The Goldilocks Conundrum of Internet Dating

Am I the only one who finds the summer Olympics incredibly boring compared to the winter games? (Luge! Curling! Ice Dancing! That event where you ski with a rifle and then shoot at targets! Swoon.) I think it’s because I have always found races that are just about speed boring - swim meets, track events, they just don’t hold my interest.  I don’t hate the gymnastic events, and diving is pretty amazing, but the things I think I’d really like are skill-based events like archery and shooting and fencing, and we just don’t get much of that on the primetime feed. I should look up how to watch this stuff live, but also I have a job where I have to be in meetings a lot, and interact with people in my office, so…

All that is to say that I was home sick today and tried to watch Olympic coverage, and was bored to tears by the NBC coverage. Now it’s dudes running. Back to my fantasy channel of HGTV, where people with normal jobs can actually buy real estate. (Being a New Yorker really sucks sometimes.)

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In things relevant to this blog, I am both proud and also terrified to announce that I have put the OKCupid app on my phone. This is a terrible idea. But I also actually began a few conversations with people who seem not-crazy, and don’t want to run away from them? Man, this is so hard.

I wonder if I just need start every OKC conversation with “hey, I’m wicked bad at this part, but pretty good in person - can we just skim each other’s profiles and then decide if we want to have coffee?” But at the same time, I want to be able to have enough back and forth to know that I’m interacting with a person who can be non-crazy and also not try to sext with me. (This is the worst. Sexting is THE WORST. I mean, maybe it’s fine if you’re dating someone, but just the IDEA of sexting with strangers gives me such secondhand embarrassment that I have to lay down.)

Also, I have to figure out how to screen people on two basic criteria for 2016: Are you voting for Hillary Clinton in this election (even if you’re not thrilled to)? And have you ever used the phrase “All Lives Matter”? Wrong answers on either of those are a dealbreaker for me, but I don’t want to be the humorless bitch who opens with political questions. (And embedding them in my profile is useless since many people just… don’t… read it.)

Fuck! Why is dating now based on texting people!? I am literally the worst at texting people! I have many people who will attest to this fact!

Navigating this is like Goldilocks and the Three Bears: you don’t want to spend so much time talking that the whole thing goes cold. But you don’t want to not spend enough time talking and get burned on a coffee date with a racist Bernie-bro sexter. There is this "just right" sweet spot that I am having a hard time finding. Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance is a great sociological read about dating in the world of cell phones and apps, and it’s also scary as hell. Because apparetly no one enjoys this. No one. And no one knows the right way to do it. After much study, there is no magic formula. Aziz himself, who is way better at texting than I am, is currently dating a nice girl he met through friends, at a party, like a dude from the 1950s would have. So, sorry Aziz, but your advice rings a little hollow on the internet dating front.

All that said, I am still stumped and not above polling the internet. Anyone have any advice on how to start a conversation, find out if a person is sane, non-racist, and not sexually creepy, and then END a conversation and move to the coffee ‘I probably will decide I don’t want to date this person anyway’ phase before one of us gets bored and wanders off?

What's the opposite of the NRA? The N-NRA?

I’ve been pretty silent on this blog of late; I think I was trying to keep this as a ‘one issue’ sort of space, and talking about being single and kidless when circumstances aren’t actually changing all that much is kind of sad and kind of boring, for you and for me.

But fuck that. Who cares if this is a one issue blog? It’s my blog! So here we go:

This week, something absolutely horrifying happened, and I want to talk about it. This week, a man in Orlando, armed with an assault rifle and a pistol (but mostly the assault rifle) was able to kill 49 people and injure over 50 more in the deadliest mass shooting yet in America.

I want to make something clear: I care why. I do. I think that the ‘why’ of this is very, very, fundamentally important. I think that the conversation around whether this was a hate crime (spoiler alert: it was a hate crime) is very important. I think pulling apart the complexity of the ‘why’ of this event is key for the victims and their families and the LGBTQ community and the whole of the nation to get closure.

