Single Extroverts Unite!
Every time I read a single woman’s essay about getting unprogrammed I think, What’s wrong with me?
I am single, so naturally I read a lot about being single. If you are partnered and didn’t know, I do this because it’s apparently what you’re supposed to do while single. Reading other people’s accounts of being single helps you figure out if you are a) doing it right b) doing it wrong c) doing what everyone else is doing, which is reading these articles.
I relate to each account, complaint and disastrous story. Except the part where the writer says they want a relationship because they are programmed by society to want one. Sorry, not sorry, but my desire to have a bedmate is not caused by the patriarchy and societal demands to partner up and become a baby maker.
Now as you @ me (because I know you will without reading ANYTHING that follows) I’m not saying there aren’t societal norms or expectations and the patriarchy. There 17,000 percent is. If you read on you’ll see I was smashing that patriarchy before I knew what that was. I’m just saying I’m not one of the programmed when it comes to wanting a relationship. This is because of a few reasons, which I will lay out right here because that is what you do in these things.
- I have never in the history of my 42 years of existence wanted to become a baby maker. When I was in second grade the girls in my class with older sisters were talking about periods, I thought it was some voluntary thing you went to the hospital to get and I was like: “Nope. No way in hell am I getting that.” When my mother explained it and said it’s an important part of bringing babies into the world I said, “That makes it worse.” (When I learned in high school that you were AWAKE and AWARE during C-sections, well there was no hope left for mom getting grandkids out of me.)
- Neither have I ever wanted give up my last name. Again, at the unlearned age of whatever age you are in second grade, I found out that women take the last names of their husbands. I learned this in school and promptly came home and asked my parents. My dad explained to me that it was tradition and men carry the family names through their sons. So, since all the Schaps had daughters in this generation the name would die out, but none of them cared about that. I promptly declared that this was stupid and decided that I would not change my name. (Unsurprisingly, I was not a doodler of adding guys’ names to mine in school.)
- And honestly the biggest reason: Because I am an extrovert who will talk to a dog. Or potted plant. Or wall. Like an actual WALL and I have, multiple times. I have had the longest and most splendid conversations with walls, showers, my steering wheel. There’s been arguments full of fury and rage and cursing that go uninterrupted for hours because inanimate objects don’t talk back. (Don’t even get me started on TV shows.)
So my hope to find a partner comes from a freaking biological, genetic, hardwired-into-my-brain, personality-induced-need to hit someone in the arm when I’m on the couch watching Netflix, listening to a podcast or reading a book and yell, “Look at this!”
Seriously, all of the programming from society and the annoying asks in the world can’t override my need to talk. I got in trouble all the time throughout school (and sometimes now) about not being able to shut the fuck up. I like noise, chatter, people, movement, bright lights big city.
Long conversations over coffee or beers or water about sports, politics, the squirrel running across the yard — I love them all. There is a deep maddening need for me to be able to converse with someone about these things on a daily basis. It’s possibly a huge reason I became and stayed a teacher for over 16 years, you were paid to talk to a captive audience about stuff that no one wanted to learn much about.
Social interaction is what I crave. (And sex, but that is a different article that I’m hoping my Dad won’t read.) To me there is something about having a partner to discuss things with that holds an appeal. Maybe other people don’t want to hear about the days of others, but I sure do!
Please, tell me about the jerk on the highway — I’ll rant about how we should have more walkable cities. Tell me all about the cute cat/dog/otter video you found on whatever social media you are using, bonus if you show me. Debate about whether war is caused by greed or oil or, it is the same thing? I’m there.
I cannot be the only single extrovert in the world who wants a partner because they actually like to be around people and what better situation than to have someone around you all the time? Sure, some people are programmed to believe in a binary, gender-normed society in which cis-het people tie themselves together in order to provide future generations of workers for the one-percenters that need employees to mistreat and profit off of.
But honestly, some of us just want to talk.
