Forever Alone | Chapter 6: Covid & Copping Out (Part 2)
In which I get called out so hard I break out in cold sweats, offend people at a wedding, surprise myself by getting a job, and rant like my life depends on it.
I published Forever Alone: One Introverted Millennial’s Half-Agonizing, Half-Hopeful Journey Through Singledom in 2021 as a 7-part podcast miniseries. I’m re-publishing it here on Substack for the first time in written form! Start reading from the beginning here.
I once vented about my weariness to a mentor of mine. I cried as I told her how painful it was to watch other people get the thing I wanted—how much easier their lives were. Her response was, “Hmm … it’s like you’re 6 years old, at your birthday party. You’ve got a big pile of lovely gifts, and you keep grabbing each one, ripping off the wrapping paper, hoping this one is that special Barbie you’ve wanted all year. But none of the boxes have your Barbie, and now you’re throwing a tantrum. My friends got that Barbie! Why can’t I have it, too?? But in doing that, you’re ignoring this lovely pile of gifts you’ve been given.”
I know this comment was well-meaning, but it instantly filled me with rage—rage that I didn’t unleash on her, thankfully. Instead, I sat with it until it boiled over and the reason I was furious became completely clear. Then I wrote it down. Buckle up, because here’s what I journaled:
The Barbie analogy implies that what I want is nothing more than a fun, unessential “goody” and that it’s wrong of me not to focus on all the other “goodies” I’ve received. Where do I even start with dismantling that? First, I’m not ungrateful for the other gifts I’ve received. I don’t spend all day every day ignoring everything else that’s good in my life. I’m constantly trying to turn my attention back to the present, and I often find things to appreciate. Maybe I’m not doing that frequently enough, but it’s incorrect to say that I’m just tossing all the other things aside.
Secondly, I feel SO strongly that a romantic relationship–a true, healthy, life-giving partnership–is not just some “treat.” For those of us who crave it, it’s more akin to vital nutrients that a human being needs to thrive. And who could possibly argue the validity of that? It’s scientific fact that humans need connection with other people. Not just casual connection, but intimate connection. For god’s sake, sex is an essential part of a healthy adult lifestyle! Don’t get me started on my deficiency in that particular nutrient, or human skin-to-skin contact, even. It feels viscerally wrong to live each day without proper nutrients. It’s like someone saying, ‘Well, you’re not starving, so you’re fine eating nothing but PB&J, right?’ Uhh yeah, technically I can survive on PB&J, but it’s not even CLOSE to the healthy feast I’m dreaming of. The Barbie analogy makes it sound like I’m a whiny child pissed that she didn’t get the exact dessert she wanted. No. I feel more akin to a malnourished kid who’s misbehaving because they’re missing vital nutrients and their poor brain and gut chemistry is all out of whack!!! Who the fuck WOULDN’T make a fuss about that??
So, if you wouldn’t tell a malnourished, misbehaving kid to stop whining about their PB&J and be grateful for the food they do have, it’s complete and utter bullshit to tell me to be more grateful for what I already have. It’s almost gaslighting. I remember she also said something like, ‘You keep bumping up against this issue.’ Uh yes, I’m fucking bumping up against MALNOURISHMENT, bitch!!! And uhhh, yeah, it’s hard to keep going when your cells aren’t thriving and you’re somehow expected to forget that and push through anyway?? As if I’m only doing a good job until I decide to OVERCOME my need for NOURISHMENT. THAT IS NOT A NEED ONE IS SUPPOSED TO OVERCOME. ACTUALLY, ONE IS NOT MEANT TO OVERCOME NEEDS AT ALL. To act like that’s the case is the definition of spiritual bypassing.
And while I’m on a roll, what about sleep? There isn’t a person in the world who wouldn’t agree that sleep is a basic human need. And most everyone would also agree that getting 8 hours of sleep is far preferable to getting six. Sure, you can survive off of 6 hours of sleep per night, but if that’s your average every night, indefinitely, you’re going to be a very different person than if you average 8 per night. When I’m struggling with insomnia I don’t sit around chastising myself for being cranky that I’m sleep deprived. I also don’t try to coach myself out of my need for sleep! Can you imagine how ridiculous that would be? There’s no amount of self-help that can replace the sleep you aren’t getting every night. Sure, you might get coached in order to soothe yourself—to help you talk through your frustrations, and give you a space to process and try to set yourself up for a better sleep pattern. But you would NEVER try to coach someone out of their need. You also wouldn’t tell someone, ‘Well, you should be grateful for the other things you have—food and water and shelter.’ Uh sure, I’m grateful for that, but being grateful for that isn’t going to make me any less exhausted or make my need for sleep any less!!! Just like, if I’m malnourished, being grateful for my iron levels doesn’t make up for my Vitamin D deficiency. Umm, you know what solves a Vitamin D deficiency? Fuckin’ Vitamin D.
And sure, it’s also not ideal to sit around all day moping about being malnourished or tired, because that won’t fix much of anything, either. But for god’s sake, it’s totally OK to be cranky when you aren’t getting basic human needs met! And even more understandable to be depressed if you have no idea when or even if you’ll ever sleep well or be properly nourished again. That’s enough to throw anyone into despair!
There’s something so different about the energy of a need, rather than a want. When you just want something, you go back and forth a lot about whether you’re allowed to have it. And you feel guilty for getting too attached to it, then angry at yourself when you catch yourself being too attached, then ashamed when you can’t let go of the attachment. There’s so much doubt and uncertainty that comes from asking, “Can I have what I want?” But that is not at ALL the relationship I have to needs. Needs aren’t negotiable. They’re not something you apologize for. And you do what it takes—go out of your way, even—to ensure they’re met, because you deserve that; because you respect yourself completely. I can respect myself, but not know if I’m allowed to have something I want. If I have a need, I expect it to get met.