But honestly? It’s the ‘how’ of this event that has me fucking angry. And what’s compounding it is that none of the straw man ‘radical Islamic terrorist’ arguments that are being bandied about on my television address the real issue. The real issue is this: a man, born in New York, a U.S. citizen with an employment background in security, who was NOT on any terror watchlist, was able to buy an assault weapon and ammunition with the intent to murder as many LGBTQ people as he could.

[A side note back to the ‘why’ for a moment:

Friends, I need to you to ignore the red herring being waved at you on your televisions. He was not on a watchlist, because the FBI, after a 15 month investigation, had no reason to think he was directly connected to terror groups. They had no reason to think that because, as far as we are aware, he was NOT connected to any terror groups. He was a lone wolf gunman. He may have pledged his allegiance to ISIL before he did this, but he was not supported by ISIL, nor was he backed by ISIL.

The news wants to draw parallels between what happened in a gay nightclub in Orlando and what happened in San Bernadino. I think a much, much closer comparison would be between what happened in a gay nightclub in Orlando and what happened in a black church in Charleston. In both cases, you have a man who is clearly full of anger, whose anger is directed at a group of people whom he considers to be less-than himself, who he sees as a threat to his way of life, who he sees holding power and influence they ‘shouldn’t’ have, maybe more than he has himself. You have that man find places - online, in his community, on conservative news channels - where others not only agree with him, but also support him, fuel his hatred, give his bigotry weight and importance. You have that man then take it upon himself solve the problem, to go to where these people are, to walk among them, to hear them and see them and still not believe that they are human beings worthy of love, because the hate in him is so strong, so huge. Because it’s so much a part of who he is that he can’t stop thinking about it, he can’t stop obsessing about it. And you have that man take a weapon that he legally obtained, a weapon of WAR, and bring it into a peaceful place, with the intent to kill those he finds abhorrent.]

So yes, I think ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ is a red herring. And it will distract us from the truth.

The truth is that an American citizen with no criminal history (let’s face the fact that we have such a terrible track record in this country of helping women who are in domestic abuse situations that his ex-wife’s family came and physically removed her from his home without bothering to try to involve the police), who was no longer under surveillance by the FBI (after he fully complied with their investigation), and who went through a (short, but mandatory) waiting period to pick up his weapons (even though he could have picked up his rifle the same day! Florida, you are on drugs.) then murdered 49 people with those weapons.

It seems like very little could have been done to prevent this tragedy.

The issue now is, what can we do to stop the next one.

My first reaction to news of the shooting, after the shock and grief, was this: Congress is complicit in the deaths of these 49 Americans. And most of that is due to the sacred cow that is the Second Amendment, and the fear lawmakers have of touching anything that comes close to challenging it.

So you know what I have to say to the gun lobby? FUCK THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

Say it with me. Come on, I know you want to! I know we hold the Constitution up to a standard even our grandmothers can’t live up to, but that Second Amendment is a millstone around our necks, and supporting it is KILLING AMERICANS EVERY DAY. Thousands upon thousands of us, every year. So FUCK the Second Amendment. We don’t need it. Repeal it. Abolish it. And then abolish all the guns.

Yes, all of them. We don’t need them. You don’t need them. You don’t need to hunt for your food, or for sport. (Buy your meat from the supermarket. Take up fishing.) You don’t need them for protection from burglars. (Chances are your kid would die from an accidental shooting before your house is ever burgled.) Let’s go and do what the NRA has been fear-mongering about for decades - let’s pass laws outlawing all guns, and then let’s go and TAKE EVERYONE’S GUNS AWAY. Let’s dismantle them, let’s melt them down. Let’s never have a gun show again. Let’s make the manufacture of them illegal. Let’s make even having one in your home a felony. Maybe we can keep gun ranges open, where all weapons are checked in and out for the day, and never leave the premises. Maybe the antique ones passed down from our ancestors who fought in the Civil War can be kept in locked cases, as heirlooms. Our military can keep a few. But why not try living in a world where average Jane’s and Joe’s can’t own guns. At all. Not a one.

