Or love. Or a connection. You don't need the rules, and you can be happy whichever way you want. Growing-ups for suckers, anyway, so why not stay a child?
“You need not be sorry for her. She was one of the kind that likes to grow up. In the end she grew up of her own free will a day quicker than the other girls.”
-Peter Pan
I spend a fair bit thinking about the way people think, as that is of interest to me, both as a writer and as a human being. And often, I'm struck by this highly pervasive lie that you see up in the title of this post. Obviously, we're not just talking about sex here, but as we all know, sex sells, so I figured I'd lead with that.
I was thinking earlier about the alarming number of lonely people out there who think they're just fine. I'm not talking about folks that are single for a while, or even people who isolate themselves for a time as a form of self-healing. In the right circumstances, I believe that can actually be very beneficial for the individual, since you need to be alright with yourself before you can be alright with other beings.
But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm noticing more and more people feeding themselves this lie that being alone is alright. That they don't need a partner, or sex, or kids, or any of that jazz to be alright. That seems to be one of the biggest and, in my opinion, most toxic lies that our culture has created for us. In our bid for diversity, we've seemingly normalized not only celibacy but actually acute loneliness.
It's not natural.
People are social creatures, whichever way you look at it. We need other people to function properly. Furthermore, we're sexual creatures, which indicates we need a partner. As we grow older, we move from relying on our parents to relying on our friends, and then from that to relying on someone. After all, your partner is someone you live with, someone who knows and accepts certain quirks of yours, someone you share little things like meals, and grocery shopping and starting a new TV show with. All things that matter in the grand scheme of things.
And just for clarity, I tend to be a highly independent being. I value my independence from others, and I generally don't ascribe to the idea that you need a man to be happy. However, this is more complex than that. We tend to talk about happiness as if it were one thing. It's not. Yes, you need to be happy and content by yourself. Obviously, and very important. However, the type of happiness you'll achieve on your own is not like the happiness you achieve while with someone. Equating them can only land you in trouble and confusion, since they're in fact different things.
And yet, our society is aggressively promoting this idea that you can be alright on your own, that it's perfectly normal and often preferable to be by yourself. Of course, it's also facilitated this social isolation to an alarming extent. With the aid of computers and smartphones, we so rarely ever feel alone. On a steady diet of visual, audio and written interaction, we almost manage to fake a healthy social life, just enough to distract us from the fact that we, in truth, lack one. I think it's fair to say it's easier to be alone now than it was 20 years ago. Which should worry us even more.
But how do I know it's dangerous? Why can't people just be happy?
Well, because they're not. If you look closely at most people past a certain age who don't have a partner or a child or any such meaningful relationship in their lives, you will begin to see strange behavioral patterns. We like to think that, like Peter Pan, we can remain children forever. Our society promotes that idea, and so many of us are tricked into thinking all we'll ever need is our friends.
Except friends grow up. That's the major flaw, unfortunately, and also the main difference between your 20s and your 30s. Whereas it's all good and well to rely on your friends primarily at 25, it's not so good at 35. Downright "weird" at 45. It's tempting to say you have all the social interaction you need through your friends, except that's not true. Your friends will eventually settle down, and forge lives of their own, things to fall back on in times of crisis. Should a crisis hit, you will be in a precarious position, however, and no matter how great your friends, they won't make up for the family you failed to create (bear in mind this doesn't necessarily involve children).
I believe this theory to be true because I haven't yet met someone to disprove it. And I feel that's a good enough explanation. All the people I've come across who were past a certain age, and yet not in a meaningful relationship of some sort (or at least actively looking) developed frustrations, odd behaviors, and even stranger coping mechanisms. Generally, they had to do with time. After all, when you've made up your mind that you'll never have kids or a partner, all you really need to do is fill those hours between coming home from work and bedtime. Make it seem like you're less lonely than you really are. Trouble is, our coping mechanisms often devolve into one of the main causes of our main problem. So you find ways to fill up your spare time, but then, those end up justifying why you have so much spare time. Weird.
Personally, I blame the culture. It's no longer hip to admit you need to follow the old and outdated recipe of a family to have a good time, but maybe not all recipes are worth throwing out with the baby-water. After all, if I were to say I won't bake bread from a 20 year old recipe simply because it's 20 years old, you'd call me nuts. Bread is bread. So why can't happiness be bread, also?
Was the old recipe perfect? Clearly not, but that should drive us to make adjustments, not to change it altogether. Ours is a world that tells young people they don't need other people. That choosing to be alone is alright. And these poor, confused people buy into that so much that they end up hurting themselves. After all, it's always more tempting to give in to your fears and insecurities than to fight them, and that's exactly what this is.
Our generation has made a fine art out of finding excuses and explanations. If you look at all the ways a relationship (or family life, in general) can go wrong, surely it's preferable to be on your own. Except, is it? Give you an example. Two women - one has a baby when she's in her early 20s with a guy she doesn't really care for. But she stays with him, has a bunch of other kids, and has to figure out this life for herself. It's not the life she planned, and sure, she's got her own reasons to be frustrated. But at the end of the day, she raises her kids. And then, there's this other woman, who watches her, thinks oh look what a mistake this first woman made. Never goes on a date in her life, and shuts down any wooing attempts from the men around her. 20 years later, the first woman has got a bunch of grown kids to dote and depend on, whereas the second woman is looking forward to growing old... alone. Who do you think made the better choice?
Personally, I'm for anything that works for you. Single parenting, same-sex partnerships, whatever works for you, whatever makes you happy (as long as it's legal). But I don't think being alone falls in that category, alas. I think that's no choice, at all. It's the absence of a choice. It's the fear that you might make the wrong choice.
But even that is better than no choice at all.
I totally agree with everything you said! Not choosing is the worst choice, paradoxically. Our culture has these massive toxic ideas and one of them is that you don't have to reproduce which in my opinion is one of the worst things a person can do. I cannot wait to have a child with my girlfriend and I cannot imagine not having a little me. It would just be depressing.
I know, right? I've always been very maternal, too, so it seems so weird now and so wrong that people are actually being made to feel guilty because of wanting that, especially women. Why want a family when you could have a career? As if they could ever be on the same plane, even.
Your content has been voted as a part of Encouragement program. Keep up the good work!
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