have labels for ourselves. That’s why we like married people, and names and genders and asking what someone does for a living- we like when things are stable and defined.
That’s why relationships are like getting into a warm bath- its like, “oh look, here’s a container to hold me, and define my shape and someone to pay attention to me and tell me I’m great and my life has this grand arc and purpose”- and it’s a purpose that everyone understands and that gives it more weight. And that’s funny because in reality, we’re all alone: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-09/single-a…. Its a really strange demographic time: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/09/24/record-… that argues for a really big ongoing change in what the stable state for a person is- that being single is going to be a default for more of each person’s life.
We all need to fight the messages of “just acheive marriage to finally be done and finished!” and support our single selves at all times, even if we get into a relationship. Not be selfish, but just always have enough going on that is just ours that no matter what, there’s always a life to pick up the pieces of, and keep going on with. Be part of families and friendships that are big enough and strong enough to handle changes and losses, and keep falling in love with new friends as you age, keep trying new interests etc. It sounds sort of pat, but it’s something that is really hard to do.
We could form a Kate Bolick reading/support group in the open thread!
I feel like as people we always want to flip to the last page and be like, “see, there’s the ending! The moral! I get the point of this story!” If we fall in love we want it to be because love lasts and validates people, or because that person was a villian teaching us a lesson. We like things to be solved and pinned down, we like to have labels for ourselves. That’s why we like married people, and names and genders and asking what someone does for a living- we like when things are stable and defined.
That’s why relationships are like getting into a warm bath- its like, “oh look, here’s a container to hold me, and define my shape and someone to pay attention to me and tell me I’m great and my life has this grand arc and purpose”- and it’s a purpose that everyone understands and that gives it more weight. And that’s funny because in reality, we’re all alone: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-09/single-a…. Its a really strange demographic time: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/09/24/record-…. that argues for a really big ongoing change in what the stable state for a person is- that being single is going to be a default for more of each person’s life.
We all need to fight the messages of “just acheive marriage to finally be done and finished!” and support our single selves at all times, even if we get into a relationship. Not be selfish, but just always have enough going on that is just ours that no matter what, there’s always a life to pick up the pieces of, and keep going on with. Be part of families and friendships that are big enough and strong enough to handle changes and losses, and keep falling in love with new friends as you age, keep trying new interests etc. It sounds sort of pat, but it’s something that is really hard to do.
We could form a Kate Bolick reading/support group in the open thread!
Ah man, the happy ending thing. I was JUST talking to my therapist about this last week because she’s always getting me to recognize the bad/scary stories I tell myself and I realized I have a habit of telling myself happy stories too, well before anything has actually happened; like, “I wasn’t going to go on a date because his opening line was too cheesy but my friends convinced me too and then HE WAS PERFECT” or “He was too shy to kiss me for four years but finally did and now HE’S PERFECT” (rather than, he was wishy-washy and flakey for four years, kissed me and then surprise surprise continued to be a wishy washy flake). I realized that everyone’s ‘how we met’ story is adorable no matter how they met, but only AFTER the fact, obviously. I’m still having trouble getting into the mindset of “I’m becoming happy with myself as I am single” for it’s own sake rather than “I’m becoming happy with myself as I am single because I hear the end to that story is meeting the perfect guy eventually”.
And yeah, it’s fascinating that we all feel this pressure to get married in our 20s even though for most people in our generation, our parents are not married to the people they married in their 20s. I’m personally really interested in forming alternate kinds of families regardless of if I meet someone– my best friend and his boyfriend and I have talked about all procreating together and being a family whether I have a partner or not (three dads and a mom would be kind of hilarious and awesome), and that’s immensely comforting to me though I’m still trying to have a solid vision that doesn’t rely on anyone else at all.
I wish her book was out already! April 2015. Unless there’s a previous one I’m missing?
My ex and I had an insanely perfect random chance how we met story. A “it was fate” story. It’s still a great story, but….it doesn’t signify anything profound about kismet anymore.
There have been a very few romantic moments in my past where nothing came of it, but they were perfect in the moment, and they’re one of the things I treasure so much- that moment of a perfect kiss in the rain, and then because circumstance, there was never a later opportunity for that to be tainted by the actual person with their actual person issues, and I never projected forward into a future. Worth considering, that there can be poetic bittersweet things that do not turn into a relationship. Things where you have to fly home after one perfect 24 hour sex session and everyone leaves fond of each other, with no claims.
