Ask an average woman in America how it feels to be single in this day and age, what would her answer be?
It seems like every other woman is on an internet dating website trying to find that perfect man. So what woman would actually want to be a single ?
In my opinion the answer is No woman.
After all, who is the single woman, if not the most desired and the most demeaned; the most coveted and the most rejected; the most admired and the most ridiculed?
She is perceived to be powerful beyond measure, while at the same time being weak; successful beyond means and also a failure. In my opinion she represents the rejected, projected and disowned portions of the collective women of our culture. Let us look at how this projection manifests itself.
In our American society, women fight tooth and nail, desperate to rid themselves of the dreaded “single” label, believing that once they do so they will obtain an elite, elevated, honorable status where they will be entitled to never-ending love, acceptance, respect and recognition.
Lie NO. 1: Before she becomes fully whole and developed as a human being in her own right, young women are encouraged to find that perfect relationship - apparently the idea is to obtain a declaration from a man to the world that she is worthy.
After marriage, women view their husbands as their personal possession; the husband becomes the property of the wife and the wife becomes his property as well. Once this blended status is “obtained” a new creation comes into being: THE MARRIAGE.
A married woman no longer exists as an autonomous, self-sufficient individual. "Thank God," I imagine she secretly sighs to herself, "I am no longer the inadequate, lonely, lacking woman I was before, when I was unmarried. THE MARRIAGE is created, a woman becomes a "wife”, and where once she might have thought herself lacking, along with a majority of her peers, she now believes herself to be something better. Think about it. A wife who is being abused is not told to save herslef; she is told to save THE MARRIAGE.
Once we understand the above to be true, it should come as no surprise to anyone that when this something better position is threatened - indeed, when THE MARRIAGE is threatened, like Clara Harris, an American woman who mowed her husband down with her car after learning of his extra marital affair, many women would rather commit murder than suffer the emotional death of losing that most coveted title of "wife". Many will go to such great lengths to keep from experiencing the annihilation of their new found status – their new found self that one might begin to wonder if for women like this there was ever much of a self to begin with.
Let's be real. If we are brave enough to really take a look at the way a single woman is perceived in America we should most certainly be confused. Any episode of The Bachelor should speak volumes. If you can sit through an episode of the outrageous Flavor of Love, you should be left scratching your head in wonder.
No matter how accomplished, no matter how intelligent, no matter how beautiful, a single woman in America is still considered lacking. Though chased and pursued, she is seemingly considered nothing unless she receives the “ring” which proclaims to the world that she is worthy.
She is often being recruited, coaxed with the promised of a white-veiled life of love and fidelity. Perhaps those who attempt to get her to conform and assimilate into a part of the married elite feel that once she does, she will no longer be a threat to their fantasy – you know, proof that there can be happiness and fulfillment outside of marriage.
But I digress. This is not a tirade about women and marriage. My goal is to explore something much deeper.
America sells the fantasy of happily ever after everywhere and the idea that marriage will complete you is just one of the forms that this marketed dream takes. Like all dreams that seem too good to be true, there is a catch. The catch here is that the fantasy that happiness can be obtained after a woman gets a husband and has the children is just that: A fantasy.
So why do so many women get suckered by a lie?
The answer might be that women buy into the all powering need to get married because they don’t want to meet the challenge of putting all of their energy into themselves and not into some unattainable goal: The goal of getting another person to help them feel good about themselves. Strange isn't it? Shouldn't it seem easier to set out to achieve personal goals rather than looking to get self-worth from others. But then, who would we have to blame when things went wrong?
We really should all know by now that people cannot truly make other people feel good about themselves. We should all know by now that the harsh truth is developing real, solid self-esteem is hard, never-ending work. But for an individual with low self-esteem, building up their own self, working on their goals, that is what seems impossible. They choose to believe they can get self-esteem from teaming up with another because it seems easier, even though receiving self worth from another is impossible.
Women truly believe that marriage will present them with the fulfillment of their wildest dreams in a gift wrapped box at their wedding reception without one ounce of effort on their part. In a true relationship of equals, respect is earned and honor is given in recognition of honorable deeds. A relationship survives when two mature people are dedicated to developing and nurturing one another, not when one party is looking to get something from the other without giving anything in return.
A fully mature, self-sufficient human being makes the best partner for another. The perks that the single woman looks to receive when she gets married is not something she is entitled to just because someone has slipped a shiny, gold band on her finger.
On a personal level, for some women perhaps the single woman is a painful indicator that the truth is there is more to life than being “wife” and “partner”. Maybe she is a reminder of a dream forgotten; a glimpse of a road untraveled; a whisper of a goal abandoned. A true marriage of equals is special; something every woman should hope to experience but there is much more to life than just that.
