Most things have more than one side. It's a side effect of living in a three-dimensional universe. Of course, there are Moebius strips, but those take conscious efforts.
For example, I stumbled across this blog yesterday. Mostly, I've been trying to fix my attitude to marriage by looking for other marrieds who've been through a painful beginning and looking for hope and insight from them. But there's another set of experiences to consider: the girls who didn't take the plunge. I keep thinking to myself that I wish I could turn back the clock and have never gotten married to begin with; never having gotten engaged would be even better. But I do still faintly remember pre-marriage me, and I wasn't the happiest person. That's what convinced me in the end to go for perfect-on-paper: I couldn't take being the nebach single when I knew that I wasn't a nebach at all. Maybe seeing how a girl who did choose to remain single regrets her decision and is trying to make herself more marriage-minded will help me change my own perspective.
Or, to paraphrase one of the anonymous commentors, maybe it takes being married to recognize that I'm more suited to being single. I certainly didn't think I wanted to be single forever when I was single, but now I'm giving it much more serious thought. Still, being single is a very selfish lifestyle: I wouldn't have to care about anyone. Being the spinster aunt might be fun, but is it fulfilling? Am I thinking about singlehood as better than marriage, or better than this marriage?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
> Still, being single is a very selfish lifestyle: I wouldn't have to care about anyone.
ReplyDeletePardon if I take offense to this. Just because I live alone doesn't mean I don't care about anyone else but me. I volunteer. I bring food to the hungry. I take care of my elderly neighbors. I have strong friendships and a very good committed relationship with a beloved. He lived with his very sick elderly mother. I live in my house that I bought and paid for with my own money in my own name. Why does not being married make me selfish?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteregarding selfish, perhaps you need a little more selfishness in your marriage and in your life. you have sex for someone else's pleasure. you go to work, do housework, curtail your time, all for someone you don't really care for. You spend a lot of your efforts trying to garner the approval of your community.
ReplyDeletebilingual, I don't have any easy answers for you, just wanted to tell me that my heart goes out to you and hope you make the right decision(s) for yourself.
I could tell you about my life as a middle aged single, and then again I could tell you about other people who married and were miserable. I could tell you about people who got divorced and are thrilled with their new life, and people who regret it every day. But it doesn't matter because it's not about them, it's about you.
The one piece of advice I have for you is something you should engrave on your heart!!! While it may be buried under lakewood, family, seminary, etc.(perhaps blogging will help you find it)....
THERE IS ONLY ONE TRUE INNER VOICE.
GOD'S UNIQUE GIFT TO YOU.
HEED IT.
Anonymous - You may notice that I said "have to care". Of course single people can choose to care about others; of course not all single people are selfish. But being single allows you to be selfish much more easily than being in a committed relationship does. While a committed relationship that is not marriage does not have quite the same force, if you are, as you say, in a committed relationship with a beloved (and lucky you, to be able to say beloved), then by Western standards, I'm not sure that you qualify as single.
ReplyDeleteKisarita - Thanks for your words. They are good to hear. I hope that I can figure out what that inner voice is saying.
ha ha (cynical laugh) now if i could only heed it myself....
ReplyDeleteyou are right, single life is much more selfish than the life of a lakewood wife, but take heart-it's not nearly as selfish as the life of a lakewood husband.
ReplyDelete(no judgements on the individual personalities involved, just on the lifestyle prescriptions)
"I hope that I can figure out what that inner voice is saying."
ReplyDeleteI think about you alot, possibly because I have also been struggling to hear that inner voice myself. But being a few years older than you and maybe a few steps further along the road maybe I have what to offer.
your inner voice sometimes speaks up very timidly, until your external voice drowns it out. to strengthen your inner voice you're going to have to identity that other, drowning out voice. listen to that external voice too, by all means, but don't give it all the power.
this is probably very vague so i'll give you some more concrete examples next post
Most of these are examples i've quoted to you already...
ReplyDelete"How am I supposed to know if it's bad sex or a bad relationship? I have nothing to compare the sex with." (over here you seek an external voice to define for you your feelings about your sex life, even though they are perfectly clear to the rest of us.)
****
"I spent a lot of time before the wedding wondering if my discomfort with my engagement was caused by the big unknown of marriage or by the fact of the person to whom I was engaged..." YOUR INNER VOICE, "my advisors all assured me that it was marriage, and not my fiance, that I was worried about." YOUR EXTERNAL VOICE.
"I was pretty pareve about him" (YOUR INNER VOICE, THOUGH IT IS NOT VERY CLEAR- PAREVE CAN SOMETIMES HIDE SOME PRETTY STRONG FEELINGS). "I recognized him as a great guy who had all the qualities I wanted, and at the time, that seemed to be enough." (RESOLVING THE ABSENCE OF CLARITY VIA EXTERNAL CRITERIA)
I also previously commented on your quote "I thing I have a unique perspective" (YOUR INNER VOICE)"but maybe that's my ego talking" (YOUR EXTERNAL VOICE; PREEMPTING IMAGINARY CRITICISM, NOT EXPRESSING AN INNER TRUTH)
I may be totally misinterpreting this, (though I'm sure it would still hold its own if only as a pure literary critique) but if I am half on target, the key is for you to identify these voices.
ReplyDeletethat is where writing can really help you, because by writing you actually capture these fleeting barely-verbal thoughts and pen them down to where you can really analyze them. and once you can do that maybe it will catch on to your general life.
Disclaimer: your inner voice's job is to tell you about yourself, not about things external to yourself. it can't tell you whether you're going to win the lottery tomorrow, or whether you're going to be happily married in five years. But while that sounds modest, you'd be surprised how much of a difference it makes.