Does that sound crazy? Maybe! Does that sound crazier than the rhetoric of the NRA? Not really!

The gun lobby has been worried for decades that the Left would come and take their guns. I’ve been worried for just as long that we WON’T. Why is my fear about guns trumped by their fear about being tread upon? I’m a grownup with a voice and a vote! Why shouldn’t I yell what I believe at the top of my lungs, just as loudly as they do?

Here’s the crux of the gun control fight: I think we’ve been fighting it wrong. I think that those who believe in more (and more and more) gun control have been gently, quietly placating Second Amendment gun nuts for far too long. I think we’ve been tiptoeing into rooms saying things like “not all gun owners” and “closing loopholes” and “common sense laws." And it’s gotten us nowhere. It’s gotten us nothing. Nothing but nightclubs and movie theaters and office parties and elementary schools and churches full of bodies.

Here’s what I propose: let’s go hard to the left. Let’s threaten the FUCK out of the Second Amendment. Let’s come for their guns. Let’s keep coming, and coming, and coming for their guns until they’re as TERRIFIED of us as we are of them. Let’s be the left-wing Constitution-hating boogeyman they warn their children about. Let’s stand up and be loud and be counted and be AMERICANS with a VOICE.

And then, when they’re as scared as we are, let’s sit down and talk. Let’s say “you can keep handguns, but no more assault weapons.” Let’s say “law-abiding Americans can own guns, but once they’ve broken the law (especially in terms of domestic violence), you give up your right to any guns.” Let’s say “gun shows can stay, but let’s have a way to do on-site background checks.” Let’s say “gun violence is a problem, but we should figure out what a ‘responsible gun owner’ really looks like so we don’t accidentally take their guns - why don’t we fund some research into it by the CDC?”

You see, in order to come to a middle ground, you’ve got to have voices on both sides. The middle is where no one gets everything they want, so it’s not a popular place. But hey, that’s America. In order to have sane compromise, you have to have two equal sides fighting for opposing ideologies. And if the NRA is going to be extremist, then so can we. I’ve picked my side. I’ve picked American lives over the sacred cow of the Second Amendment.

Hopefully, sooner rather than later, we can all meet in the middle, as Americans.

(As I write this, Senate Democrats are… filibustering seems to be the wrong word, since they’re trying to get legislation onto the floor and not block it. But they’re committing themselves to speaking in support of gun regulation for as long as it takes to pull sensible, sane laws up for a vote.  Well done, Democrats! You’ve been doormats on gun control for far too long! Maybe sanity will come sooner this time? Enough is certainly enough. I won’t be thrilled if we ‘only’ get an assault weapons ban through Congress, but hey - it’s a start!)

NYMag writes a piece awesome enough to break my radio silence!

Sorry for the long quiet - I developed some health issues late last year that took a considerable amount of time and energy to get to the bottom of, and by the time I was back to wellness in January, my writing mojo over here had slipped. And you know how it is - you owe a friend an email, but you don't reply right away so you forget for a week or two, and then you feel guilty so you don't email in case your friend is mad, and suddenly it's five months later and you still haven't emailed, and you've stopped leaving your house just in case you run into said friend at the store, even though they live an hour away!

Anyway, my silence was a little like that. But I'm back! Or, that's the plan!

I have a few things to catch up on over here in (topics include: what to say to people who tell you you look great when your weight loss is due to a pretty crappy illness! How to deal with random fat jokes in childrens' books! OKCupid - why are you so literally panic inducing?!) but I'll start by just directing you all to this week's New York Magazine cover feature: The Single American Woman. It's a phenomenal piece by Rebecca Traister about the new political power of unmarried women (single, divorced, widowed, mothers and non) who made up a whopping 23% of the voting population in 2012. The political power of a group that large could be staggering.

