Chanté Joseph dropped an article this week that fired up the girls across every social media platform. I read each word with a smirk on my face. Talk about divine timing, this is exactly a conversation I want to be having right now. Please go read it, there’s no paywall!
I was talking to my mom and sisters the other day and my mom was lamenting about how picky I was. She’s a Nigerian woman born in the 60s; her framework of womanhood includes being partnered and having kids. When she was my age, she was already married and just had me. Then there’s me who has never had a real exclusive long-term relationship and is currently planning to start a new business and her 3rd girls’ trip this year. I had to manage her expectations that I may never get married and I’m 98% sure I’m never going to have biological children. I assured her, I’m a little thrilled by both of those possibilities. Last year, I would have had a bit of yearning in me but today that has been quelled. Finally!
She asked why I’d never been in a relationship and all I could ask her is with who? With the guy who used the first date to ask me how to land his dream job? With the guy who refused to send me a love letter when he moved out of AZ but hits me up when I post a picture on instagram to ask to have sex with me? With the guy who resented me for making money and accused me for trying to make him my sugar baby? There’s no reality in which I could dilute myself, betray myself, to ever partner with the men I come across. I have tasted happiness alone and their offerings don’t look like anything I’d put in my mouth. My mom just fears seeing me alone. “Who will take care of you?” she asks. The same people taking care of me now. People I have yet to meet that will love me deeply. Part of the excitement is getting to watch that unfold.
I feel bad for my little blog because technically, this is about my dating exploits but dating has become humiliating. It’s not funny to me to get dressed up and go to some speed dating event when none of those men would ever think of talking to me if they saw me at the Churchill. If anything, I feel like a loser for wasting my time doing that when I could be doing…anything else. How many times have you heard me say “I could have been reading/having dinner with my girls/volunteering/at the gym/practicing Spanish/going horseback riding instead of going on that date?” I know I sound cognitively dissonant because I think there is nothing more beautiful and powerful than love. In a word filled with suffering and hate, how blessed are you to have a partner that loves you! I just… don’t think those partners are doing enough. I have yet to experience a man do for me what everyone else does for me. When my girls vent to me or I open up TikTok, I also don’t think their men are doing enough. There is always a twinge of disappointment when he is needed to step up to the occasion. There is often a compromise I feel they wouldn’t have to make if he took more initiative, if he was more intuitive, or if he was more romantic. I am good for telling a woman “You don’t have to subject yourself to that if he doesn’t want to do more. You can leave.” I don’t see the perks in having a boyfriend if I am continually complaining about his shortcomings and if your loved ones can continually see them too. Then again, what would I know?
I love that the tide is turning when it comes to the attitude about single women. My little cousins in high school and college are not at all boy crazy. My friends are breaking up with boyfriends that are fundamentally incompatible with them. My married coworkers are frequently telling me to stay single and to party on their behalf. All the women in my life have big dreams about what they want their lives to look like. Lives of doing what they want, when they want to, where they want. I cannot help but be entirely grateful that none of this would have been possible for us even 75 years ago. I look forward to being intentional about what life may look like if I don’t take the traditional route and now that “single” as an insult has lost its bite.
The Hungry Bachelorette 