My breakup books points out, a person with a rich fulfilling life that isn’t just frantic activity covering up a pit of yawning need, attracts other people like that to them. So its a bit of zen in a way- being happy alone leads you to other happy alone people who are paradoxically great to date? IE- volunteering for a cause you feel passionate about and working hard on it leads you to the sort of guy who is also passionate about a cause which gives you a point of connection. Having a richer life is worth doing for itself, and also it might take you an interesting wonderful place.
My ex and I had an insanely perfect random chance how we met story. A “it was fate” story. It’s still a great story, but….it doesn’t signify anything profound about kismet anymore.
There have been a very few romantic moments in my past where nothing came of it, but they were perfect in the moment, and they’re one of the things I treasure so much- that moment of a perfect kiss in the rain, and then because circumstance, there was never a later opportunity for that to be tainted by the actual person with their actual person issues, and I never projected forward into a future. Worth considering, that there can be poetic bittersweet things that do not turn into a relationship. Things where you have to fly home after one perfect 24 hour sex session and everyone leaves fond of each other, with no claims.
My breakup books points out, a person with a rich fulfilling life that isn’t just frantic activity covering up a pit of yawning need, attracts other people like that to them. So its a bit of zen in a way- being happy alone leads you to other happy alone people who are paradoxically great to date? IE- volunteering for a cause you feel passionate about and working hard on it leads you to the sort of guy who is also passionate about a cause which gives you a point of connection. Having a richer life is worth doing for itself, and also it might take you an interesting wonderful place.
Just articles, that’s what I was thinking of.
As someone who also rode the the “slow breakup tilt-a-whirl” this summer and is struggling to redefine myself post-heartbreak, thank you for this. Thank you so much.
It’s so rough! Mine was this constant, “are we finally getting engaged or are we finally breaking up?” thing and it was completely not up to me, and it just chewed me to pieces- one week we were totally fine and spending the rest of our lives together and making plans and the next week he was falling apart on everything- us, his friendships, his life goals, etc.
Even though I’m still pretty raw, at least once you get a final decision, the only issues you have to deal with are your own, which you can at least partially choose which to tackle when.
Falling out of love is it’s own sort of magically miserable time, isn’t it? Unpleasantly vivid in mostly bad and a few small good ways. This self help book getting past your breakup is working pretty good for me (David Foster Wallace had a lot of self help books I tell myself). One of the main points in there is, that void from the missing person is going to fill itself somehow, and if you don’t get in there and figure out what you want in that void, you’ll just go chasing something not great for you.
That is EXACTLY what happened to me too! We were fine and making plans to go to his home state for the state fair in a few months, and less than a week later he’s sleeping on other people’s couches and hiding from having any kind of relationship with me. We took a two week break because he “needed to figure things out” and after that passed (which, btw, I’ll never allow in a romantic relationship again- I don’t think I’ve ever suffered so ambiguously in my life) he STILL didn’t know what he wanted, and asked for even more time, and I finally just cut the cord and broke up with him.
Looking back, I’m really proud of myself for having enough self-respect to break it off rather than put myself through another three weeks of misery, but everything still hurts like hell. I know this was for the best, if only because “this is the path my life is supposed to take” but jeez, it’s nearly impossible to get excited about the prospect of dating or even finding a sex friend for the interim. I’m throwing myself into my work/grad school/writing-related activities, but if you have any self-help recs send’em my way (I just finished “Co-Dependent No More,” which was pretty good although not directly applicable).
Getting Past Your Breakup: How to Turn a Devastating Loss into the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You [Susan J. Elliott JD MEd]
Oh god. The worst. We were supposed to move in together in February, we’d talked enagement rings, I’d sent him a list of rings I liked. We had talked about the arrangement of the furniture. We had plans to go to his cousins wedding last weekend, we had shared season tickets to the ballet, etc. Meanwhile, “I just don’t know if you are the one. How do you know that?” “I just don’t see myself as the kind of person who gets married. But yeah, I think I want to get married, of course.” “no of course it’s you, if its anyone its you, I can’t see anyone else being the mother of my children”, etc. Every week the flip floppy message.
I did at least say, “no more breaks. If you break up with me you break up with me, its completely unfair to put a pin in me for later but make me sweat it out. There’s no “time off”- either we’re trying to be together for ever and you are on board or you are out. Just because you are depressed you don’t get to take time off from having a mom or having a job, so same deal here.” Be proud of yourself. I wish the first time he’d asked me to argue the pros and cons of being together I’d have had the sense to walk.I could be 6 months into my emotional future by now!
