Hello to Serious Singles

It seems to me that most of the time I am writing to Searching Singles, those Singles who are trying to be okay with being Single but really want to be married or in religious life (but mostly married, really), and not as much to Serious Singles. This is because Serious Singles are somewhat rarer, and since they are generally happy and fulfilled being Single, they don't need to read about it so much. I think.

However, since the internet is not exactly crowded with blogs about the Single Life, it does not do to ignore the Serious Singles entirely.

Who are these Serious Singles?

Well, to shock the stuffing out of you all, I will begin by pointing out that most secular Catholic priests are Serious Singles. There are married priests (especially the ex-Anglican ones) and there are priests in religious life, and that suggests to me that the majority of priests are then Serious Singles, men who can't rely on a wife or a religious order as a sort of emotional/social/financial safety net. Ordinary priests don't take a vow of poverty, which means that they are often very poor indeed. It's a bit scary, sometimes, thinking of how hard secular priests work for how little money. And with fuel costs rising and with priestly dependence on their cars---eeek!

What Serious Single priests do have is a pulpit, so I wish they would use it more often (e.g. once a year) to talk about the Serious Single life, and not just the priesthood. There are a lot of devout men who, for various reasons, can't get into the seminary or are chucked out of it and (often for the same reasons) can't get married either. They don't need another homily about the priesthood, as important as such homilies are. They need homilies about how it is tough to be male and Single, but how such a life has its joys and opportunities, too. The married people can lump it one or two Sundays out of 52; they get oodles and oodles of attention.

Speaking of lay Singles, there are men and women who feel so devoted to their professional calling, like medicine or spreading L'Arche communities throughout the world, that they don't see how marriage fits into this. They deliberately make choices to travel to poor countries or live in L'Arche communities or do other things that makes it very difficult to find (or be found by) somebody to marry. They are seeking them first the Kingdom of God, and God bless them for it.

Then there are men and women who are not sexually attracted to the opposite sex, and therefore would find it very weird, uncomfortable and fake to get married. This has not stopped all such men and women, of course, from contracting disasterous marriages, but people of integrity tend not to marry innocent people as some sort of disguise.

Devout Catholics who are not attracted to members of the opposite sex, therefore, live their lives (or try to live their lives) as chaste Serious Singles. Sadly, just by being who they are, they risk criticism both from gay activists on the one side and from overly wound up fellow devout Catholics on the other. To quote my Inner Child, this sucks. If a Serious Single is Single because s/he isn't attracted to members of the opposite sex, that is his/her own business and if s/he don't feel like talking about it, leave him/her alone. Coming out of the so-called closet is not the human equivalent of a butterfly bursting out of a crysalis. It is not actually the eighth sacrament.

Then there are Serious Singles who have physical and psychological issues that make it very difficult for them to get married and have babies. There are some incredibly unselfish people who deliberately say no to marriage and babies so as not to pass on a genetic disease to another generation. I am not sure I agree with such decisions, since all things--like healthy babies regardless--are possible for God, but that is the decision of the Single person.

And then there are the extremely mentally ill and those with developmental disabilities so severe that although they can, of course, have friendly relationships with their families, carers and others in the community, they cannot take on the responsibilities inherent in marriage and parenthood or in religious life. These, too, are called to the Single life.

(By the way, there is a religious order for women with Down Syndrome, so developmental disabilities alone do not preclude religious life.)

Finally (although it might not be finally), there are Widows and Widowers, who have lived perhaps long lives as married people, and are done. The order of Widows is a very old one in the Church, and heaven knows what the Church would have done (and would do) without the activities and prayers of Widows all these past twenty centuries. Either B.A. or I will be Widowed one day, and I wonder what a job he or I will make of it.

Anyway, I am sure there are many more categories of Serious Singles, so if you belong to one, feel free to name it in the combox.

The Catechism, incidentally, says that Single people are especially close to Jesus's heart (CCC 1658).