I’m also so fed up with how we speak to single women. Either we’re getting shamed for being single—and encouraged to lower our standards before all is lost; because clearly being single is worse than ending up in an unsatisfying relationship for the rest of your life—or we’re getting shamed for wanting a relationship.
And you know what? Often that shame comes from other single people. People who, either because they don’t care about partnership as much as me, or because they’ve gaslit themselves into believing it isn’t a need (to protect themselves from disappointment) take a self-righteous pride in having “ascended beyond” that desire, and you’re less than for not being able to, or not wanting to. When’s the last time you heard someone tell a woman struggling to get pregnant that she should be grateful for the spouse and life she does have? That maybe she only wants a baby because she’s been conditioned to want one—as if the desire to become a mother is something you can transcend, if you’re woke enough. Or when’s the last time we told a mom that she should be ashamed for wanting a career, because mothering doesn’t totally meet her needs for life purpose? We take those women seriously when they say they have a need for family or meaningful work … why the fuck am I not being granted the same benefit of the doubt?
I could go on, but you get the idea. My weariness wasn’t superficial. It was borne from a combination of burnout and not getting a very understandable human need met, for years on end—a need that I’m constantly being shamed for not getting met, or shamed for having in the first place, depending on who you ask. So what, exactly, was wrong with coasting until I met someone? I’d already worked my ass off to get to a place of … if not wealth and thriving, then at least middling stability. Sure, I hadn’t made any inroads in paying off debt or replenishing my savings—didn’t really have a plan for how either of those things would happen. But did I need to? Once I finally met the right person we could figure it out together. I’d get to benefit from partnership the way my friends with dual incomes had. It wasn’t fair to expect me to somehow ascend beyond my current circumstances on my own, exhausted as I was … or so my Type 4 self told me.
What I couldn’t have told you at the time is that the nutrient I was craving—and the thing that appeals to me maybe most about partnership—is a healthy balance between masculine and feminine energy.
When I say “masculine” and “feminine” I don’t mean “male” and “female;” it’s not about gender, though most people who identify as male tend toward masculine energy, and most people who identify as female tend toward feminine energy. It’s a natural, hardwired preference for how you operate; how your energy best expresses itself.
Masculine energy is about doing. It’s building, striving, pushing, challenging. It’s competition. It’s quantity and metrics and logic. It’s about going out and achieving, conquering.
Feminine energy is about being. It’s ease, flow, and connection. It’s collaboration. It’s quality over quantity; intuition and feelings over logic. It’s about allowing; becoming a magnet that pulls things in, rather than hunts them down.
Masculine and feminine energy are equally important. And we all use both every day, to some degree. But most of us are hardwired to prefer one over the other. Except, much of how our society operates is very heavily skewed toward masculine—we tend to honor productivity and achievement and hard work. We don’t tend to celebrate people who did less because their body was crying out for rest, for example. We call them lazy.
My and Kristen’s burnout was a direct result of being in masculine mode for years on end, working hard to build a business. Much of that was necessary, of course. Without the discipline and structure and “get it done” of masculine energy, we’d have floundered and never gained any momentum. But we’d also overdone it, and our depleted minds, bodies, and spirits—not designed to operate that heavily in masculine mode—showed the toll that had taken.
The coasting we did in the wake of that burnout was the product of us bouncing from the intense masculine end of the spectrum to the extreme feminine side. Now, we didn’t want to do anything. We just wanted to be. What wanted to come could come, but we weren’t interested in lifting a finger to make anything happen. And because Kristen and I were wired in the same way, we couldn’t balance each other out. My exhaustion and weariness enabled her exhaustion and weariness, making it even easier for us to check out and become complacent.
But in a different kind of partnership, that wouldn’t have to happen. A healthy partnership can be a beautiful, symbiotic relationship—like a yin yang. The person with masculine energy naturally provides a lot of “doing” and “making things happen” energy, which helps support and fuel the more feminine person, while the more feminine person supplies much of the ease, nurturing, and emotional connection that doesn’t come as naturally to the masculine person.
The two can do so much more together than they would apart, because their energy and strengths are a natural complement to the other, directly but also indirectly. Just being around someone whose energy is opposite of yours can serve as fuel—like charging a critical battery. Which means in every area of life, you both find it easier to succeed and thrive.
When I snapped at my dad’s friend at my brother’s wedding, when I had a full-scale meltdown about my mentor’s Barbie analogy, what I was really saying is:
“I deeply want to get this need for partnership met so I can start thriving. I can’t manufacture masculine energy. I’ve tried, and it depleted me so much I’m still struggling years later. But I’m frustrated because I have no control over life or its timeline. I can’t force this need to be met. But until it is, I don’t think I should have to try to meet it on my own.”
Which, if you ask me, is a completely understandable conclusion to come to. People shouldn’t have to live for years on end without getting vital human needs met. It’s unfair at best, and cruel at worst. But it’s also … reality. Sometimes, we do have to live for years on end without getting vital needs met. It freaking sucks. But the question becomes—how do we show up in the face of that? I’d mentally checked out and coasted for quite a long time, but I couldn’t say it had gotten me any closer to what I wanted. Now, faced with a callout from the Enneagram—“rather than look for practical solutions to their difficulties, Fours are prone to fantasizing about a savior who will rescue them from their unhappiness”—I decided that maybe waiting for a partner before I took deeper responsibility for myself was a cop-out. Maybe it was time for a different approach.
This was Chapter 6: Part 2 of Forever Alone. Read on for Chapter 6: Part 3!