(The story also inspired this kickass cover!)

Traister is very clear that this group is not a monolith - her historical exploration of the sexism that pushed white women into suburban kitchens in the 1950's and its stark contrast to the racism that kept black families (and black women) out of the suburbs and in the underpaid workforce is an especially good example of why intersectionality is so important when talking about feminism. But she also notes that other times when America has had more single ladies than it knew what to do with (after the Civil War, and again after WWI, for example), single women led the charge in social reforms, from abolition to sufferage to establishing a whole bunch of women's colleges. It would be amazing if we were on the edge of another wave of social reform like that - one that moved the focus of American politics away from the nuclear family. That was an ideal that barely held water in the '50s, and certainly isn't the norm today.

Overall Traister notes that there are many policies in discussion on the state and federal level - raising the minimum wage, universal health care, affordable child care, paid family leave, women's health funding (reproductive and otherwise) - that would benefit single women across economic boundaries. In fact, a bunch of those would make it easier for a single woman like me to make the decision to have kids on my own - a decision that Dan Quayle railed against in the Murphy Brown era, but that is much more common, and commonly accepted, today.

So here's to All the Single Ladies! (That's also the name of Traister's new book, which I may have to check out!)

Looking for Upsides

One of the things I’ve tried to do this year while I’ve been dealing with my kidless circumstances is look for upsides to the whole thing. Silver linings. Little good things that might help make the big bad thing feel a little less suffocating.

Right now, I’m on vacation in Orlando. I kind of hate the weather in Orlando, but I do love both food and Harry Potter, and so this week my mom and I are here for both the Harry Potter experience at Universal (I got to have some Toad in the Hole and butterbeer for lunch yesterday at the Leaky Cauldron, and yes, it was just as charming as it sounds) and for the Epcot Food & Wine Festival. Walking around the theme park yesterday, there was a distinct lack of people. No ride had a line longer than 20 minutes. We could just wander up to something and do it.

The reason? It’s the last week of September, and no schools anywhere are off for vacation. It’s the “low season” for tons of tourist attractions, so I can have my pick of cheap flights, good hotel rooms, and 2-for-1 packages. I’ve been enjoying the pick of vacation deals for years now! May is another great time to travel - kids are ramping up to final exams and the beaches are nearly empty. Want to have some fun in the sun for a steal? Try early February in Cancun! With no school calendars to deal with and only myself to pay for, travel is easy and flexible, and my waiting-in-line time is nearly nothing.

There’s a list that runs through my head of things that are easier without kids. On top of travel, It includes: taking the subway, eating at pricey restaurants, sleeping in, cleaning my apartment, cursing loudly when I stub my toe, making last-minute plans for a drink after work.

It also includes spending money on things when I shouldn’t. I have a fair bit of debt racked up from a combination of non-profit salary, student loans, and crappy spending habits. A few years ago, I made up a personal austerity plan to get out of credit card debt so that I would feel more secure having kids on my own - no new clothes for a while, no big vacations, no fancy dinners and expensive theater tickets. I needed that space on my credit card for donor banks and fertility clinics (both not covered by my insurance).

Now that I’ve made the decision not to get pregnant, my debt-reduction plan has gone mostly out the window. Who cares if I’m in debt, when the only person it’s hurting is me?

Jody Day, one of the ladies from my book recommendations post, talks about how she nearly decided to accept a very dangerous job in Afghanistan. She wasn’t worried about the danger to herself because she was a kidless single woman. If she died, she thought, what would it matter? That might sound insane, but I will tell you that I’ve had the same thoughts. I’ve wondered if I should ditch my NYC life for a job with a lot more travel and a bit more danger. I don’t have kids to worry about, or a spouse. What if I just jumped into something crazy?

