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Redefining Single
By Maureen Jenkins Never underestimate the power of a sexy TV show when it comes to shaping women's thoughts on being stylishly single. Lynne Herolt, a 26-year-old Convention Services concierge at the downtown Hyatt Regency Chicago, says HBO's "Sex and the City" brought home the challenges and joys of being an unmarried woman in 21st century America. "I'm open to dating, meeting people, maybe going out with them a few times, but nothing serious," she says. "I think definitely one day I'd like to be married, but I don't see that for another three or four years down the line." A Kenosha, Wis., native, Herolt wants to stay mobile, something she fears she'd sacrifice with marriage or a serious relationship. "If someone at work was to say tomorrow, 'We need someone in that location -- can you go?' I'd only have to consult myself," says the Logan Square resident. "I don't limit my dating because I'm career-driven, but you just have a little better opportunity to do things you have your mind set on. "I also have a couple of friends who are significantly older than me who are not happy in their marriages. That brings you back and makes you think, 'What's the rush?' In general, I'm pretty happy with [my situation]." So is 47-year-old Sabrina King. She was never one of those little girls (or grown-up ones) who fantasized about meeting a man who'd sweep her off her feet and marry her in a fairy-tale wedding. "I'm probably one of the only women that never willingly opened a [bridal] magazine," she says. "I never dreamed about Prince Charming; I never dreamed about being saved, walking down the aisle in a white dress." Not that she dislikes men. In fact, she loves one of them, her "life partner" and soulmate, Luther Lee, and has lived with him for the last 12 years. It's just that she has no desire to marry him or anyone else. This human resources director for GATX Corp. calls herself a "committed single." In American society, says King, "we have defined commitment as getting married. I define commitment as 'I choose to stay because you like me.'" She says the more traditional Lee "is not averse to being married; the idea doesn't bother him. It's just something I've never been excited about, but he's acquiescing to my lack of interest, understanding it's not him, but the idea. My issue was I didn't want the legal definition of our relationship to be set by someone else. I don't have the insecurity of 'What happens if?' I think it's because marriage gives you an illusion of permanence that isn't there." Any such illusions shattered early for King, who grew up in the Bronx. "I literally knew nobody in my childhood among my parents' friends who had a happy marriage," she says. Even now, she still vividly remembers the husband who, the day after he threw a huge party celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, walked out on his wife and never looked back. "I don't feel there is real safety or security in being married," says King, who owns a Bronzeville home and residential contracting business with Lee. They often vacation separately because of different interests (she's a shopper, he's a skier). "The safety and security comes from being good friends and staying emotionally invested in each other, and that's a hard place for most people to go." Sign of the times More than 100 million unmarried people now live in the United States, one in every three Americans. Women such as King -- who's armed with an Ivy League education, Wall Street work experience and finances of her own -- have chosen to remain unmarried in a nation that, despite female advances in the boardroom and bedroom, still often judges those without husbands as somehow different, aberrant or even a little bit strange. These women's unapologetic stance is a sign of the times, one that takes old-school feminism a step forward by declaring that though they view marriage as an unwelcome burden, they still are free to choose relationships (or not) that best complement their personal values and needs. That's why retired Chicago Public Schools administrator Sallie Townsend of Bronzeville is single today. Over the years, this 59-year-old hasn't lacked for dates, easily meeting men on airplanes and in restaurants, at church and friends' parties. "People knew I'd had a number of guys really interested in me," she says. "They just assumed, 'I know you're not going to pass that one up.' I was always open to the possibility [of marriage] -- even now." But by the time she reached her late 30s, Townsend had grown into her own skin, wearing her singleness lightly, not as a burden. By then, "there were so many of my friends who'd been married who were now divorced," she says. "I never missed out on anything because I was single. Things people expected men to do for them, I was doing for myself." It's all about options, says Dr. Joe Siegler, a psychiatrist and founder of Full Life Centers, which offers personalized life coaching on everything from career management to dating strategies. "Never before have women had all these choices," he says. " 'Do I want to get married? Do I want to have a child as a single parent? Do I want to have a child biologically? Do I want to be with a younger man? Do I even want to date?' For the first time, people are free to be true to themselves." The city of Chicago is home to an equal percentage of married-couple and single-person households, according to the Census Bureau's 2004 American Community Survey. Alice Nixon of Northbrook is among the singles. Divorced for 15 years after having been married for nearly a quarter century, the 64-year-old Nixon, a licensed clinical social worker in private practice, is happily single and intends to stay that way. "Why does anybody who's self-supporting and has some means and can take care of themselves need this piece of paper?" she asks. The mother of two adult children in their 30s, Nixon says marriage can offer financial benefits when kids are involved. But since her children are grown, she no longer has a need for the institution. And although she was engaged after her divorce (her fiance died a couple of weeks before their planned wedding), she's not actively pursuing or looking for a romantic bond with a man. "If I were to bump into one and there was a connection made that was more than a friendship," Nixon says, "I wouldn't ever agree to sign a legal document. It is a very difficult challenge to be in a relationship full-time with the expectation and intention of it being lifelong. The fiance that died is a very tough act to follow, so I'm very fussy, I guess you could say." Says sociologist E. Kay Trimberger, author of The New Single Woman (Beacon Press, $25.95): "Being happy as a single person doesn't negate romance -- but maybe we can offer a broader definition of romance. It doesn't always have to be another person that brings passion into your life." Nixon says social work is her calling -- and this all-consuming devotion has in many ways co-opted the energy she'd otherwise spend on a romantic relationship. "You're so busy having a life and doing the things that make a living and that bring meaning and passion to your life that having a man is not in the forefront." In fact, says Thomas F. Coleman, executive director of Unmarried America, a Glendale, Calif.