Kirsten, 36, has just finished writing her profile for the online dating service she's been with for two years. Hers doesn’t read like all those others that ask wistfully, “You: Crave perfect sex on silken white beaches in the Caribbean; love children, puppies, poetry; play polo professionally; work out daily; call your mother weekly; make boatloads of money.” No, Kirsten--smart, funny, lovely in that knock-out Nordic way possessed by Swedish women, successful on her terms as well as the world's--has suddenly reduced her requirements drastically, asking only that her dream guy be heterosexual. Oh, and ambulatory.
Why so modest? I ask, perched as I am on a golden throne in the skies. "Might he not be required to be employed? Or is that too demanding?" (I can be sardonic with Kirsten. I've known her since she was a young girl.)
"Well, even an old maid like me could ask for a guy who’s presentable, I guess,” she allows, “but, well, after all...”she trails off, and I take her meaning to be that at her age she’ll take what she gets, as long as whatever it is gets there quick.
Just a year ago, she had been more discerning--to wit: “He should be part Swedish, like me, with a love of art and a passion for skiing and running and...herring,“ she said then excitedly. But now, it’s as if being single has become a disease; as if some virus has invaded her, worn her down. She no longer sees herself as an independent woman carving out a life that holds fabulous adventures, but as slogging along on a treadmill of endless bad dates and cheerless tomorrows.
Something odd is going on here. This gorgeous blonde at the peak of her beauty and health, in a career she loves, has turned overnight into a desperado, a fugitive, afraid to be caught being single much longer or she will....what? Turn into a pumpkin? Die lonely? Shrivel? Be shot? What?
Now, I’m the last one to disparage marriage, having been married to the god of love for eons--mostly happily, I should add (he has a monstrous ego, by the way, but more on that another time). So it isn’t Kristin’s goal of love and marriage that troubles me. After all, it’s what an overwhelming majority of American women want and what 90 percent of them get. No, it’s her panic, not her desire, that scares me; her sudden morphing into a tragic, self-hating thing who wakes up with a clenched jaw from dreams of sub-zero refrigerators and bag-lady fantasies. It’s a panic that feels old, and misplaced--as if the fear lies elsewhere and in a different time.
Instead of remaining joyful in her single life, treasuring it, but keeping an eye out for a future husband, Kirstin has declared her independence in effect pathetic. Her sudden devaluation of her own achievements and efforts and life--a devaluation of herself, after all--feels to me like a throwback to the last century, when anything achieved by a spinster was deemed meaningless, idle, even man-hating (for why wasn't she married? the thinking went). Her sudden narrowed vision of what her life must become if she’s to be happy, the rigidity of it, and of how events must occur and unfold, and in what order--feel as if she’s walked out of a Jane Austen novel, and must be in possession of a husband or be consigned forever to dreary, loveless spinsterhood, poverty and scorn. Her use of self-deprecating terms like “old maid”--even in jest--confirm the humiliating residue that still colors life, if you let it, outside marriage.
But only if you let it. And you're not going to. This Love Goddess has much to say on the topic--like, how to dispense with this residue of worthlessness-without-a- man, particularly now, around holiday time, and instead be proud of where you are right this moment. We'll continue tomorrow. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, please let me know YOUR thoughts!
Love,
TLG
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