In actuality, many women have lived wonderful, accomplished lives unmarried while many other foolish wives have settled in complacency after they’ve snagged a husband and had a couple of kids only to find out in horror that their husband has sought affection and love in the arms of another, single woman – the dreaded “other” woman. Cleary, the husband looks for a woman who will make him feel much like his wife did before he married her but the wife does not understand this.
The irony is that the husband in many ways is looking for another woman to do for him exactly what the wife expects he would do for her: Give her self-worth. He's looking for a stamp of approval of worth from an extramarital affair; she's looking for security and self-worth from him. Yet, not realizing that her husband has unwittingly made the same mistake she has, the wife burns in indignation at the thought of his betrayal of their self.
Remember, he belongs to her and no longer can have feelings of his own. Every fiber of her being fully believes his heart, his mind, his soul belongs to her. How dare he have feelings for someone else, is often the thought that comes to mind, and with that mindset, when faced with the dismantling of her fairytale life she doesn’t admit she’s fooled herself; she doesn’t begin to build a strong sense of self, one that is not dependent on the approval and acceptance or love of anyone else. Instead, such a woman chooses to become a victim.
In her mind, her husband has sabotaged her happiness and often the response is unmitigating, irrational rage. Now considering all that I've explain, if the rage was directed at him there would be some logic to it all. But more often than not her anger goes straight out the door and finds a resting place at the door of the “other” woman!
In so many instances the wife faced with such a life crisis does not roll up her sleeves and get to work on achieving and earning the love and respect and honor that she thought would be given to her just because she became a “Mrs.” She doesn't focus on herself, looking internally for any reasons that her marriage has sailed into troubled waters. She declares that she deserves love, respect and honor simply because she carries the title “Mrs.” Rants of How could you do this to me! I am your wife, can be heard miles and miles away.
Because she has bought into society’s fantasy that we all live happily ever after "just because", her indignation doesn’t find it’s destination where it belongs, with herself OR her husband. The wife does not see herself seperate from her husband, and since she cannot admit to her own flaws, she cannot admit to his, either. She doesn’t fault him for his mistakes and certainly there is no self-recrimination for any mistakes she might have made or actions she failed to take. Accountability doesn’t come anywhere near the door of THE MARRIAGE. It is the “other” woman who bares the burden of the wife's projected feelings of impotence and weakness and the husband's mistakes. Why won’t the “other” woman just leave her husband alone? Why won’t she just get a life? The wife expects the “other” woman to do what both she and her husband will not - dare I say, cannot do.
But the blame for this kind of thinking rests with society. There is a bigger picture. The bigger picture is that society, used to burdening the single woman with rules and tasks and goal posts that keep moving even after she’s reached them, refuses to waiver from it’s campaign for perfection. The wife cannot own her mistakes because society is intolerant of anyone who is not perfect. The married woman projects and disowns her feelings in part out of her own denial and fear of being imperfect, and in part out of fear of what society will think of her. She does not want to fall under the censure of society’s critical eye. In fact, neither does the husband.
Society’s opinion of the a single woman has it’s roots in the false perception of the woman’s all powerful persona. Accordingly, if a single woman finds herself the subject of the attentions of a man who is married she is expected, without question, to be able to fend him off. But in contrast, society typically treats a married woman like a powerless person. Messages stating that a wife is helpless to control her husband if he strays or that say she is too weak to keep her husband from beating her children corroborate this thinking. The tragedy is that we, as women, have collectively colluded with society and labeled ourselves as victims, behaved as victims, lived as victims and reasoned like victims.
A lot of the pressure that we exert on women in general comes from our own selves. Married women often adapt a role of powerless while expecting other single woman in similar situations to possess super human powers of persuasion and control. Everywhere she turns a single woman is being bombarded with like-minded perceptions from people who have been trained and indoctrinated for generations by a society that says women are inferior AND ultimately responsible.
Women are persecuted with expectation after expectation that no one bothers to tell them they shouldn’t even attempt to achieve. It is the most confusing, mind-boggling and ultimately the most damaging role to impose on a person. Women experience the frustration of trying to assimilate and adapt and while floundering in the face of such an impossibile task, we are never able to find our own true, authentic self. We are constantly being told who we should be but there is no consistency, no logic, no reason to it all.
But is it just a gender thing? Perhaps society does this to us all, both men and women?