I honestly don’t know if that line of thought an upside or not. I don’t know if I want to do crazy things because I want to, or just because I can. I don’t know if I actually feel like my life would have more worth if I joined an NGO and moved to Cameroon, or if I’m just trying to do something, anything, that gives my kidless single life some deeper meaning.

The upsides to a kidless life are not hard to find. But the scale seems to be eternally tipped toward kids so that no matter how many upsides I pile on the other side, it never feels quite even. It always feels like the upsides are a consolation prize.

But don’t get me wrong - if I can’t have the kid, I’ll take the short lines.

Choice vs 'Choice'

I can’t stop thinking about this Guardian article my friend A share with me this week.  Entitled ‘There’s no stigma: why so many Danish women are opting to become single mothers’, the article is, on the surface, about how the liberal mindset of Denmark has led to a new class of family led by ‘solomars’ - single mothers by choice.

There’s a lot of talk of why women are having children alone, making it clear that most of these women were “waiting it out”, trying to find men who wanted to have children with them until they were (on average) thirty-six.

But in reality, it’s just an outline of what a whole host of women in many countries would love to have access to:

“Denmark is famously family-friendly, with 52 weeks’ paid parental leave for a new baby and a generous welfare state paying three-quarters of the costs of childcare, enabling 85% of mothers to return to work. “It’s easier to be a solomor in Denmark than elsewhere because society accepts and supports you – we’re pretty liberal about most things,” says Erb.”

And later:

Won’t women’s job prospects suffer if they’re grappling with small children while trying to finish degrees and get on the career ladder? “Not if men and women realise they have to play a part,” she says: “Denmark has the highest employment rate among mothers in the world – we have the day care, we have the welfare state – it shouldn’t harm women’s careers to have their children a little earlier.”

My tweet to A after reading the article was “Man, if I had free fertility care, a year of maternity leave and cheap child care after that, LIFE WOULD BE DIFFERENT. Sigh.”  A’s reply was “I just read it and cried.”

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Choices women make can only be compared when all the decks are stacked the same. 

I say I’ve made a “choice” to not have kids on my own. But in reality, U.S. society is not set up to make it possible for a single woman of my income (and my income is pretty high, statistically) to have a kid alone. Insemination is not covered by my insurance. Neither is sperm, if I wanted to go through a donor bank. My (very well-established) non-profit offers no maternity leave. (Women have to use up all of their sick and vacation time; after that, they are eligible for disability if they want more time at home with their babies.) There is no subsidized child care. Once I had a kid, my health insurance premiums would go way up. And don't even get me started on saving for college.

My grandfather was born and raised in Denmark. I wonder if it’s time to consider going back?  (JK, if I wanted to be a Danish citizen in my childbearing years, I should have moved there a decade ago.)

Fat is not a Four-Letter Word

There was a lot of talk in certain circles of the internet this week surrounding a (now deleted) youtube video by popular vlogger Nicole Arbour entitled “Dear Fat People”. In the video, Arbour spends long minutes telling fat people they are fat, and should be ashamed of being fat because it’s gross, and don’t we love ourselves enough to be thin? She’s calling it comedy, satire, a funny way to tackle what she thinks is a serious subject.

I call it bullying.

(This might not seem relevant to this blog about singledom, but bear with me.)

Look, I’m fat.

I have friends and family who cringe when I use that word, because they don’t think of me as “fat”. They don’t look at me and see a fat person. “You’re not fat, you’re adorable,” they’ll say, and I’ll reply “No, I am totally fat. I am a fat person.”

It’s jarring for them to hear, because fat is not a thing society wants a person to be.

A number of my friends and family end up falling in to two camps: the ones who argue that I cannot be fat, because that is an insult, and they love me too much to insult me like that, and the ones who concern troll me about my weight, because they love me so much and every fucking thing in society tells them that Fatty Fatsons like myself are doomed to die young from being fat. Either way, what comes across to me, as a fat person, is that being fat is not okay. That the person I see when I look in a mirror is upsetting to a lot of people. That I do not fit within the prescribed limits of what is okay for humans to be.

