Rachel's Musings » Edwards Challenge

The Challenge of Sex

Rachel — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:52:04 +0000

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)

Sex remains a titillating taboo topic: We don’t feel comfortable talking about it yet sexualized stuff is all around us. And while sex outside of marriage is becoming more accepted, sex outside of a serious conjugal relationship is still frowned upon. That makes sex a difficult topic for those of us not in conjugal relationships whether by choice or chance.

Obviously, sex is more than hormones and technique, which is to say that sexual maturity is clearly much more than a matter of puberty.
[...]
The purpose of this chapter is to look at some of the sexual problems inherent in the single life and to help you put sex in perspective. It is intended to help you become realistic about your own sexual feelings and needs, whatever they may be. Our thesis is that just as it is okay to be single, it is okay to have the sexual feelings and the sex life that you choose as best suited to you as a single. (162-3)

Edwards and Hoover start out the chapter with debunking the myth that singles are Don Juan’s and Donna Juanitas who have sex anywhere and everywhere we want to. According to them there are many factors that prevent such sexual freedom (or irresponsibility depending on your viewpoint).

Some of them are psychological – guilt about one’s sexual feelings and confusion over what one’s sex life should be like are two main ones. In addition, there are the simple facts and circumstances in life that keep people apart or make good relationships difficult to establish and maintain. Some of these are the pressures of time, work, and energy, isolated urban life styles, fears and apprehensions about getting involved and the inhibiting presence of children in the homes of many singles. (164)

This leads to a rather unpredictable sex life: Not enough when we’d like more or too much when we’d want less. All of that is overshadowed by a feeling of guilt – whether we want sex (and feel guilty for wanting it) or don’t want sex (and feel weird for not wanting it), it seems like we end up feeling inadequate.

Hoover and Edwards suggest that there are many reasons for wanting sex, the book lists more details on each (166-169):

Sex for instant intimacy: Confusing physical and emotional intimacy
Sex to bring love: Thinking that having sex will lead to falling in love
Sex for reassurance: Someone wants sex with me therefore I am okay
Sex for self-esteem: Wanting to become the best sex provider in the world
Sex as an expression of hostility and contempt: If you don’t have sex with me, there’s something wrong with you
Sex as a weapon: I can tell you want it, so I use it to have power over you

They point out that “none of these distortions of real sexuality is apt to bring true sexual fulfillment” (169). Toward the end of the chapter, a comment makes this statement clearer: “The confounding of sex with love still permeates our cultural milieu to a large extent” (190). It sounds like Edwards and Hoover suggest to decouple sex from love: Having sex does not (necessarily) mean that you’re in love with the person and you can have satisfying sex without being in love. Although they caution that “one-night stands” tend to be difficult and can be rather disappointing.

The consensus seems to be that brief encounters in a romantic setting or those that happen spontaneously have the best chance of being rewarding. Those that come out of a dogged search or out of pure frustration have the least chance of being worth the trouble. (173-4)

Well, so what brings sexual fulfillment? It depends. Instead of telling us what to do, which they can’t, Hoover and Edwards suggest some broad guidelines (169-172).

Seek greater awareness of your own feelings: Take a look at the above list – are you using sex for any of those reasons?

Decide what your sexual threshold is: Don’t allow others to tell you what normal sexual behavior is. Figure out what is normal for you.

Be open and honest with the opposite sex: Talk about what you want (don’t want)

Don’t let sex dominate your life: It’s not going to kill you not to have sex

Next, Hoover and Edwards discuss some common sexual problems for singles. I found the next sections more interesting, though, which discuss celibacy, masturbation, and cohabitation. Basically, they address the idea that celibacy leads to us drying up, which it doesn’t. Masturbation is even more a taboo than sex itself, partly because we’re associating it with being immature; a desire that should be overcome by having a handy sex-partner through marriage. The latter ignores the relatively high frequency of masturbation of married folks that Alfred Kinsey uncovered. Overall

Masturbation is recognizable as universal among both males and females, from the youngest child to the oldest adult, and should not be viewed, per se, as immature behavior. (186)

Despite Kinsey’s and Masters and Johnson’s work that shows that masturbation is normal and not harmful, the deep taboo persists partly because for centuries it was considered the most horrible sin in both Christianity and Judaism, sometimes punishable by death (182-3).

Reading Edwards and Hoover’s section on Living Together (186-191) is rather interesting because cohabitation is so much more common now. However, the perils remain the same: Most importantly the lack of legal protection for unmarried couples is still far less than marriage bestows on people. Of course, some organizations are fighting to change that but in our matrimanical society that remains an uphill battle.

What is in a word?

Rachel — Sun, 31 May 2009 01:40:11 +0000

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!

But it gets worse. Throw in unmarried woman at thesaurus.com and this is what you get:

bachelor girl, fuddy-duddy, goody-goody, lone woman, maiden, prig, prude, single woman, spinster, unmarried woman

Of course! An unmarried woman has to be lone and prude! Why didn’t I think about that! And, btw, the main entry for unmarried woman is “old maid.” Pretty telling. Because women before 80 are all married, right?

