spinster wish

A month or so ago, I finally finished Kate Bolick's Spinster:  Making a Life of One's Own , which details the author's pursuit of a single, defined identity as well as explores the idea through the lives of famous (or less famous) literary women who devoted their lives to what Bolick calls "spinster wish"--the idea that marriage and cohabitation takes away the autonomy of the creative self, which as women, we are meant to sacrifice in the name of relationships, of love, of children.  While I am an unabashed spinster, I wasn't quite able to draw the complete  conclusion that such spinsterhood was necessarily crucial to one's pursuit as a writer (or in Bolick's case also editorial work.) Obviously. many writers/editors have happy marriages, families, and somehow balance all the things in a way I don't think I'd be able to successfully.

But it is intriguing, looking at women like Charlotte Perkins Gilman or Edna St. Vincent Millay, who for their time, were living sort of revolutionarily single at least for parts of their live  Of course, one would suspect that feminism, in the century or so since, would have different ideas about a woman's ability to live alone, but while it's maybe more possible, it's still, societally, a strange thing (though single woman households, even with children, make up a large percentage of the population.)  I too have watched as everyone around me paired up, married (and then, with a few exceptions) unceremoniously uncoupled. For years, I was often the only singleton at the party (though now everyone seems newly single after divorce.) I am a rarity in that I never married, never had children, and though at least the latter is pretty much off the table biologically, or will be, I feel it's less surprising to people once you've hit the 40's.  There is much less, oh you'll find someone.   I've been a little more out with my solo poly tendencies, which may explain some of it, and people still confuse me being in a relationship at all with being in an escalator one by default.

There is something to be said for being the marshall of one's own existence--a life more of one's own devising.  A friend was recently talking about her tendency, in past relationships, to give too much of her self to the detriment of her creative and mental health.  I am pretty good at compartmentalizing and my love life, even at it's most dramatic, was always fuel for art, so maybe it's a bit different, but emotional bandwidth is a tricky thing.   A little too much drama, too much skewed thinking, and it can throw you off balance

She also considers the downside of living alone-- the instability that one feels when their livelihood is entirely their own making--with no backup or support system (which of course, I guess is something you need to build as infrastructure in the absence of a domestic partner....friends, family..)  The burdens of shouldering everything yourself, which, for me, i suppose is outweighed by the freedom.  I've lived alone most of my life, barring the years I lived with parents, and briefly with my sister here in the city. But even then, another person can be a distraction, even a fun one, which can make you less productive than you'd like.  I used to force myself to work in a cafe when I was working on my first book, the fever almanac, because when I was home, we would just watch dvd's and laugh a lot.  Another person in your environment makes it harder to focus.

I'm not sure love or romance are necessarily at odds with the spinster wish, but definitely complicate what one is willing to sacrifice for these things.