Arbour’s video is the pinnacle of this. It’s thoughtless, and it’s hurtful, and I am 100000% glad it’s gone from the internet (at least for now).

Look, if you have ever told a fat friend “you’re not fat, you’re lovely!”, please know that I know you are trying to be very nice to a person you like a lot, but it’s doing the opposite. Also, please think about what that means for you in the world. If you refuse to see your lovely, smart, talented, cute friend as fat, even when they are pretty obviously fat, think about what that means for how you see fat people you don’t know.

Here’s a quick exercise: think about the people in your life. I am going to bet that there is at least one (probably more than one) who is fat, and who you love. Think about if you didn’t know that person and saw them on the street. Think about what you would think when you looked at them. When you looked at their body. Think about if you would be judging them, about if you would point them out to your friends and whisper “oh, shit, some people should not wear leggings." What if you saw your fat friend in a restaurant enjoying some (probably well-earned and certainly delicious) french fries? If they were a stranger, would you frown at them, thinking “of course they’re fat, look at what they’re stuffing into their mouth!” What if your friend was a stranger in a bar, and bought you a drink? What would your gut reaction be?

This is why it hurts so much being told you’re not fat by people you care about.

You, as a fat person, now know that this person doesn’t want you to be fat because they know what fat people are, they know how lazy they are, how much they don’t care about themselves. They know that fat people are an eyesore. They know how gross fat bodies are, and that they’d never want to see one naked. And they don’t see those characteristics in you, but instead of re-evaluating how they think about fat people, they just re-categorize you as “not fat.”

And here we go: relevance!

I went to the beach this weekend with some wonderful friends. I spent hours laying in the sun and splashing in the waves and having heart-to-hearts and laughing a whole bunch. One of my friends had her new camera with her. “Let me take your picture,” she said, and I looked her with my floppy hat on, and I smiled. It was a good day.

She sent me the picture last night with the note “You’re so cute!” In the photo, I’m smiling in my sunglasses and my pink straw hat. You can see the dark spots of my moles. You can see my saggy double chin, and the roll of fat along my neck as I turned to smile at her camera. It’s a headshot - you can’t even see my body south of my sternum. But I looked at that photo and I thought, “Oh, fuck. Fuck. Is that what I looked like out there, on the beach all day?” I was nauseous.

I forgot I was fat yesterday. I didn’t think I looked like that on the beach because I felt whole and right and unashamed of my happiness, and fat people aren’t supposed to feel those things. But that photo is proof of my constant fatness, and my reaction to it is proof of my own unease with that, no matter how much I try to be body positive.

I call this blog “circumstantially single” because it is. It’s mostly circumstantial that I haven’t met the right person for me. I am an extrovert; I love parties and meeting new people and making them laugh. But if I didn’t admit that I’m worried (ashamed, terrified) that part of the reason I’m single is because I’m fat, I would be lying to you.

I’m not single just because I’m fat. I know that well enough because I have a lot of happy, fat friends who are not single! They have found people - fat people, thin people, all sorts of in-between people - who love them and desire them and make them feel special and beautiful. And who, I am assuming (hoping?), don’t spend a lot of time telling them they are not fat.

Because they are fat. And also smart and kind and generous and sexy and funny and all the other things that people can be.

But I am terrified (worried, ashamed) that for every person who knows me, who adores me and laughs at my jokes and compliments my outfits, and tells me I’m not fat - for every one of those people, there are a hundred to whom I am the stranger in a restaurant, with my plate of fries. That one of those people - hell, more than one! - could have been “the one” for me, if only I’d been less fat, and they’d seen me like my friends see me.

