How To Be Single (and not have anxiety attacks about it)
Whenever I talk to my friends about what it is to be single, I realize that there's a big difference between being single when one is 20-something and being single when you're well over 30. Having been single in my 20's, and now again in my 40's, I know for sure that these are two far different states of singledom!
And when I lunched with my friend V. (also single and 40-ish) the other day, we, at length, discussed this fact....and how it would be very nice to have a book that would give us some guidance on our current state of affairs without making us feel guilty about being content with it.
Then, last night, in the local Barnes and Noble, I found it! Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl is back in print!
I couldn't believe it! And, after a quick leaf thru the book, I realized that this is the book I should have had 12 years ago when I was on the cusp of single and 30, and that someone should have given me after my last divorce 5 years ago. It would have saved me my last crappy marriage as well as a huge bout of unnecessary depression after the divorce.
But, that wasn't the zeitgeist in those days. Back then, it was all about Women Who Love Too Much....Men Who Hate Women Who Love Too Much.....The Rules....Why Men Hate The Rules.....Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus....Why Men Hate Women Who Are From Venus.....Grrrrls and Bois....(I needn't go on, you get my drift).
Brown's book delineates the problems with being single over 30--the pool of men getting smaller and weirder; your waistline getting wider and more difficult to maintain; managing your own money and maintaining your own space without your parents' advice....with frankness and humor and without all the psychobabble and handwringing and guilt-inflicting and finger-pointing that is endemic in that massive amount of self-help tomes that ubiquitously occupy the shelves of any independent or corporate book dealer.
(Heck, Brown's even got great advice about how to have sexual dalliances with married men and not get one's knickers in a bunch over it (something I learned all on my own)....wish someone had given this book to Monica Lewinski....would have saved us an impeachment hearing....)
In a world full of overly-pedantic and joyless self-help books by pundits who want to tell women exactly how to live, and what losers we are if we're not married and don't want to be, as well as cutsie, pesudo-edgy books directed to grrrrls rather than women, I have finally found a book that pats my hand and tells me it's okay to have rampant fear of commitment and that life doesn't have to be all about finding a husband or getting a seriously cool tattoo--that I can guiltlessly enjoy being single, marginally employed, sexually adventurous, and NOT somewhere between 25 and 35 with a biological clock driving me mad.
I am now off to finish reading and then plotting my next adventure....or at least graduate school.
And when I lunched with my friend V. (also single and 40-ish) the other day, we, at length, discussed this fact....and how it would be very nice to have a book that would give us some guidance on our current state of affairs without making us feel guilty about being content with it.
Then, last night, in the local Barnes and Noble, I found it! Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl is back in print!
I couldn't believe it! And, after a quick leaf thru the book, I realized that this is the book I should have had 12 years ago when I was on the cusp of single and 30, and that someone should have given me after my last divorce 5 years ago. It would have saved me my last crappy marriage as well as a huge bout of unnecessary depression after the divorce.
But, that wasn't the zeitgeist in those days. Back then, it was all about Women Who Love Too Much....Men Who Hate Women Who Love Too Much.....The Rules....Why Men Hate The Rules.....Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus....Why Men Hate Women Who Are From Venus.....Grrrrls and Bois....(I needn't go on, you get my drift).
Brown's book delineates the problems with being single over 30--the pool of men getting smaller and weirder; your waistline getting wider and more difficult to maintain; managing your own money and maintaining your own space without your parents' advice....with frankness and humor and without all the psychobabble and handwringing and guilt-inflicting and finger-pointing that is endemic in that massive amount of self-help tomes that ubiquitously occupy the shelves of any independent or corporate book dealer.
(Heck, Brown's even got great advice about how to have sexual dalliances with married men and not get one's knickers in a bunch over it (something I learned all on my own)....wish someone had given this book to Monica Lewinski....would have saved us an impeachment hearing....)
In a world full of overly-pedantic and joyless self-help books by pundits who want to tell women exactly how to live, and what losers we are if we're not married and don't want to be, as well as cutsie, pesudo-edgy books directed to grrrrls rather than women, I have finally found a book that pats my hand and tells me it's okay to have rampant fear of commitment and that life doesn't have to be all about finding a husband or getting a seriously cool tattoo--that I can guiltlessly enjoy being single, marginally employed, sexually adventurous, and NOT somewhere between 25 and 35 with a biological clock driving me mad.
I am now off to finish reading and then plotting my next adventure....or at least graduate school.
posted by Tish Grier at 10:26 AM
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