Single-Minded

Double X recently posted an article about a study that compared psychological well-being among singletons and those already married, and found that contrary to stereotype, most singles are just as happy and resilient as their married peers. The study, which profiled heterosexuals 40-74, left out those who were divorced or widowed, normally skewering the results of “single”. The article has some problems, however:

“When single people feel control over their lives and can rely on themselves, they can have especially high levels of happiness,” explains Jamila Bookwala, lead author and associate professor of psychology at Lafayette. She adds that the married people in her study who reported being highly self-sufficient weren’t happy about it, whereas single people on average felt relatively good about carrying their own weight.

Interesting how self-sufficiency is viewed in these two categories. I suspect that it is a point of pride for many singletons to be as self-sufficient as possible, but also in that they have to, or want to, rely on themselves for many things; that’s how the cookie crumbles, it’s just easier to do. But, when married, there is someone there to rely on, and you often just naturally fall into that pattern of needing that person to do things, expecting that person to provide something, and when that person falls short, disappointment arises. Those who are married are self-sufficient because they’ve found that they can’t rely on their spouse, and that causes unhappiness.

But of course, single is never an easy word to define:

It’s also not clear from the November study which single respondents had satisfying love lives but simply didn’t believe in marriage and which people preferred flying solo.

Neither of these designations is clear. What if you are single, have a satisfying love life, but do believe in marriage, and are just not ready for it? That seems like a hell of a lot of people to me. And while “prefer flying solo” is just a phrase, it’s too simplistic. Are these people who don’t want a relationship? Is this incompatible with having a satisfying love life?

The DoubleX piece links to a cover story from 2006 from Psychology Today on the growing shift and reduced stigma towards singles, and one psychologist actually links the current marriage craze (matrimania) to the rise of the singles. With a greater percentage of households not being filled by married couples, and with people marrying later, she posits that there are those who are insecure about the state of the union (and she doesn’t even mention the increased prominence of homosexual marriage).

Does that go back to the idea that being single is seen as a threat to those in relationships? The idea seems laughable, but somehow it always come roaring back. There are also still so many (namely lumped into the category of “relatives”) that find it strange when you don’t bring a love interest to the Christmas party every year. But I do wonder where this marriage glamour comes from. It’s become a topic of conversation among my friends, as we see so many acquaintances pair off and announce their engagement. For many, it is a confused surprise—why settle down so early? What’s the rush? I don’t know if that’s where the mocking originates, the idea to bum rush a David’s Bridal and try on a bunch of dresses for giggles. Why not? It’s an excuse to play dress up and not have to pony up the cash, to worry about the real things marriage signifies. But is it? I play along, because apparently once you hit your mid-20s, marriage is supposed to float into your head, and now we’re being forced to think about it. Dating for a number of years? Be prepared for the questions, the assumptions, the expectations.

Of course, when thinking about “singles”, that iconic show of single women, Sex and the City, comes up. The show itself did a lot to change perceptions, but it also married off three of the four women. I’m reminded of a season six episode, “A Woman’s Right to Shoes”, which explores how society does or does not celebrate or accept a person’s personal choices:

Carrie: You know what? I am Santa. I did a little mental addition and over the years I have bought Kyra an engagement gift, a wedding gift, then there was the trip to Maine for the wedding- three baby gifts...in total I have spent over $2300.00 celebrating her life choices and she is shaming me for spending a lousy $485.00 bucks on myself? Yes, I did the math.

Charlotte: Yes, but those were gifts. And if you got married or had a baby, she would spend the same on you.

Carrie: And if I don't ever get married or have a baby, what? I get bubkiss? Think about it. If you are single, after graduation, there isn't one occasion where people celebrate you.

Charlotte: Oh! We have birthdays!

Carrie: Oh, no no no no- we all have birthdays, that's a wash. I am thinking about the single gal. Hallmark doesn't make a "congratulations you didn't marry the wrong guy" card. And where's the flatware for going on vacation alone?

Exactly. Plenty of people experience major milestones that don’t fall under these traditional rubrics, but they can’t throw multiple parties every step of the way and expect gifts. Announcing a marriage can have engagement, shower, and wedding gifts, and that’s not including all the ancillary expenses! Many people also agree that we have an obligation to make ourselves happy, and that includes a lot of “selfish” decisions, ones that can be judged harshly by outsiders:

Even as singlehood is becoming the de facto norm, people who choose to go through life solo are deliberately kept in a state of confusion about their own motives by a culture that clings to the marriage standard. Typically, says DePaulo, singles are told that they are selfish for pursuing their own life goals. If you're single and you have a great job to which you devote energy, you're typically told your job won't love you back. Of course, singles are always suspect as tragic losers in the game of love. But most of all they are told through commercials, images and endless articles that they will never be truly happy and deeply fulfilled unless they are married.