It's worthy to look for an answer to this question but be prepared, you'll find that society is a double-talking, spin doctor. The single/married woman paradigm illustrates the point perfectly. A single woman in a troubled relationship is supposed to get rid of the man because that’s what’s right, period; she is supposed to be able to get herself out of any potentially bad situation and if she doesn’t then she is WRONG!
But then society flips the script and gives a woman who is married all kinds of sympathy and reasons to explain away the terrible treatment she has, in fact, chosen to endure. Society encourages her stay in a bad relationship. She might stand aside and swallow infidelity after infidelity, dying a little inside each day or she might watch her children physically abused by their father; molested by family members or destroyed in a myriad of ways mentally and physically but not only is she often encouraged to "save" her marriage, if she stays she is often praised, coddled and comforted by society’s double talk.
It is always amazing to me that a married woman is habitually considered dedicated for staying in an unfulfilling relationship while another single woman would unabashedly be considered stupid for doing the very same thing. There is curiously one part of this equation missing; a counterpart in all of this who escapes censor and recrimation. He doesn't get blamed as part of the problem and he is not tasked with fixing it, either. Interesting, I wonder why?
But before I attempt to answer that question, I'll add just one more dose of truth to this discussion. When a woman is victimized, in any way shape or form, whether it is through the vile act of rape, whether she is the single woman who is selected by a married man to become his mistress, whether she is oppressed in the work place or discriminated against at school, emphasis is made on whatever mistakes she has made in the situation. No reflection is given by society to the fact that we all misjudge and make errors or get ourselves into bad situations. If she has ambivalent emotions society dubs her as being disingenuous simply because no consideration is given to the fact that this woman is a living, breathing human being with feelings.
Women are held up to impossibly unrealistic standards. Once we begin to understand this, we have the first clues to deciphering the mystery of the truth of how we, collectively as society, have been trained to think.
Society’s unspoken rule of thumb is the mistakes we all make, the problems we all have, the addictions we all face, the trials we all endure must remain unspoken and unacknowledged, surviving outside the scrutiny of the masses. What can be spoken about are the things that make us look good, that speak well of us and give us the illusion of perfection that we are all looking for. This rule of thumb is applied to both genders, without question. However, when one gender, though, must suffer for the benefit of the other, it will always be the woman who takes the back seat. Always.
So the headlines may read we are outraged at the Police Officer who is found with a stash of children's lingerie and a computer that shows he’s been visiting kiddy porn sites but we knew all along children's lingerie was being sold from somewhere; we knew that there were many people photographing children and exploiting them on internet porn sites but we were perfectly okay with that as long as it didn’t come to light.
We’re outraged if children are molested by other people but when it happens in our own families we are often reluctant to face it. We’ll make excuses, we’ll often react in denial and sometimes we'll do what society does to us all: We attack the victim, accusing them amazingly of being responsible for causing the act that victimized them in the first place. We let on subtlety and on occasion very clearly and cruelly that there are rules that should have been followed, things that should have been done; and if those things had been done the right way the person would have been spared.
But it is all lie, isn’t it? And when someone has to face the music, if it is a choice between holding a woman accountable and holding a man accountable, more often you will see the woman's face in the spotlight. I will say it again:
Women are held up to impossible standards.
Women today have lost her identity to the pages of Cosmopolitan. We want to become that emaciated, 110 pound air brushed beauty of impeccable tastes, flawless reasoning and the highest esteem. We are constantly being told who we should be but the woman whom we are being measured up to does not exist. The life this fictional woman is leading is in fact a lie.
Life is full of choices and set backs and disappointments and lessons. We all have to navigate through life burdened by insecurity, doubts and misgivings and when we are the most reluctant, life forces us to make the toughest choices. We all have to contend with ambivalent feelings and sometimes unwanted desires. This is the truth about life but society sends us a false message as we step out into the world that makes us completely unprepared for this truth. A young woman is told that the lie is the truth and discovers too late that she has been seriously mislead.
Is society sending all women a secret, hidden message?
Is the message clearly: With a man at your side, then you matter?
Is the married woman elevated into one who is special, better, worthier because of her husband?
Or should I ask a different question: Is it that we are all hypocrites?
Is it that we are afraid to be flawed, afraid for other’s to know that we have troubles?
Is it that we force women to abandon their true selves for a marriage certificate and those three-letter initials because our society preaches a system of perfect values and accepted behavior that is hopelessly unrealistic?
Ultimately is it that this patriarchal, us vs them, power over society supports this crazy making, backward thinking, because after all, it does create a control group of people we can then point our fingers at, ridicule, label and ultimately compare ourselves to and find lacking?
Because how else would the rest of us continue to feel good about ourselves if we were not pushing someone else's face into the ground?
