To me now, alone time is more precious than gold and I never get enough, or even close to enough. But when I had nothing but alone time, it could lead to loneliness and depression. If there’s a perfect balance I haven’t found it. Maybe when the tyke is older? (Hey, a guy can dream.)
I think it’s natural for folks to want whatever they don’t have.
I was in almost your exact shoes 3 years ago. I recommend joining a group on Meetup that matches your interests and going on it to meet people. Do something active. Organize an after-work dinner with folks you enjoy. Go see a movie. Spend money on something frivolous. Travel. (My gf and I just flew to Paris for a 5-day weekend. I didn’t even have to organize a kid day swap with my ex since we do alternating 5 day weekends with the kids. The Paris trip was great!)
Hey, you beat me! I had my first at 40, which is not actually all that unusual in my area, but my family back in Louisiana all thought I was nuts. Haven’t really gotten to the strangling years yet, but kids can certainly challenge you.
Not quite though, since the study only looked at married couples vs. single folks:
Cohabiting couples were underrepresented in the data and excluded from the study.
So they didn’t look at the happiness of not-married-but-committed folks, or (presumably) single folks with kids. That’s fine if you’re only looking at married people, but you absolutely can’t make a conclusionlike the one above.
And that’s my major issue with the article - it seems to be the author trying to use the study’s narrow conclusions to support her broad beliefs.
Here are the lines from the latter half of the article that led me to believe that about her reasoning:
I was surprised that no one seemed to be talking about the isolation of modern romantic commitment
The expectations that come with living with a serious partner, married or not, can enforce the norms that create social isolation.
There was a line that I felt was a glaring logical tautology, but re-reading it, I misinterpreted on the first read.
My alone time used to be after 8 or 9. My wife likes to go to sleep early. But as my eldest got older (15 now) she stopped going to sleep at that time, and likes to join me in the living room, tell me convoluted teen stories from school and generally let off steam and stress.
I was miffed about it for a period, but thankfully quickly realised that I’m lucky that she still wants to hang out with me at this age, and that in 3-4 years she’ll be out of the house off to uni, and I’ll be devastated.
So we sit and talk and watch grown up shows. Once or twice a week I’ll tell her I want an alone night, but most often than not we go to sleep at the same time.
Her brother is also getting there in a year or two.
I would like to see the same rationale the article uses applied to students vs. working people. Working eats up your free time and stops a lot of social interactions!
Anyway, I understand single life is good for some folks. Me, I love having somebody I share so much with and who can truly be a partner. Moving from working at home (she still does, so we shared out working space) to an office has been hard.
Also, I’m a geek. I socialize more through living with her.
That is amazing. I can only hope my daughter feels anywhere near similar when she gets there.
I proposed to the love of my life nine years ago (July 17th, actually), the only time I’ve proposed, and things went totally off the rails. Sideways, in loops. We never married, and I just received notice this morning of an order terminating supervision and jurisdiction w.r.t. DCF and our 5 year old son, placing him with me (not her). Needless to say, the last nine years didn’t go according to plan. I’m 38, now.
I have been married for 38 years. But marriage isn’t for everyone anymore than having kids is for everyone, or vacationing in Hawaii is for everyone.
Life expectancy for married men is much higher.
It’s slightly higher statistically, and the studies that have shown this are (as any life expectancy study must be) based on older cohorts where traditional marriage was more socially valued and non-traditional relationships often were due to correlating factors like education and economic status. Recent studies have also shown that life expectancy for married women is slightly lower than that of single women. All of that is, of course, fraught with complications and caveats and shouldn’t be something you base your life decisions on.
Nah. It’s the same. It just feels longer. She’s right behind me, right?
This thread is weird. It’s like a mix of people saying they like tomatoes and other people who don’t, but then it started with a diatribe about how not liking tomatoes is fine and now statistics about people who eat tomatoes vs those who don’t.
Do what you want, people! And the internet is a place where everyone writes a blog/article about how all their choices are the right choices, but we haven’t yet learned to ignore those people and just let everyone do what they want yet. Apparently.
Time to divorce in the name of min-maxing.
Men who fuck other men’s wives and daughters used to have a low life expectancy, but it’s been a couple of generations now since those stats reversed themselves — in this century, the shotgun wedding and the shallow grave are just memes people post. Cads get all the benefits with none of the financial strain, and no divorce settlements to boot. I recommend it!
But now they get elected president!
I’ve had a mediocre marriage and good marriage, with a lot of single time in between. I’ll take single over mediocre marriage without hesitation, but the good marriage is better than my single years.
I can completely relate to the alone time comments. Thankfully, I get plenty of that still while being married (no kids helps immensely in that department, obviously).