People will want you to get excited about dating right away again. That’s because it’s interesting to them- a breakup and the feelings that come after it are of interest to most people for about 2 weeks, 3 tops if your ex keeps trying to call you, and then they want more stories. The friends who are single want you to be in the trenches with them again, the friends who are married want 1. to see you heal super fast, and 2. hear all your crazy date stories. I wouldn’t rush it. I’m of the mind you might even want to wait until a little past the point where you do get interested in a sex friend or a first date, or give yourself an arbitrary time that’s sort of far off (3 months?) to get it off the table. Your interest may actually come back a bit faster if it’s sort of forbidden instead of expected, and I think there’s nothing so excruciating as going through the motions when your heart feels super dead. Or worse still, think if you meet someone very nice during this time period, and you just can’t do it, and then later when you feel better its like, “ugh if I had met him 3 weeks later on, that would have had a chance”- that happened to me after my last super tragic breakup and he was so cute and such a good kisser and into me, and I just couldn’t do date #3. Waste of potential that was.
I have a sort of hookup possibility out of state to sort of look forward to and I have vague plans to ask a guy I like a bit out to get a drink sometime in about 3 weeks from now. And that’s about all I can handle. I do blush a bit when my potential hookup and I text, so that’s a sign I’m not dead, but he’s safely across the country and it’s only a maybe that I’ll see him when I am home for thanksgiving, so that’s really low stakes. I highly recommend that as a good tiny step when you are ready a thing like, “if I am in town, in a month or two and you are still single, want to hook up?” It’s super low pressure but also flattering if they say yes, and it probably won’t happen.
Getting Past Your Breakup: How to Turn a Devastating Loss into the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You [Susan J. Elliott JD MEd]
Oh god. The worst. We were supposed to move in together in February, we’d talked enagement rings, I’d sent him a list of rings I liked. We had talked about the arrangement of the furniture. We had plans to go to his cousins wedding last weekend, we had shared season tickets to the ballet, etc. Meanwhile, “I just don’t know if you are the one. How do you know that?” “I just don’t see myself as the kind of person who gets married. But yeah, I think I want to get married, of course.” “no of course it’s you, if its anyone its you, I can’t see anyone else being the mother of my children”, etc. Every week the flip floppy message.
I did at least say, “no more breaks. If you break up with me you break up with me, its completely unfair to put a pin in me for later but make me sweat it out. There’s no “time off”- either we’re trying to be together for ever and you are on board or you are out. Just because you are depressed you don’t get to take time off from having a mom or having a job, so same deal here.” Be proud of yourself. I wish the first time he’d asked me to argue the pros and cons of being together I’d have had the sense to walk.I could be 6 months into my emotional future by now!
People will want you to get excited about dating right away again. That’s because it’s interesting to them- a breakup and the feelings that come after it are of interest to most people for about 2 weeks, 3 tops if your ex keeps trying to call you, and then they want more stories. The friends who are single want you to be in the trenches with them again, the friends who are married want 1. to see you heal super fast, and 2. hear all your crazy date stories. I wouldn’t rush it. I’m of the mind you might even want to wait until a little past the point where you do get interested in a sex friend or a first date, or give yourself an arbitrary time that’s sort of far off (3 months?) to get it off the table. Your interest may actually come back a bit faster if it’s sort of forbidden instead of expected, and I think there’s nothing so excruciating as going through the motions when your heart feels super dead. Or worse still, think if you meet someone very nice during this time period, and you just can’t do it, and then later when you feel better its like, “ugh if I had met him 3 weeks later on, that would have had a chance”- that happened to me after my last super tragic breakup and he was so cute and such a good kisser and into me, and I just couldn’t do date #3. Waste of potential that was.
I have a sort of hookup possibility out of state to sort of look forward to and I have vague plans to ask a guy I like a bit out to get a drink sometime in about 3 weeks from now. And that’s about all I can handle. I do blush a bit when my potential hookup and I text, so that’s a sign I’m not dead, but he’s safely across the country and it’s only a maybe that I’ll see him when I am home for thanksgiving, so that’s really low stakes. I highly recommend that as a good tiny step when you are ready a thing like, “if I am in town, in a month or two and you are still single, want to hook up?” It’s super low pressure but also flattering if they say yes, and it probably won’t happen.