I am ashamed (terrified, worried) that I have thought that same thing about a person in a restaurant, or someone buying me a drink at a bar. Because fat people, well. We fat people judge fat people just as much as non-fat people do. And one of those fat people could have been “the one”, and I let them get away because ew, they’re fat.

That is gutting, to me. That is the worst thing I can imagine, and I imagine it often.

So, for me, being fat is somehow still mentally tied to be single. For me, fatness is still something that I struggle with. Finding myself sexy is easy when my only view of myself is my ample cleavage in a cute rockabilly dress covered in polkadots. But then I pass a window on my walk to work and catch my reflection - sideview, always the least flattering - and I am jolted by that same grim realization all over again. I may have great boobs, but I’m still fat.

And if I don’t think I’m sexy in this rockabilly dress, who the fuck else is going to?

Some takeaways, if you’ve made it this far:

If you don’t think any of your friends are fat, take another look, and then think about what that means for your ideas about fat people. (If you don’t think any of your friends are fat and none of them are fat, you’re possibly an asshole who judges people more by what they look like and less by the awesomeness of their insides.)

If you’re fat, you probably have the same ideas. I know I still do, even when I’m trying not to. Be aware of them, and how it affects how you see other people, and how it affects how you see yourself when you look in the mirror.

If you’re fat and people you love tell you you’re not, it’s okay to tell them they’re wrong. It’s okay to say “I am fat AND adorable, thank you very much!” It’s okay to jar them a little bit. It’s okay to be fat. The person you see in the mirror is okay. More than okay - your body is lovable and good and an acceptable way to be a human. (Read ‘Lessons from the Fat-O-Sphere’ if you want to get a good head start on loving your big, fat self.)

Learning to love yourself is like a game of Shoots and Ladders. You move up and up and up and love yourself more and more and more, and suddenly one random toss of the dice sends you whooshing down some shoot, pushes you back to where you were ten turns ago. That kindly-sent photo from my friend was a crappy roll of the dice for me. Arbour’s “Dear Fat People” video might have been that crappy roll of the dice for a whole lot of people this week. But there’s no other way to win the game other than to keep on rolling the dice, and so I shall.

PS - I am not going to spend any time talking about why I’m fat, or how long I’ve been fat, or what I’ve done to become less fat. It doesn’t matter, is the thing. People who care enough to get to know me learn those things. People who don’t, well. That’s the problem, isn’t it.

Catastrophe and the Modern Woman

I spent a lazy Sunday afternoon this month marathoning the Amazon Prime series ‘Catastrophe’, and I can’t recommend it enough!  Written by the two leads (American actor/comic Rob Delaney and Irish actress/comic Sharon Horgan), it’s the story of a one-week stand between two 40-somethings that turns into a lifetime commitment when Horgan ends up accidentally pregnant. From there, the comedy turns into one of the most refreshingly honest and romantic (and hilarious) shows I’ve seen in ages.

I recommend it to anyone, but for women who have been told they should be able to “have it all” all by themselves, the show has a particular resonance. There’s one scene, mid-way through the 6-episode run, where Horgan is explaining to a friend and co-worker that she and Delaney have decided to get married. Her co-worker is shocked - it’s the 21st century! She doesn’t need to get married to raise a child! She can do it on her own! Horgan’s character laughs it off in the moment, but later in the episode she returns to her friend to say “No, you know what, I CAN’T do it on my own, and I don’t want to; he wants to help, and that’s wonderful.” And it doesn’t make her less-than, it doesn’t make her seem pathetic or sad or weak, it just makes her human.

There are a million other scenes in this show that made me laugh and cry and love it to bits, but that one made it golden.  Check it out:  

Starting the Conversation: Book Recommendations

My last post stated that baby-stealing was a great way to get a conversation started about the ways we think about women and children, and more specifically women without children. But baby-stealing is, rightly, illegal in this country.  So where else would a conversation start? Books! Books are a great way to start thinking about something, and talking about it!