-based information service, these seniors are helping shape modern perceptions of what it means to be marriage-free. In some cases, these women choose not to marry because of pension survivor benefits from previous marriages, he says. In other cases, these women hesitate to disturb estate plans that their children stand to inherit. And Coleman knows women who have become single either through divorce or widowhood and quite simply are relishing their freedom, however it arrived. "If those are the attitudes of many older women," Coleman says, "they're filtering down to younger women." Even when a woman is living with her significant other, he says, "Mom might not like it, but Grandma's doing it. It's less messy for a single woman to remain single even through cohabiting in terms of what belongs to whom and how you divvy up the finances. A lot of women, even with things like their credit [ratings], don't want to get married. There's a lot more feeling that with independence comes prosperity. "It used to be a woman would get married, then get a house and have kids. Now it seems to be, 'Get a house, then get a man.' It's kind of re-rooted itself in terms of sequence. Younger women are seeing they can do it on their own." Pop culture helps set agenda TV shows like "Sex and the City," "Friends" and "Seinfeld" -- still going full force as reruns -- have shown that "not only is it OK, but it can be a blast," says Full Life Centers' Joe Siegler. "I think the whole concept that you can have a lot of fun being single is taking a lot of the pressure off." Ever since spunky Mary Tyler Moore eased her way into American pop culture consciousness in 1970 with her self-titled sitcom (and Marlo Thomas' "That Girl" a few years before), an element of "glamorization" has marked the single life, says marriage and family therapist Karen Gail Lewis, author of With or Without a Man: Single Women Taking Control of Their Lives (Bull Publishing Co., $18.95). "But that glamorization is on top of the stigma which still exists. We live in a society that sends a double message. The media has learned that 'single' sells. So while you're getting all these messages, you bump into a friend, and one of the first things they ask you is, 'Are you married yet?' " Even the word "unmarried" is loaded, Lewis says. "You wouldn't call me 'un-tall.' It's in those ways that we perpetuate the stigma." Public relations executive assistant Diane Washington, now in her early 50s, doesn't buy in to the notion. Married for four years right out of high school, the South Shore resident is in a 20-year relationship with the man she calls her boyfriend, her other half, her guy. Like Sabrina King's partner, he'd also like to be married. But Washington says the six months they spent living together proved to her it wouldn't work. "We love each other, but we had more arguments when we were under the same roof 24-7." "To me, this is the perfect relationship for me at my age," says Washington, who sees her six-years-younger boyfriend about four days a week. "I am so set in my ways, and I'm not about to make major changes. I know you have to make major commitments, and I don't want to be tied down to those. At the same time, I feel like I have a life partner without the drama of marriage." And, with more women feeling free to shape their own realities -- choosing to stay unmarried, entering long-term relationships, deciding not to have kids -- American society is changing "in revolutionary ways," says Siegler, the psychiatrist.
"I think this
'nuclear family' [concept] is completely in revolution, but nobody's
talking about it," he says. "We still have Ozzie and Harriet in our
minds, but the reality is completely different." The notion of what's 'normal' for women is changing BY MAUREEN JENKINS Staff Reporter In the old days, they were "spinsters," or, as the Merriam-Webster Dictionary puts it, "unmarried women past the common age for marrying." Ladies of a certain age. Old maids. But not now, not in the 21st century, when today's successful and upwardly mobile single woman is earning her own cash, buying a home (or two), paying for her own vacations, and funding her retirement. Even those who say they'd love to find a long-term partner or husband are hardly putting their lives on hold, holding back from buying or doing -- or even becoming moms -- until he comes along. Even this concern about societal perceptions is uniquely female. Men who don't walk down marriage aisles aren't slapped with unflattering labels -- they're simply "confirmed bachelors" or "playboys." They don't fret about biological clocks, about eggs that dry up after a certain age. But today, when high-tech biology can transform a woman into a mom without ever being touched by a man, the game is clearly changing. And single women are helping rewrite the rules. For centuries, American culture has sold us on the notion that what's "normal" and standard is a household comprised of a married man and woman and their kids. But current reality is looking a lot different from the so-called nuclear family. Today, 48.5 percent of all U.S. households are headed by unmarried adults, a figure that has swelled from 41.3 percent 20 years ago, says the U.S. Census Bureau's 2004 Current Population Survey. And more single-person households -- nearly 29 million of them -- now exist in the United States than the 24.1 million married households with kids under age 18. Reasons behind this new reality are many. Americans are cohabiting more, as the numbers of folks living together swelled 72 percent between 1990 and 2000. More than one third of U.S. babies are now born to unmarried women. The median age for first-time marriage continues to climb, now nearly 26 for American females. Divorce and widowhood are shoving more females into the singles pipeline. And older women are helping lead attitudinal shifts by staying single by choice, a shift that appears to be trickling down to some of their younger sisters. After all, who'd dare call dynamic Oprah, spirited Teri Hatcher or sassy Goldie Hawn spinsters? Even women who'd ultimately like to find long-term relationships and, yes, marriages, say they find single lives full and fulfilling, not merely way stations before becoming wives. Although statistics show nearly nine out of 10 Americans will marry at least once, it's true that American women are spending longer portions of their lives as unmarried people. Outmoded mortgage documents may claim they're legally "spinsters" (and single women who've bought property know this, chafing when they see the word), but we're strutting into the future like nobody's business. Women are living and loving while building careers and helping shape the next generation's view of what being single looks like. Pop culture vehicles like TV shows, films and chick-lit novels often make it seem that being a single female is either a total drag or a constant date fest a la "Sex and the City." But the reality's likely somewhere in between. This week, we examine the changing dynamics of what it means to live as a single successful woman today. |