Decoupling

[Tabouli]

The Elk ranting about the romantic paradigm!  Ooo, fascinating.  Even at 2am, how could I resist?  Perhaps I can squeeze in a quick musing now and then muse in more depth tomorrow.

I have often pondered along similar lines.  The whole notion that one is somehow tragic and incomplete without a sexual partner gets my goat.  The well-meaning but infuriating types who tell you you will End Up Alone if you keep being So Fussy (the implication being that life without a sexual partner is not worth living so you should take whatever you can get and be grateful).  And, worse still, dig up the most frightful single people of the appropriate gender in their social circle and try to Set You Up.  Ugh!

It's everywhere, this notion.  Dinners for two... for you and "someone special".  Some article I read about Jodie Foster saying "It seems so sad that someone so beautiful and talented has no-one to share her life with".  A (former) friend of mine whose comment after my stomach operation was "Well look at you!  You nearly died, and what would you have had to show for it?"  At my incredulous protests ("Are you saying my life would have been worthless because I don't have a *boyfriend*??") she replied "Well isn't that what life's about?  Finding love?"

The fact of the matter is that I have, to date, *always* been happier when single than when in a sexual relationship.  *Always*. (cue for friends to coo "oooh, but that's because you just haven't met the right guy...").  Relationships have the very effect on me that Elkins describes.  A relationship consumes so much of my mental space and time and energy, narrows my focus, dominates my brain.  Relationships podify me.  Haven't had one for two years and haven't missed having one.  And have been happier in the last two years than I ever was before now when I was having a series of what were really pretty unsatisfactory relationships.

The most irksome thing about it isn't the lack of boyfriend, it's people's refusal to believe that you can be happy without one.  They are convinced that you are just in denial, or putting a brave face on it, or playing the independent woman who needs no-one role and fooling no-one, or, most insultingly of all, that the reason why you're single is because there's Something Wrong With You (too fussy, too unrealistic, "threatened by men", too old, too unattractive... the list goes on).

It really gets offensive.

That isn't to say that I'd say no if a relationship that looked like it had the potential to be really fulfilling and stimulating was on offer.  But if one isn't, however, why enter a relationship you know doesn't have that potential just for the sake of being in a couple?  For the sake of "having someone"?  For "not being alone"?  I mean, really!  Alone.  Being in a bad relationship is MUCH MORE ALONE than being single and happy!

As to where this couplethink concept comes from, I've had a number of thoughts on this in the last few years.  I went through a phase three or four years ago when I did want a relationship.  When I really did feel lonely, and alienated, and craved the attention and affection.  Interestingly enough, this was when I was spending the great majority of my time doing things I didn't value.  Doing a full-time job which consumed five days a week and going home to my thesis, seeing friends for brief periods on weeknights or weekends.  I had very little time and energy and mental space left for doing things I valued and enjoyed which made me feel happy and fulfilled, and I think this is the key.  I wanted a relationship because I wanted to feel valued and wanted, to get some personalised attention and affection and intimacy.  Some me time.

Now that I'm no longer working full-time, and have lots of time to do things I value, time and mental space to think and breathe and explore life and see my friends, I don't feel the need for a relationship at all.

I wonder if this has a lot to do with the couplethink syndrome.  Someone who is spending the majority of their time generating income who doesn't gain a great deal of enjoyment or personal satisfaction from their job, or have the time and opportunity to develop intimate connections with other people (apart from their colleagues, if they're lucky) is, I think, susceptible to feeling bored and lonely and unfulfilled.  And relationships promise stimulation and company and fulfilment.  Sure, they often don't deliver, but even fairly mediocre relationships provide some personalised attention.  Even the illusion of intimacy gives you something to cling to.  And, as Elkins points out so ruefully, people *do* cling most tenaciously to unsatisfactory relationships all too often, because the alternative is just too grim.

Then there's the individualist society factor.  I ran a series of workshops for international students (mostly from Asia) and got them to speculate about what various items said about Australian society.  One of the things I gave them was a page from the lonely hearts column in the local paper, and a Thai (or was he Indonesian?) man said something quite interesting.  He said that Westerners seem to be obsessed with "finding love" and "soulmates" and so on in a way people in his country aren't.  In his country, you (hopefully) get that sort of feeling of belonging and intimacy from your extended family, and it's not so crucial to find a spouse to complete you and fulfil all your emotional needs, there's a much stronger element of social obligation.  You get more choice about how you run your life in the West, he said, people are much more independent of their families and can focus on themselves and what they want, but it often comes at the price of loneliness and alienation.

I don't know how far I'd take this guy's theory, or his generalisations about the cultures concerned, but it did make me think.

Tabouli.


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