Remove the woman and it gets even worse:

by oneself, companionless, friendless, in solitary, individual, me and my shadow, me myself and I, on one’s own, single, solitary, stag, unaccompanied, unaided, unassisted, unescorted, unmarried

If you’re unmarried, you don’t have friends, you don’t get any help, and you never have company. That’s for unmarried (using main entry “solo”)! Scrolling down to main entry “alone,” we find

abandoned, batching it, by itself/oneself, companionless, deserted, desolate, detached, forlorn, forsaken, friendless, hermit, in solitary, individual, isolated, lone, lonely, lonesome, me and my shadow, me myself and I, on one’s own, onliest, only, shag, single, sole, solitary, solo, stag, traveling light, unaccompanied, unaided, unassisted, unattached, unattended, unescorted, unmarried, widowed

Alone is not lonely, far from it. It certainly does not mean that someone deserted or abandoned me! And what’s up with this “me and my shadow, me myself and I”? Being single is so horrible that we have artificially create a group? Of course that’s also pretty pathetic because we’re so desparate for companion that we start talking to our reflection in the mirror.

Clearly, we have a long way to go if the words that are associated with single or unmarried are such negatively laden things as “forsaken.” Gee, if that’s what comes up for “alone,” what will lonely be? Oh, sure enough, it’s single (among other things…). Notice again that they’re mixing words that are negative and those that could be positive, like the juxtaposition of lonely and alone. Edwards and Hoover define loneliness in chapter 4 of their book “The Challenge of Being Single” like this (p. 79):

Briefly, loneliness can be defined as an acute longing for companionship, a feeling of bleakness, of isolation, and of being cut off from others in an uncomfortable, even despairing way. Being alone, on the other hand, means simply being by one’s self. It can make you miserable – if you can only see it in terms of loneliness – or it can be quite enjoyable, a source of infinite possibilities once you appreciate the positive uses of being by yourself.

Loneliness has nothing to do with being alone, by oneself, secluded, or solitary – as anybody who has felt desperately alone in a relationship can attest to. Yet, the thesaurus writers throw it together with being alone. What a sad reflection of our cultural assumptions!

Myths about Singles

Rachel — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 19:45:29 +0000

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.

It is clear from this chapter that Edwards sees people as either single or married. In the early 1970s, unmarried but coupled people were not as much on her radar screen. This adds to an unfortunate dichotomy and leaves out people who choose not to get married but still enjoy being in a conjugal relationship.

In chapter 2, Edwards addresses myths about being single. These myths are somewhat similar than the ones Bella DePaulo debunks in her book, which is another sad reminder of how little progress we have made in overcoming singlism.

Myth #1: All single women want to get married

Myth #2: All confirmed bachelors (single men) are afraid of responsibility

Myth #3: It is easier for men to meet women socially than it is for women to meet men

Myth #4: All unmarrieds are terribly lonely

Myth #5: Single life is hazardous because there will be no one around to help you if you are hurt or sick

Edwards then debunks all of these. I won’t repeat this here because these myths are just that: Myths. We don’t need to continue debunking them; we need to let go of them, especially the internalized versions, as Edwards pointed out in Chapter 1. As she underscores: “Getting married is [...] something one chooses to do or not to do, not something one must do in order to lead what society has deemed a complete life” (45). (If you find this quote, you’ll notice that I changed it slightly: I took out the word “becoming.” Due to the backlash, marriage is still very much expected but it is still true that it should be viewed as a choice).

These myths have a direct impact on us even if we don’t buy into them: Discrimination (what Bella DePaulo coined “singlism“). Edwards explores the examples of taxes, jobs, credit, housing, and insurance. Let’s look at these areas today.

The tax code still very much discriminates against singles and all unmarried (if you don’t believe this, you can use this tool to see what happens to your taxes when you “get married” at the same income). Unless a married couple is an equal-earner couple, they are benefiting from the tax structure.

I have not experienced different expectations on the job between married and single folks. It seems to me that we’re all now expected to get married to our jobs because the old employment-for-life contract is no longer valid… Credit seems to be given to everybody, well, at least before the financial melt-down, independent of marital status. Feel free to write about your experience in the comments, though. Just because I haven’t experienced the discrimination doesn’t mean it no longer exists!

As hard as I find it to believe, housing discrimination is still very much alive and kicking, as stories from the Alternatives to Marriage Project attest, although most of these are not directed at singles but at unmarried couples. It’s discrimination nonetheless.

Insurance, especially health insurance, remains a large area of discrimination, just like taxes. Access to health insurance can be secured through a married partner but not through a friend, for example. And health insurance premiums tend to favor families with a married couple (just like family memberships to museums and health clubs, I might add).

In addition to these areas of discrimination that Edwards identified, AtMP lists adoption, welfare, and immigration. Clearly, we have a lot of work left to overcome singlism!

As Edwards points out at the end of Chapter 2, these are “only” the “major discriminations, but singles are subject to a parade of small needling ones as well” (58). These range from cheaper food in family sized packages to discounts at hotels and health clubs. And then there is the stigmatization we face when confronted by the myths: “the inevitable pauses and puzzled glances from many people you meet when they learn you are single” (59).

I don’t agree with Edwards that “these discriminations and myths which do, indeed, exist in the outside world can only really harm you when they exist in your own head as well” (59). Tax discrimination has a very real harm on our finances and don’t have to exist in our head. Yet, I agree that the myths – not the discrimination – can only harm us if we buy into them. Overcoming singlism has to include both inner work and work in society at large – the political and private are very much interconnected: “If you value yourself enough, you will make every effort to assert – to yourself and to the world around you – ‘It’s okay to be single.’ With that understood, you can begin to fortify yourself with your own individualism and an appreciation of your own talents” (59). And you can move beyond seeing relationships as limited to the conjugal pair and start valuing connections with all people around you.