"The battlefield is now psychological," says DePaulo. Single women today have work opportunities, economic independence and reproductive freedom. "The things that can be legislated are all done," she notes. "The last great way to keep women in their place is to remind them that they are incomplete. Even if you think you're happy, the messages go, you don't know real happiness." There's a hunger out there for a new view of singles.

Notice, of course, that the article goes from all singles to just female singles, again focusing on the women. Because it’s women who want to be married, right? There the ones we have to worry about. As friends of mine commented a few months ago, it’s assumed that men will marry, but for women, you never know…the men might be a little off, but the women will be downright strange!

But for many people, being single is both a choice and not a choice. It’s a choice in that a person can decide whether or not to pursue something, to set up an online profile, to ask out every person seen at a bar. But it’s also not a choice in that you don’t always get what you want, the person you want may be unavailable for a variety of factors, and sometimes, there just isn’t a suitable person available.

The Psychology Today article has some noteworthy stuff, although I don’t agree with it completely. But neither do I with another singles “movement”: Quirkyalone. The premise is basically that it’s better to be without a relationship than to settle, a feeling that many people agree with in theory. It’s meant to battle the relationship stigma, all those people who hop from one person to another. But many of these people, just like many of the people in relationships, do really believe that they don’t “need” someone. Quirkyalone is a mindset, as Sasha Cagen repeatedly declares. I understand where she’s coming from. I just do not like the label. Singlehood as a movement seems a bit silly to me, though I understand the points of privilege single bloggers point out, like tax code rates, hotel rates and whatnot.

A lot of the advice Psychology Today points to is rather obvious, at least to those of us who know the world. It might not always be feasible or easy to follow, but it makes sense. It’s what people do, it’s the natural evolution. It always seemed sad to me that when people coupled up, their social circle often narrowed, instead of expanded. This isn’t always the case, but especially with marriage, circles get smaller, because the available time one has now must be appropriately divided, and a smaller portion goes to friends. It’s part of the soulmate culture, another dangerous idea: one person can change your life, but it can’t fulfill you always and forever:

The soulmate culture insists that one person can satisfy all your emotional needs, says DePaulo. "But that's like putting all of your money in one stock and hoping it's not Enron." Marriage today forces many people to put their friendships on the back burner. Singles, on the other hand, are free to develop deeper relationships with their friends without fear that they are betraying closeness. The flip side is that singles have to be more proactive about building their social lives; it takes an effort.

"Single people are more likely to have a good relationship investment strategy. They tend to have a diversified portfolio of relationships—friends, siblings, colleagues—and to value a number of them," says DePaulo. "They have not invested their entire emotional capital in one person." Having a broad social network is physiologically as well as emotionally protective, although society perceives singles as psychologically vulnerable precisely because they lack the built-in support system of a spouse.

As I said, lots of these things just naturally happen, and they should, whether a person is single (whatever that means) or not. As more people stay unmarried, and the psychology of happiness continues to grow, there will be more studies…probably proving that what single people hate most is forcing them to answer questions about coupling up.

Don't Mess with the Media

I’ve read a lot about Sarah Palin. I find her interesting. I don’t hate her with the force of a thousand suns like a lot of my friends do, but I do believe she is completely over her head and is in no way ready for the national stage, and I think she’d be disastrous if given the opportunity to exercise her values legislatively.

Her beliefs are polarizing, to say the least. She has a way of creating enemies, and governs in a very personal manner. I think part of her charm is that she is cute and pretty, and leads what many consider to be an incredible life. I think many women wish they could pull off something like that; they ignore the warning signs, they ignore the pregnancy, her spurious background. She’s approachable, and that feeling wins out.

Luckily, her utter unpreparedness for a national campaign is finally becoming clear, and it’s become increasingly apparent that John McCain has made a terrible mistake by selecting her as his running mate, exacerbating the decision by following it up with the genius idea of shielding her from the press.

