I’ve been thinking a lot lately about expectations. Because although I’ve been able to overcome the getting pregnant hurdle, there is one other thing that I always assumed I’d get, and haven’t and may never, which is a nice relationship. This is one of those things that it seems nearly everyone is able to accomplish with minimal effort – much like getting pregnant – and yet a few of us out there are just left in the lurch. I know LOTS of people, and yet only three or four single women. The vast majority of people I know in relationships are pretty happy in them; I only know a few that are pretty dysfunctional. I remember once I made a comment to my then-therapist about wanting to be in a relationship, and she looked at me with widened eyes as if to say, “you have NO IDEA what goes on behind closed doors.” And I truly believe that many relationships are hopelessly codependent, or involve the woman (or the man, in more rare circumstances) being “kept down” in some way, and/or involve one or both partners sacrificing dreams and living lives of “quiet desperation”. But not all are like this – many people are genuinely content with their partner, for the most part, and if they have troubles in their lives they involve work or family members or whatever. Still, even in my happily knocked-up state, I can’t help but ask myself – why did it never happen for me?
I think the bigger question really is, SHOULD it ever happen for me? When I really, seriously sit down and think about real day-to-day life in a relationship, I have to say it kind of grosses me out. The waiting for the other person to get their act together. The dealing with the other person’s foibles and how it reflects on you – his drinking too much at parties, his inappropriate closeness with his female assistant, his crazy relatives that he thinks are just great. The down times when he’s lost his job and is totally impossible to live with for months. The parenting disagreements. The having sex when you don’t want to – or being denied it when you do, and then feeling unattractive. The living with someone whose job it is to “call you on your shit” when in fact this is incredibly patronizing and insulting. The whole guy thing of “I can do it, we don’t need to hire someone,” and then hiring someone because he never does it or fucks it up. The obligatory work/in-law gatherings you don’t want to go to. I just can’t think of any guy who would be so awesome, smell so good, and have such great hair that would make me want to put up with all this. Maybe five years ago, but not now. Especially not now that my biological imperative has been met. The idea of coupling with anyone is kind of repulsive to me. And yet I still have that weird, knee-jerk reaction when I see couples of, “but I want that, too!” But do I? Do I, really? Or have I just been conditioned by decades of sitcoms, romantic comedies, love songs, and nineteenth-century novels, all of which end in a storybook wedding? None of these things fast forward a few months to the day your husband wants to do some sick thing in the bedroom, or the day you find his cache of porn on his computer, or the day he spends your retirement on a motor cycle because he wanted to. I want to see THAT romantic comedy. Starring Jennifer Anniston and Ashton Kutcher. Woo-woo.
I had a conversation recently with a divorced woman in her early forties who was getting back into dating, and having kind of a “meh” experience (my experience exactly). We talked a lot about “He’s Just Not That Into You”, a book I enjoyed for its empowering message, which is hammered home again and again – you’re awesome, you deserve someone who treats you like the queen you are. And that’s all great. It certainly helped break me of the habit of pursuing people who weren’t really interested, which was a real problem for me for a while. But I brought up to my friend one problem I found with the book – what if NO ONE is ever “that into you”? What if you spend your entire life going on dates with people who are just never that into it, you hit forty, you’re childless, you want a family? Then what? I can count on one hand the times I’ve actually been asked out by a man – and most of these people were wildly inappropriate (ie, my last brief encounter, the guy with no place to live, no job, no car, no money, and a habit of mooching off of people – if you say he was “the one that got away”, you’re nuts). The rest was years and years of endless internet dates that went nowhere. None of those people were remotely “into” me. Neither were any of the people I was set up with, met randomly out and about in the world, met on Greek cruises, whatever. Not one. So, then what? The book doesn’t answer this question. I want the book titled “What To Do When Nobody Is Ever That Into You”. I believe it’s called “Choosing Single Motherhood.”
So, did that. And I’ll say again I’m happy I did, and deep down believe, much like my male friend who said, “why am I not surprised you’d go this route?” that this was sort of my destiny, in a way. Still I will freely admit I have those odd little moments of weirdness and jealousy – like my jealousy of my married friend – where I find myself wondering why I can’t have what everyone else gets to have. Isn’t this a similar question to the one infertile people ask themselves on a daily basis – why can’t I have a baby like magic like everyone else? This was the tagline of one of my favorite blogs, called Fucking Infertility, which has now been deleted because the author decided after many failed IVF attempts to just pack it in. The blankness of that deleted page makes me sad, and I’ll always wonder what happened to her, and wish her well. But this gets to the universal question of, “why am I being deprived of something that everyone else gets?” It’s an ugly question to ask, and I SINCERELY hope someday I’ll make my peace with this issue, stop being jealous of my happily married friends, and just let go of all of that relationship crap. Relationships just aren’t that into me. The end.
To read more about how horribly wrong asking the question “why not me?” can go, read this.
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