Lea Lane at the Huffington Post finally makes a list of all the reasons she’s still single so that it’s all in one place and people will stop asking. I know how she feels.
Of course, Lane’s situation is a bit different than mine, as she’s a widow and a bit older than me, but it is really annoying to be asked, “Why are you still single,” as though it’s choice that you’ve just sort of randomly made. Um, hello, it takes another person. Lane says:
I’m alone because I can stand it and even sometimes like it, so I won’t go out and beat the bushes for some nice enough fellow who votes Republican and belches so loud I jump, but who doesn’t make me smile enough to put up with strange noises and smells.
She, like me, is alone because rather than find someone nice enough to keep from being alone, she’d rather hold out for special. Special doesn’t walk by every day.
She also thinks she’s alone because, at least to a degree, she’s too used to being alone and not having to justify the weird shit you do when you’re alone.
I’m alone because I ‘m now used to getting up when I want and drinking from the juice bottles and not shaving my legs and leaving dishes from the night before on my bed and getting up at 3am and seeing a movie and going back to bed at 5am and not hearing a word of scorn.
I think she forgot “peeing with the bathroom door open.”
She’s alone because she isn’t scared to be without someone because she has a life that makes her happy:
I’m alone because I have friends who laugh and go out to concerts and play Scrabble and keep me occupied when I want to go out and we seem to laugh more than our married friends and we even look happier, even if we aren’t, but I suspect we might be, at least moreso than many.
Sometimes, you’re more alone in an unhappy relationship than you really ever are without a relationship at all.
And, again, she’s alone because it takes two to tango, and no one seems any more interested in asking her to dance than she feels like asking herself.
I’m alone because I’m independent and outspoken and most men don’t much care for women who debate them and who don’t hope to get married and cook for them.
Well, that specific one might be generational.
There’s also the part where she doesn’t feel like she’s missing out on anything being alone:
I’m alone because I’m satisfied that I’ve sowed enough oats to make oatmeal for the New York Yankees and the Knicks and still have some left over to feed the Miami Chamber Orchestra and the waitstaff at Joe’s Stone Crab, with a few spoonfuls to spare.
I think I love her a little right now.
I mean, you can list all the reasons you want for why you’re alone, but it’s never any one. I’m not in a relationship because I have a limited tolerance for other people’s bullshit, and because other people often have a limited tolerance for mine. I’m alone because I looked around one day in the midst of the relationship I thought I’d spend the rest of my life in and realized I was so miserable that there wasn’t any way I could possibly be unhappier alone, even if I spent the rest of my life that way. I’m alone because I was too unwilling to compromise sometimes and too willing to at others. I’m probably alone because I dated when I wanted to and got into relationships when I wanted to and got out of them when I needed to. I’m alone because I eschewed goal-oriented dating and “trying to find someone” in favor of seeing what happened with this guy, this time, one guy at a time (more or less). And, like Lea Lane, I’ve made my peace with being single because I don’t have to pretend I don’t drink from the carton or sleep with one of those face masks on or watch Murder She Wrote too late at night.
I’m alone because life doesn’t always wind up the way you expect it to, and it wound up this way for me, and I roll with it.
Not everyone follows the same path, and not everyone gets to be with someone, and not everyone necessarily chose this. We’re all single for as many reasons as everyone else got married. Like anything else in life, there’s no simple answer.
Why I’m Alone [Huffington Post]