Oh God, I just burst into tears there, I’m sobbing horribly because this is exactly what I’ve been looking for. Some confirmation that there are other people who have nothing obviously wrong with them, who aren’t obviously inherently unlovable, who don’t have any real kind of romantic life. I have lots of friends, people like me, but never had a girlfriend or a boyfriend.
I’m past the stage where I even consider compromising any part of myself for the sake of that, because I know it doesn’t have any effect. Trying to make myself any different doesn’t make anyone any more interested, so I might as well just be who I am. But God, thank you for this because it’s easier to be lonely, that way, sometimes, if you know that other people are too. That not everyone has a lover.
I hope I do find one some day, bu thank you again for this.
It’s definitely not a referendum on your loveability. There are absolutely monstrous people out there in marriages, who have never been single- peodophiles and politicians and mens rights activists.
It makes me absolutely furious when people imply that people who are single must be doing something wrong.
Oh yes! We are out here.
I also really need this confirmation because ALL MY FRIENDS ARE MARRIED (some of them are not technically married, but same difference) and it is incredibly hard to be the only single person in a sea of couples (literally, the only one at pretty much every social event I go to) and keep my sanity and good humor intact. No matter how often your lovely girlfriends tell you that you are great and they are very puzzled by your singleness, the fact remains that you, and only you, of all your small corner of the world (or at least, me and only me in my small corner of the world) are currently (and always) unloved.
But in fact there is a lot of world out there, and you aren’t really alone, and neither am I. In the immortal words of Tobias Funke, there are DOZENS of us. (I really wanted to copy in a gif of Tobias sobbing in the shower, but I can’t figure out how to do that because I am technically illiterate maybe? But anyway, I recommend googling it. It always makes me feel just a little bit better.)
Another one here! I’m 31, and I believe my longest relationship lasted two months, IF that. And that was nearly 10 years ago. I kind of think I’m better alone? But sometimes I am lonely. And I know there’s nothing wrong with me (okay, there’s stuff wrong with me, but not enough to be unloveable), so sometimes it just seems massively unfair. Even though I can’t think of very many (IF any) men that I’d be willing to make room in my life for. BUT STILL. Anyway, when we reach retirement age, we should all form a spinster commune. Maybe some of the spinsters will fall in love. They’d have to leave the commune, probably, having disqualified themselves, but we could invite them back for parties.
You know what does help me when I think about my eternal singledom, though? I had a near miss with this one guy that I passionately regretted for years, but now I think about how my life would have been had we gotten together, even if it lasted and was great (and we were married like he is to the woman he went for instead of me). I would be a completely different person who wouldn’t be working at her dream job right now. Being single let me take way different risks than I would have taken if I had had another person’s life attached to mine, you know?
ETA this was a reply to 30Litresof above.
I am not one to get lonely, I am one to get crowded, but somehow that makes me even sadder for those who do feel lonely.
May I just mention that my partner was WELL into his thirties (and I was pushing 30) when we met and neither of us had ever had a stable and/or nice relationship with anyone before. Being in a relationship sometimes gets on my nerves, but he is still worth it. What I mean to say is that you can find someone, without having to compromise, long after everyone else has started to think of divorce from the one they met when they were 22.
Yeah. I know of a couple where they met and got married to each other in their 50s and it was a first marriage for them both. My mom set up her coworkers who were in their mid thirties and were both really lovely people who were in the category of “I can’t believe you are always single!”
While obviously one hopes it happens sooner, I know for a fact people are still dating and shacking up in the nursing homes. It’s not over till it’s over, and it also just happens or not for no discernable reason.
I am frequently lonely despite an embarrassment of kind, thoughtful friends and a funny, reliable boyfriend of seven years. So thank you, Marika.
this was a super read. I feel like I”m going to return to it several times in the next week as I ruminate on Solie’s poem and Marika’s comments. Lovely. Thank you for sharing.
The comments and analysis are beautiful, and thank you for introducing me to a poet so wonderful as to write poetry about my favorite album in the world. Perfect.
Loneliness is the body’s cry to know itself, not to know another…
I have just learned to embrace my monstrous unwieldy horror-self and accept that I will never be loved by anyone and/or anything.
I mean Godzilla wasn’t partnered but he still managed to stomp through a lot of Tokyo.
ahhhh there are a thousand versions of these comments! stupid comment threads.