Snogs, Snuggles and Sexy Puritans

Update: Welcome again, Patheos readers! I had no idea Max Lindeman was among the few men who still read my blog despite its rosy hue and swashbuckling protectors. Trads, sedevacantists, folkies, Max... Here comes everybody, indeed!

***

B.A. and others told me to read this post by an American convert who actually writes for Salon. I am always astonished and impressed when a Catholic writes for famous and seriously secular journals because I have a persecution complex as big as the six counties of Ulster.

Anyway, Max Lindenman's piece is making the Catholic blog rounds, so I thought I'd read it. The one piece of advice I'm going to give you ladies, especially all you ladies who LONG to know what men are thinking, before you dive in is that we don't always like what men are thinking. It can be insulting. It can be challenging. It can be pretty darn aggravating. But men are who they are and not who we want them to be, and fortunately we only have to marry one at a time, if we have to marry one at all.

I have a few thoughts about Max's account. First, Max is a good writer. He seems to be an emo-blogger, though. An emo-blogger is the guy who has his heart broken by Miss Perfect and then tells you all about it, even though the girl in question is presumably still alive. There are ways of doing it that are poignant and ways of doing it that are cringeworthy. Doing it the day of the girl's wedding to someone else is definitely cringeworthy, and Max didn't do that, so good on Max.

Second, Max writes about a weird world in which Christian girls in skintight clothing boast about the number of guys who tried to get them into the sack. He calls them the Sexy Puritans, and I hope none of my readers are acting like that. But Max also mentions seeing a girl in tiny shorts and a mantilla, ending his piece by suggesting that even trad Catholic girls are getting in on the Sexy Puritan action. Eek.

Third, Max hones in on a snuggle-bunny culture in which Catholic girls treat their boyfriends as if they were as temptation-free as teddy bears. Snoggy, snoggy, snuggle, snuggle. Now (super rare confession, mark the calendar) I used to behave like that myself, and my mother read me the riot act. Like Max's Nice Catholic Girlfriend, I thought it was okay to get as much physical affection as humanly possible without falling into sexual sin, without much pondering if treating boys to whom I hadn't made a firm commitment like squishy toys might not be itself a sin.

Max doesn't quite put it that way. In fact, as much as I enjoyed Max's piece, I wonder if there isn't a thread of passive-aggression throughout. He's trying to keep it light, but somewhere in there Max is seething "How come you get to treat us like squishy toys?" I suspect from the comments that a few outraged women have picked up on Max's anger, and his not quite subtle suggestion that there is a double-standard going on and that he tried to get "his".

But I wonder if Max would prefer to eschew all physical contact whatsoever. A snuggle simply does not have the moral equivalence of a [name obviously sexual act here], and heaven knows there are thousands of single men rather older and less attractive than Max suffering from skin-hunger. They would be happy for a bit of a snuggle. They would be happier for a lot more, of course, but a snuggle beats a kick in the teeth.

Anyway, Searching Single life is tough, and having a boyfriend or girlfriend or human teddy bear doesn't make it much easier. Dating relationships bring their own problems and they are no substitute whatsoever for marriage. And speaking of marriage, I don't snuggle with any men except my husband, so why are girls snuggling non-stop with men not their husbands? I don't say this in a judgmental way because, let's face it, I was a snuggle monster myself. I'm just throwing the question out there.

If it is totally okay and in keeping with Catholic traditions to snuggle non-husbands, then that is totally awesome, and I will keep my eye peeled for plump, warm, snuggly looking chaps. But somehow I don't think it is.

Why Are They Boring? Is It Us?

When I was a Single woman in my early twenties, I thought most Catholic men in their early twenties were frightfully boring, and now that I am a Married woman aged forty, I think most Catholic men in their early twenties are frightfully interesting. How inconvenient! Still, Catholic men in their early twenties come up to me after Mass now and tell me about their interesting lives, so I have profitted in the long run.