The media likes access; the media likes answers. They do not like rebuffs, refusals, or rejections. The media’s job is to get stories out to the public, and when people make their jobs difficult, they are not happy. The media can be your friend, and they are big on relationships—they can make or break you, so treat them well. Sarah Palin was a public figure before she became a vice-presidential candidate; she’s had experience interacting with the media, just on a smaller scale. For god’s sake, her degree is in journalism!

There’s a difference between demurring for privacy’s sake and outright refusing to answer questions because you have no answers. The only reason not to let the press talk to her was because they were hiding something—which is so completely obvious that it’s totally backfiring on the campaign.

But I just want to point out an interesting example of how media partnerships work, why it’s so important to cultivate positive relationships with them. From Vanity Fair, via Andrew Sullivan:

Obama, on the other hand, was snubbing Murdoch. Every time he reached out (Murdoch executives tried to get the Kennedys to help smooth the way to an introduction), nothing. The Fox stain was on Murdoch.

It wasn’t until early in the summer that Obama relented and a secret courtesy meeting was arranged. The meeting began with Murdoch sitting down, knee to knee with Obama, at the Waldorf-Astoria. The younger man was deferential—and interested in his story. Obama pursued: What was Murdoch’s relationship with his father? How had he gotten from Adelaide to the top of the world?

Murdoch, for his part, had a simple thought to share with Obama. He had known possibly as many heads of state as anyone living today—had met every American president from Harry Truman on—and this is what he understood: nobody got much time to make an impression. Leadership was about what you did in the first six months.

Then, after he said his piece, Murdoch switched places and let his special guest, Roger Ailes, sit knee to knee with Obama.

Obama lit into Ailes. He said that he didn’t want to waste his time talking to Ailes if Fox was just going to continue to abuse him and his wife, that Fox had relentlessly portrayed him as suspicious, foreign, fearsome—just short of a terrorist.

Ailes, unruffled, said it might not have been this way if Obama had more willingly come on the air instead of so often giving Fox the back of his hand.

A tentative truce, which may or may not have vast historical significance, was at that moment agreed upon.

Embarrassing Obama?

Why is Barack Obama constantly being embarrassed by his wife?

Maria Menounos (who is moving up in the world, doing segments for Today and the Nightly News) recently did a four-part segment featuring the entire Obama family on Access Hollywood, and Barack rarely spoke, letting his daughter Malia and wife Michelle spill all his dirty secrets, like how he doesn’t like most sweets (except pie).

Most of this stuff is benign, but it was delivered with a hint of hostility, a tone I’ve detected in Michelle’s previous comments about her husband’s personal habits. Her daughter has picked up on this, too.

I don’t understand this impulse at all. I don’t find it endearing or cute. I know people razz on their friends and family members all the time, but usually there’s an undercurrent of affection in the teasing. But with Michelle Obama, I just don’t see it, even though I’m sure she means well. It’s supposed to open up the candidate, showing us who he really is, foibles and all. That’s why candidates and their families do silly puff interviews like the Access Hollywood one in the first place, although Barack has been regretting it of late. I usually don’t mind personal habits—to a degree. Nothing embarrassing, nothing I’m cringing at. It also has to be delivered in a way that makes all parties ok with it, and my problem seems to be that because Barack himself doesn’t seem to be ok with this teasing, I’m not either. He doesn’t look mildly embarrassed, a little sheepish, just coldly nodding his head, letting the facts stand there.

It’s also what Michelle Obama says that irks me. Her comment that he is “snore-y and stink-ey” struck me as low, even if she’s talking about him first thing in the morning. There’s a difference in saying that a spouse is clumsy or forgetful at times; attacking him for personal hygiene habits is too TMI for my taste.

I understand that Michelle Obama is just trying to flesh out her husband and not deify him, to offset this kind of cult rock star figure image that has glommed on to him. As she stated in the Glamour article, as an explanation to her earlier comments:

I think [most] people saw the humor of that. People understood that this is how we all live in our marriages. And Barack is very much human. So let’s not deify him, because what we do is we deify, and then we’re ready to chop it down. People have notions of what a wife’s role should be in this process, and it’s been a traditional one of blind adoration. My model is a little different—I think most real marriages are.

But in the Access Hollywood interviews, his family spends a good portion of time ragging on him; he barely gets a word in. He only eats mint gum. He doesn’t like sweets. He hates to shop. He wears old clothes. Wowee. He might be a little staid, but so are a lot of guys, so are a lot of political guys. Maybe it’s their way of just saying that he fits right in, despite all the ugly rumors proving he’s too much of an outsider. But it doesn’t come off that way; from Michelle it sounds like a litany of complaints. I’m not interested.

