Introspection

We don’t need men. Or we don’t need men to be complete. Or we complete ourselves. Or we’re happy that we don’t have someone else living in our space, leaving caps off toothpastes. Or that we like having our own space, our own time, to pursue our own interests. Or that we have the freedom to just be ourselves. Or that it’s not us, it’s them. Or that boys are stupid and we should throw rocks at them. Or that men may come and go, but our girlfriends are forever.

While there are people who believe some of these excuses, to many other people, they are just excuses. They are phrases that we utter to ourselves to make us feel like it might not be our fault, that we might not be fundamentally unlikable, that we’re doing the best we can, and our inability to find that special someone might mean that it’s just not the right time for us, not that it will never happen, even if it feels like never’s the most likely possibility. They are sanity-preserving reframings of things that feel like they’re out of our control.
And then there are people who tell us that we’re too picky (because we won’t endlessly date men we’re not interested in), or that we’re (I love this phrase) “choosing to be single.” This implies that every day we leave our apartments, pick up our New York Times from our doorstep, and step over the lengthy line of suitors waiting with flowers and chocolates and rings and hoping that we’ll give them the matrimonial time of day. It implies that suitable men have proclaimed their desire to commit to a lifetime together, and we’ve said, “sorry, I really like being single. You know, because of Carrie Bradshaw. And you know, because Angelina and Brad don’t have to be married to have fuifilling lives, and so neither do I.” (The analogy to Jolie was apparently invoked by Katie Couric on CBS.)
Now, you all know that I literally can’t even walk down the street without someone mistaking me for Carrie Bradshaw (even though she’s fictional and I’m real) or Angelina Jolie (whose lips, I’m convinced, are fictional, even though mine aren’t). But the realities of single life aren’t always glamorous in the manner of Hollywood, and aren’t always a liberation.

The Columbia Journalism Review comments on some recent reporting by the NY Times about the fact that:

by a margin of one percent, more women are unmarried than married in America. The article, to no one’s great surprise, hinting as it does at the problems of sex and love, was the number one most emailed today (or as Gawker, in its inimitable style, put it this afternoon, “Also, 91% Of Women Are Now E-Mailing Spinster Article To Their Single Friends.”)

Leaving aside what struck us as strange methodology (like the fact that the survey counted anyone over the age of fifteen as a woman), there was something else disturbing about the piece. It had a tone of exuberance that spun the numbers as an unambiguously positive piece of progress for women. A quote from William H. Frey of the Brookings Institute captured the mood of it. The shift away from marriage, Frey said, represents “a clear tipping point, reflecting the culmination of post-1960 trends associated with greater independence and more flexible lifestyles for women.”

But this doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re choosing the single life. It means that our options are more open in terms of timelines and in terms of the men who are (theoretically) available to us. And sometimes, this means making different choices than our mothers and grandmothers might have made.

There are certainly women, especially those who are recently divorced and feeling free for the first time, who choose the single life. But those of us who choose not to marry the first person who asks (or who are stubborn enough to insist on waiting for someone who is actually appropriate and whom we love), are not choosing the single life. We’re choosing life itself.

Unless that’s just one of those things we tell ourselves.

I’ll admit it–I really liked “The Breakup.” Not because I’m like all into the Vaughniston thing (may it rest in pieces), but because finally, it presented a celluloid relationship that was flawed, and even sarcastic or mean in parts. It felt realer than the swelling music of romance as lovers race toward each other across a field, or he “has her at hello,” or “she rescues him right back,” or they meet atop the Empire State Building and know from the second they see each other that it’s just right. I mean, call me a cynic, but puh-leeeze.

It’s because of movies like these that I’ve spent most of my adolescent and post-adolescent life with a romanticized view of love that’s nowhere near approaching reality. I know this, but still, I’m wired to believe that this kind of romance exists. And that’s why it’s good for America to have films that portray relationships as difficult, nuanced, tenuous–which on the day-to-day level is often more of a series of logistical and emotional negotiations than a romantic blur of kissing, hand-holding, companionship and epic music. “The Breakup” tells you right in the title–this isn’t your standard rom-com. And yet, the first audience comment I heard at the screening I attended was: “Well, that’s two hours of my life I’m never getting back. That was the worst movie ever.” But that’s not what the female, twentysomething moviegoer really meant. She meant: “I wanted a happy ending.”

A new film, “Flannel Pajamas,” according to the NY Sun, will likely also disappoint the disgruntled rom-com seeking audience member I overheard, but may just help us all understand that relationships aren’t all magic and romance and happily ever afters. As writer Steven J. Snyder says in the article:

Turning its back on the sentimental for the universal, this isn’t a pick-meup tale of how we wish life was, but a loving embrace of a movie made by filmmakers who know a thing or two about how it actually is [...] What’s powerful about “Flannel Pajamas” is that these two remind of us of flawed couples we know — personalities of people who fit together, but not perfectly. Like trying to force a puzzle piece into a spot it doesn’t fit, Stuart [Justin Kirk] and Nicole [Julianne Nicholson] function if they push as hard as they can to make their relationship work, but without the added effort, they will never be what the other needs. And yet they try, committed to building something that’s more good than bad, believing that affection is enough to overcome the obstacles of family, friends, dreams, and emotions. Amid this struggle, “Flannel Pajamas” becomes one of the few movie romances to own up to the truth: In the end, marriage is about a whole lot more than just love.

Wouldn’t that be an interesting message for today’s impressionable minds to leave the theater with? That, even when there’s an instant connection, love still takes work? That relationships aren’t instantly the solution to your problems?

I know I’m like a Grinch stealing relationship Christmas. Reality sucks, but that’s where we live. “The Breakup” got decent reviews, but wasn’t a major success–maybe people still flee to the movies to escape their lives, and if their problems follow them into the plot, they’re not happy. But is that happiness delusional? And is delusional happiness healthy, in the long run, if it alters our expectations to an impossible level?