Wading in the Velvet Sea

That might come off as bitter, but really, it isn’t. Some people want relationships. Others don’t. Not wanting a hard-core relationship isn’t, contrary to popular opinion, a mark of deviant selfishness that will send you into a moral quagmire from which you emerge, penitent, when you’re 87 and watching your waste products empty into a bag three feet from your bed while bemoaning your inability to dedicate your life to another person at the age of 25.

Now that we’ve had our Very Bad Visual Image of the Day, let’s move on.

Why are men supposed to love singledom? The story, as its been told to me, runs something like this:

The shot opens on a cave wall. Shadows of crackling flame dance feverishly as the camera pans down to a series of cavemen.

In the beginning, men ruled through sheer brutal force. They clubbed animals to death, dragged their wives by their hair, and were the providers. While they occasionally got Parcheesi nights out alone with the boys, by and large their moral code dictated that they keep their wives around long enough to knock them up and propagate their good looks. This passed as monogamy. Guys (and Darwinian theory) played along.

We are now in Victorian England. Jane Austen teaches us that one gets engaged by finally holding hands with someone. Jack the Ripper is helping London know exactly where the Red Light district is.

Women wear clothing so binding and complex to ensure no man would ever still be sexually interested by the time the corset finally came off. Society dictates chivalry, but very few people are giving it anything more than a cursory look. (Read your Foucault, peeps.) Women can’t find any man who is nearly as dashing as Mr. Bennett, and men go off and settle for Madame Bovary while their wives are in Hour Two of Undressing. Again, singlehood is eschewed, but monogamy is abhorred. Darwin is by now alive and only getting action from some finches he brought back with him.

Flash forward to 1985. Men look like women who look like men who look like Annie Lennox. Women can now vote, work, and wear outfits with frickin’ huge shoulderpads.

Men, horrified that their wives look like Howie Long, masturbate to Samantha Fox videos after their girlfriends have gone to bed. Here, in the baby boom generation, the concept of ‘lifelong monogamy’ as the desired end-goal is truly shattered across an entire generation. Yes, marriage wasn’t hunky dory beforehand, but the baby boomers took all their parents fed them, digested it for a bit, and spit it out like bad (Michael) Milk(in). By this point, many of them have already had kids---namely, us. Darwin, from beyond the grave, dances to A Flock of Seagulls.

Well, this ‘Wading in the Velvet Sea Afterschool Movie’ was informative, wasn’t it, kids? Now go get a cookie and come back.

Back? Like the cookie?

You have some crumbs on your face, right there…no, the other side. Good. OK.

So what have we learned in the shortest ‘History of Relationships’ summary in the History of Man? Well, the common trend of the last 25 years in the pop psych market tells us that men and women have always been forced to live out a societal structure which dictates marriage and propagation, and only since the 1960’s has this notion been fully confronted as the social contract that it is. The reality is in fact much messier---as many men wants relationships as women, but equally as many, it seems, want nothing to do with this.

So here comes the fun sexism. If a woman wants to not seek a monogamous relationship, either by focusing on career or simply having a good time, she’s considered a phreak. If a guy does it, hardly anyone blinks an eye. (Except their mothers, who wring their hands nervously.) I’ll speak for the guys here, since if I’ve learned just about anything about women, it’s that I don’t know Jack Squat about what goes on in what they call ‘logic’. They call it ‘logic’ even though ‘logic’ actually stays really, really far away, whispering to its buddies at the bar, ‘Dude, I ain’t going near that with a ten foot pole.’

So, these single men, are they really envied by other guys, those ‘tied down’ to the ‘ball and chain’ or a relationship? Well, if they guy’s utterly whipped, yea, maybe he’s envious of Joe Single who gets to eat boneless buffalo wings while flipping through five stations of ESPN while Joe Taken is sitting at his potential mother-in-law’s house flipping through baby pictures of a girl he’s already seen naked and (hopefully) with a much better looking naked body.

The rest of the guys, however, know better. Very few people are really happy alone. They might be better off than they would be if in a bad relationship, but it’s sometimes an ill-fitting comfort. It gets a bit worse as you get older. Girls expect to get hit on by a 24 year old at a bar. If they guy is 30, though, the normal ‘Danger Will Robinson’ alarms go off even more. The thought process is thus: ‘If they were really a catch, someone would have caught them by now.’ (Now, again with the sexism: Girl hits on a guy at a bar. What’s the guy thinking? ‘Oh, hell yes, it’s on. This girl needs a big order of ME to go.’ Just’ack. That’s another article. Actually, I wrote three [here, here, and here] about this.)

A lot of single guys, especially those coming out of long-term relationships, don’t even bother getting to the stage where they are mentally accused of being Humbert Humbert. Why? It’s a lot of frickin’ work. We’re tired. If you invest 12, 16, 24, however many months into a person---well, generally you’re not instantly looking to start back again. If you run a marathon, you’re not hopping to go the next day for another 26 miles. Doesn’t mean we can’t, or won’t, we just need a little mental Gatorade IV drip for a while.

Full confession, which has been obvious to most for a bit I imagine---I’m in that position now. Have been single for a month. Wasn’t pretty, was necessary. Details aren’t important, no one did anything wrong; life led us down different paths and those paths are going to diverge in ways that may or may not meet down the road. But for now, they are separate. People have been saying I should ‘get back out there’. Well, I don’t even know where ‘there’ is, and generally, I’m not itching to find out. I don’t want to ‘play the field’; I want the field to come over, give me a lap dance and some French Fries, and maybe then I’ll say hi. Just can’t be buggered.

There are always times, in relationships, when one or both parties look across the table, smile at each other, and think, ‘God, this steak knife would look great buried in your throat.’ Thoughts of getting away are natural; they generally are pipe dreams though. Look, if you can’t have your own life while sharing it with someone else, you’re probably in the wrong relationship. Your significant other is ideally supposed to compliment you, not swallow you whole. ‘Relationship’ need not mean ‘co-dependence’, which is not to say relationships don’t involve dependence. Relying on someone is terrifying but ultimately about as rewarding as can be if actualized; losing your own will in the process is about as destructive as possible.

Single life has its rewards, but for especially those of us who have been in long-term relationships, it isn’t always ideal. Necessary? Often. Healthy? In the long run. The end goal? Hardly. So we make do, best we know how, day by day. Some are better than others. But we wait, and, on good days, hope.