I’m not saying first ladies or potential first ladies and campaign spouses have to hold their tongues. Especially nowadays with their own high-powered careers, there is no need for them to be completely demurring and just fawn and smile sweetly when discussing their husbands, but there’s something to be said for discretion. Cindy McCain has acknowledged that her husband was away for her three miscarriages and her addiction to painkillers—something that would kill many other marriages. Like the Obamas, they decided to spend a good portion of their time living in separate places, each working where their career took them and the women largely raising the children. But while Cindy McCain has mentioned these hard times in both her marriage and in her life, she has not denigrated her husband.

Now, because I’m not voting for either Michelle Obama or Cindy McCain, this shouldn’t matter. It should have no bearing on my feelings for either candidate.

But stuff like this seeps through. Cindy McCain says she always knew that John would put the country ahead of her—so should that make us feel confident that he would make a good president because he cares about the country’s needs more than his wife’s? Should I wonder why Obama married a woman who would insult him in public? Is this a good thing, because he knows criticism and can handle it, shrugging it off like he does now? Or is this harmful, because he is immune to criticism? How does this affect—or not—his running of the country?

Recently, Slate’s XX blog has been discussing Ellen Tien’s apparently scathing account of her husband, how she thinks about divorce every day. I didn’t even read the article (written by the woman who does the Sunday Style’s Pulse), but I was appalled. What is the point of trashing your spouse (or significant other), who you are still currently with, in a public forum (print, online, video)? The only logical conclusion would be that you want out, and you want to hurt that person very, very badly.

Which is exactly what Christie Brinkley did in her exceedingly humiliating spectacle of a divorce. She exposed Peter Cook to humiliate him (and her), to get what she wanted, children and propriety be dammed. Exposing such nasty truths only serves as revenge. Michelle Obama, who has said that she won’t let Obama run again if he loses, and Cindy McCain, who is known to dislike the whole running for president thing, aren’t as brokenhearted and humiliated as Christie Brinkley is (we hope), but I don’t think they are saying these things purely out of spite. They are just telling the truth. But the truth doesn’t have to sound like they hate their husbands.

Another Survey Explaining Why Men Don't Get Women

Clueless Guys Can't Read Women

"More often than not, guys interpret even friendly cues, such as a subtle smile from a gal, as a sexual come-on, and a new study discovers why: Guys are clueless.

More precisely, they are somewhat oblivious to the emotional subtleties of non-verbal cues, according to a new study of college students.

"Young men just find it difficult to tell the difference between women who are being friendly and women who are interested in something more," said lead researcher Coreen Farris of Indiana University's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences."

Yes!

This "lost in translation" phenomenon plays out in the real world, with about 70 percent of college women reporting an experience in which a guy mistook her friendliness for a sexual come-on, Farris said.

As any girl knows, there's a fine line, which is why intentions often need explanation.

Of course, most people are going to use this as another example of Why Boys Are Dumb, why a lot of popular science is of the "duh" variety, why women need to be more direct (you go girl!), and why we're all so damn clueless.

But what might be the most interesting thing about this study is that it was funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

As even more girls will tell you, drinking means that that friendly "Hey! I haven't seen you in FOREVER!" automatically MUST mean that you're totally digging said long-lost buddy. And, well...relationships affect our mental health. Just ask anyone going through a breakup.

Names

Why is it that women are called by their first names and men by their last? Hillary is running for president, but everyone I know has been caught by Obama-mania. You could say that it’s because there already was a president with her last name, but that doesn’t really work when you think about the current one. He was referred to by nicknames or his last name, never by his first, unless derisively. I think of it in a sports environment, how all the players are called by their last name. It’s been a while since I’ve seen A League of Their Own, but I’m sure there was some sort of scene, look or line where some of the players were called by their last names. It’s gotta be a bonding thing–from both sides. Hillary is Hillary because we know her; she’s one of us. A last name is more impartial, since it belongs to your family. You call your friends by their first name (hence Hillary), but the playground tykes nicknames or last names. A last name might be funny, or carry more weight, some authority. In jobs (not my current one), I’ve been called by my last name, always by a guy. Guys seem to give nicknames more easily, are comfortable calling each other by their last names, usually as a way of differentiating them. In school I was known by my first name and last initial, a mark I still hate today. I never really minded being called by my last name–probably because it made me feel like one of the guys.