There have been, in the past few years, a small number of voices speaking up about this non-conversation, about this well of loneliness at being single and childless and ‘of a certain age’. I’ve read all of these books this year, and while my experiences are different from these women in the practical, the feeling of sorrow at watching one’s life unfold in a way you didn’t expect seems to be universal. I remember reading Notkin’s book and underlining whole paragraphs, scrawling “YES!!!” in the margins. These aren’t books that have all the answers, but they showed me that I am not alone in asking the questions:

1) Otherhood, by Melanie Notkin

I found Notkin when I was frantically googling things like “childless women who are sad about it” and “women who want kids and don’t have kids”, crazy stuff that was running through my mind as I came to end of a long, emotional journey where I realized that I did not want to have a child on my own. I was not going to be a ‘Single Mother By Choice’; instead, I was going to be something else, something undefined. My searching brought me to Notkin’s Huffington Post article ‘I’m 45, Single, and Childless, and There’s Nothing ‘Wrong’ With Me’ which deserves a read as well.

I found out from there that Notkin had just (just! as in, that very week!) published a book called ‘Otherhood’ about her struggle as a single, childless woman in New York City. Was it perfect? No. In fact, large swaths of the middle of this book read like episodes of Sex & The City, complete with disastrous dates with high-powered attorneys and conversations about egg donation over cocktails. Her life is far more glamorous than mine, and her friends have far more money than I will ever see in a lifetime of non-profit work. But the chapters that start and end her book are smaller, introspective pieces of writing that strip away the trappings of five-star Upper East Side eateries and weekend visits to the Hamptons and show Notkin to be a woman who struggled for years to come to terms with her own truth - that she wanted a family more than a baby, and that she wasn’t okay with settling for mediocre when it came to finding a partner. And, at 45, she wasn’t going to have the family she’d always envisioned. It’s worth checking out, even if you skim the Sex & The City parts.

2) Rocking the Life Unexpected, by Jody Day

Day’s book comes out of the UK, and her experience is as a woman who ended up divorced in her mid-30s, single for the first time in ages just as her fertility was about to nosedive. Her battle through the grief and anger around her circumstances led to a book that is full of hope and encouragement. Day has spent the last few years in training to be become a counselor, and it shows in her writing. She doesn’t point fingers, but gives some practical exercises for women to work through as they are thinking about their worth as women in the world who are not mothers.

Day also founded Gateway Women, an online community for those who are struggling with their circumstances. Much of the focus of the site seems to be around women in the UK, but there are meet-up groups all over the globe. I haven’t fully explored the community online, mostly because it’s a closed community and joining seems daunting, and would solidify my membership in a club I’m not really thrilled to be a member of.

If you want to get a flavor of Day before you read the book, check out this great short talk she gave as her book was coming out.

3) The Mother Within, by Christine Erickson

In her non-writing life, Erickson is an “equus coach”, which (as far as I can tell from her website) is a kind of life coach who works to help people while they ride horses. This seems odd, but Erickson’s short polemic on childlessness is earthy, personal, and accepting. She wants to be okay, and she wants you to be okay too. It’s a lovely read!

(She has also tried to get some discussions moving around childlessness at her Mother Within website, but it doesn’t look like the conversation has started there either.)

Not all of these books are for everyone. And yes, there need to be more voices from poor women, from queer women, from women of color, all of whom face this same challenge. But what I got from these books was a sense of shared loss, a sense that I may still be at the bottom of a well of loneliness, but that there are other women down here too, grasping in the dark for someone’s hand to hold. These books were a helping hand for me. I hope that this blog can be a helping hand for some of you, who will then open your hands to even more women.

I really do think we have to overcome the shame of perceived failure at not having children before the conversation can really open up. No one wants to be the first to raise their hand and say “me! I didn’t end up with the life I wanted!!” Thank goodness these writers made their voices heard! 

Do you have other books, articles or blogs to recommend to those struggling without children? Let me know in comments!