You remember Kristen, whom I discussed the other day ("Single at 36...Why So Gloomy?") Well, Janet, 40, also desperate to find a man, has dated approximately 17 men who are definitely marriage material-- but couldn't stand any of them. “It's like I must pick one of these guys to be the father of my child,” she says, “and I can’t get past the fact that one slurps his soup like something out of Animal House and another has this little whine in his voice.....” She knows she’s being “too picky for someone my age” and yet hates feeling that she shouldn’t be. She knows you don’t find someone perfect, yet she says she must marry soon or “my life will have amounted to nothing.” Hardly the sentiments of the Love Goddess's philosophy...but there they are. We get hurled back to the need for old, safe plots and already-written endings the moment we find ourselves truly writing our own stories. The male life story, the “hero legend” as it’s called, has obstacles built into it--you can’t be an adventurer without facing danger, loneliness, upheaval. (And all three are part of a hero's story; they're welcomed, not feared.) But danger and loneliness have not been built into the traditional heroine’s story (only Marriage has)--they have been, in fact, the threats against women don’t find men. Our terrible fear of loneliness is instilled in us by a culture that still, even with all the magnificent changes for women, disapproves of us if we choose to stay firmly outside of marriage. It no longer quakes at the prospect of powerful, independent women--but it still threatens them with a lifetime of loneliness. We must learn, the way men have, that loneliness (I like "aloneness" better), adventure, danger and upheaval are part of the story we ALL live, inside as well as outside marriage. They're not to be feared. I've noticed not only that the happiest and most unconventional women know this already. And I've noticed, too, that many of the best marriages I've witnessed, on earth and in the galaxy, come along only after we’ve made our own plots thicken all by ourselves. More on this in the next blog. --TLG
Comments