Rachel’s Musings

There have been quite a few posts on singles blogs recently about sex, in particular on how to deal with sexual energy when there’s no obvious outlet like an intimate partner (for example, the Onely post and Bella DePaulo’s writing). It seems fitting, then, to summarize Chapter 8 of Edwards and Hoover’s “The Challenge of Being Single” even though the topic of sex on a blog feels somewhat dicey… Again, I am struck how current this book still is – it was published in the early 1970s, yet so little has changed. For example, I think that this is still true (even though many of us would rather not admit to it):

In our society, getting sex in perspective is no small achievement. On the one hand, since childhood many of us have been subjected to repressive teachings that result in guilt and embarrassment where sex or almost anything to do with the body is concerned. In or out of marriage, few of us are able to overcome this unfortunate upbringing completely. On the other hand, we now live in a sex-obsessed culture that hard-sells sex in movies, TV, and magazines, on billboards and at the corner newsstand. (161)

     Continue reading this post » » »

During a recent discussion amongst footloose femails, we bounced around some idea for self-descriptive labels that don’t come with truck-loads of baggage. Single or spinster came up, of course. One woman had the idea to look at thesauruses, which revealed a boatload of singlism.

According to Reverso, these are synonyms for unmarried:

bachelor, celibate, maiden, on the shelf, single, unattached, unwed, unwedded, virgin

Celibate? Virgin? Unattached? Unless I’ve replicated virgin birth, I am obviously no longer a virgin because I have a child. Why does a single person have to be celibate? And what’s up with being on the shelf? As if being unmarried means that you cannot possibly live your life; you are waiting to be picked. Only then can you get off the shelf to finally enjoy life. What matrimanical bs!

     Continue reading this post » » »

I thought I’d write biased summaries of the book “The Challenge of Being Single” as I read it. Here are the first two chapters.

The first chapter addresses the question “how come you’re not married?” Edwards suggests that society’s theme song toward singles is “there’s something wrong with you.” She goes further than identifying this, though: “This social contempt eventually brings about self-contempt. Like any group that has been constantly ignored or downgraded, singles come to believe what others say about them.” (18) She suggests that we are learning to create a need that is experienced so strongly that it feels as basic as the need for food and water: “Psychiatrist Roderic Gorney, in the Human Agenda, says that from babyhood on, we in the Western world have been overfed and overstimulated on a diet of intense emotional relationships so that what is actually an artificial need is experienced as a basic, urgent, almost physiological one. Intense emotional involvement – with mother, father, siblings, friends, and later lovers, spouses and children – is so taken for granted that questioning it would seem to be denying our need for such essentials as food, water, and oxygen.” (21) This outlook leads to the Eternal Search for a partner. Edwards lists two errors that she sees as underlying the search for the One-and-Only: 1. There is only one such person and 2. Finding the One-and-Only will solve all your problems (31). After presenting a positive vision of being single – including mentioning some developments in the legislative arena, which appear to have disappeared – Edwards suggests that as singles we ask ourselves the question of why we’re not married. Not as a question to determine what is wrong with us but as a question to explore why we are making that choice, what we find positive about being single, and what we might be missing.

     Continue reading this post » » »