I adore Mr T, but when he’s gone, I am going to enjoy being COMPLETELY ALONE EXCEPT FOR A BUNCH OF CATS
I never wanted children. I thought I might, in college, but after I broke up with my (very sweet, kind) college boyfriend, I realized that children – and marriage – were impediments to what I wanted to do with my life.
I wanted adventure.
I wanted travel.
I wanted to read for hours without interruption.
I wanted to do what I wanted to do.
When I was a kid, I didn’t see a lot of moms around me who seemed happy. Mothers of my mom’s generation – especially moms whose husbands were in the military and the moms were continually uprooted and separated from family and friends – did not seem happy.
Even now, when you can call your family in another country more than once a year and you don’t have to wait two weeks for a letter on onionskin paper to arrive, women who are married to men in the military can get frustrated.
A really good friend is a lawyer, but after she married her Navy pilot husband and they were sent overseas, her career disappeared.
She said that the overseas base PTA was run by super-competitive women who used to have important jobs and now, suddenly, they were outside of the US, not allowed to work, not allowed to do anything but make sandwiches, clean house, and run volunteer organizations.
“This is the only place in their lives where they have any power,” my friend noted dryly, “and it shows.”
I had several marriage proposals before I finally married Mr T.
All I could think when these pre-Mr T boyfriends broached marriage was that I would be losing my freedom.
One boyfriend already had our entire life planned: We would have two children, to be named Grace and Stuart. We would plant a tree for each when they were born (which is actually very sweet). We would live in the town where he grew up, close to his parents (who were really nice people, so it wouldn’t have been like with Mr T’s parents, where I dreaded seeing them but still). Etc etc.
Another boyfriend just assumed I would move wherever for his career.
Another boyfriend didn’t even propose marriage – he just suggested that I quit my job and move to another state with him. That is, that I surrender all my financial security to depend on someone else without even having a contract in place.
No.
Thank.
You.
I didn’t want marriage. I didn’t want children.
I like children.
I just don’t want any of my own.
As far as I can tell, they are a ton of work and moms never have time to do anything for themselves.
I always wanted to skip children and go straight to adult offspring. My friends’ adult children are awesome. I liked them when they were kids and I really like them now. One of the great joys of my life has been forming adult friendships with the children of my friends.
And I got my wish when I married Mr T. He came with two stepdaughters from his first marriage and they are wonderful. I love them so much. They have married wonderful men and they have produced amazing children themselves and I have Bonus Daughters and Bonus Sons in Law and Bonus Grandchildren.
I feel very lucky.
I always wondered why a woman who is financially independent and doesn’t want children would marry.
When I met Mr T, I decided I wanted him in my life. I didn’t care if we were married, but it’s easier to be married than not if you share your finances so we got married, plus it pissed off his parents for him to marry me, which was a positive.
But when he’s dead, I’m not doing this again. I’m not getting used to living with someone new. I’m not arguing about who should clean the cat vomit this time. (Although if I’m alone, I guess I will clean the cat vomit 100% of the time instead of 100%- % that Mr T cleans it.) I’m not debating bedtimes. I’m not going to hike, which I do now because Mr T loves to hike and wants me to go with him.
My friend Ruby is 101 years old. She married her husband after she completed grad school. He died a few years ago.
I asked her if she was lonely. (She still lives by herself in the adorable house she and her husband built together on the lake in Madison.)
She laughed.
“I had roommates in college,” she said. “I had roommates in grad school. Then I got married. I had never lived alone until now.”
I braced myself for her to admit extreme loneliness.
But she didn’t.
Instead, she said, “AND IT’S SO LIBERATING TO LIVE ALONE!”
I exhaled.
She continued. “I watch TV when I want to watch TV. I eat when I want to eat. I read when I want to read. I wash only my clothes and only have to clean up after myself.”
Also. My mom had five marriage proposals, all from lovely men, in the first several years after my dad died.
She’s still single.
Enough. Said.
Texan in Exile 
Some people really do a lot better with in-house companionship even with all the compromises that involves (both elderly and young!), and some prefer to live alone, but I think in the US it is also the case that there exist not quite enough guys who are reasonably competent at partnership to go around? (I got one of them, as did a couple of friends; most of my married friends… did not so much. For a couple of them, it’s worth it for the kids they got out of the deal, however, so there is that.) And of course that shortage is before assessments of whether *this* particular guy who would make an at least acceptable roommate (rather than you mostly being their unpaid lackey) is a good fit for you in other ways, which makes it even trickier.
(considering the numbers game, as an introvert who was not interested in having children, perhaps I shouldn’t have “taken” one of the decent ones, but we were a good fit and I didn’t know anyone who would be a better fit with him, *and* we are both definitely weirdos so the odds were perhaps against him finding another really good match, so there is that?)
One thing I have heard is that if men are upset about how many women are choosing to stay single and instead sticking with a cat and a vibrator (which some men are!), they should perhaps try harder at outcompeting a cat as a roommate and a vibrator as sexual company, and… well. In the case of some introverts, it may be a legitimate challenge to compete with that pairing! Being able to just roll along with life without having to perpetually accommodate someone else! But in many of my single friends’ cases, it is instead a stunningly low bar that no dude has quite managed to reach up to yet.
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So Goldie, are you reading my diary? You;ve told my story, except I only had one prior proposal and he was in the Navy! Egads, I was going to follow him around the world. He broke it off (after a week, but that’s a long story) and now has four – yes, count them, four – children. OMG – no!
I will miss my husband a lot, but like you, I look forward to the peace and quiet. And, getting my independence back. I will have a dog, not all the cats, so no little to clean. Fish and bicycles, you know!
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