It is a puzzle to me why I found most Catholic men in their twenties dull when I was twenty, when Catholic men in their twenties today are so interesting. Even more puzzling, during my recent travels, I spoke to a girl currently in her twenties, and she finds most Catholic men in their twenties dull.

And to add to the puzzle, the accounts of English debutantes of the 1920s and 1930s reveal that they found most of the young men that they met during the London Season indescribably dull. And yet, once the debs married, they had marvellous social lives and made friends with many men, young and old, not finding them dull at all.

What can all this mean? I have four hypotheses, which I will expound here.

1. The first hypothesis is that when I was twenty, I was too young to appreciate the merits of nice Catholic boys in their early twenties. Fancying myself an intellectual, I was more interested in men in graduate school. (When you are twenty and don't know any better, grad school status suggests that a man is a serious intellectual.) And I suspect that twenty year old girls find Older Men interesting because they seem to possess a glamour and a sophistication as yet lacking in twenty year old boys, to say nothing of the twenty year old girls. You want what you haven't got, in short.

2. The second hypothesis is that Catholic boys and girls in their early twenties are under a lot of internal and external pressure to find each other attractive and to be found attractive by each other. And since most of us are not really ready at 20 to marry, we rebel. "Marriageable" is a quality that means squat next to "fanciable." Boys our mothers are keen on ("He's a nice, stable boy with a good character. What more do you want?") leave us cold, and we all know wonderful girls who get passed over for nasty little passion-pots with bright red lips and talons.

Why? Because we aren't old enough to get married yet, that's why. In Canada, the USA, Britain and Germany (at least), our culture encourages us to stay teenagers (or "students") as long as humanly possible. (In Germany students get so many perks and discounts, losing your student status must be a serious economic tragedy.) I was a teenager until I was 30 or so. This is not a good thing. However, it was not entirely my fault. Society was to blame.

3. The third hypothesis is that Catholic boys and girls act in a very strange and fakely polite way around each other and relax only in front of oldsters like me, who privately think the youngsters are fantastically beautiful but usually have the brains to hide this. A relaxed and funny Catholic boy is a lot more interesting than a careful, hunted-looking Catholic boy. And a forty year old Catholic married woman, if she isn't too matronly, looks like an indulgent aunt--a cool aunt, with a job in publishing or television, who wants to know what the kids are saying these days. She never looks at a guy like he's a serial killer, which NCGs often do, and NCBs hate it.

4. The fourth hypothesis--and I admit this is a bit of a stretch--is that the most interesting twenty-something men are the ones who like to talk to forty year old women like me. Possibly the dull ones skulk off in corners, where I can't see and hear them. Only the cream of Scottish Catholic young man society is toodling up to me with teacups to ask me how I am, and that is awesome.

So to sum up my hypotheses, you might find Catholics your age boring because:

1) you're too young
2) you're too young to get married
3) you all need to relax
4) they don't have the social skills to talk to older ladies after Mass, and the best ones are talking to me.

One solution to this problem would be for forty year old married ladies like me to dress up to the nines and swan around town with twenty-something Catholic men. This would impart our worldly glamour onto the men, and twenty-something Catholic women, rightly resenting our trespass into their age bracket, would now sit up, take notice, and find the formerly boring Catholic men glamorous and even slightly wicked for running around town with married ladies. The only losers would be the husbands, but even then perhaps they would enjoy the fact that they no longer had to squire their wives around town and could stay at home in peace to watch TV and eat cheese on toast.

;-D

Single and Self-Care

Oh poppets. I am growing careless. Yesterday we locked me out of the Historical House. This was not so bad in itself except that before Christmas I lost my mobile phone. When I am stressed--and going to the local (and very ghastly) mall to buy all the provisions for Christmas Dinner was very stressful indeed--I tend to lose things. And, to add to the problem of being locked out of the H.H. and having lost my phone, I can't memorize mobile phone numbers. My brain cannot process numbers; I think I have numerical dyslexia, if there is such a thing. And therefore I could not call my husband, then in a pub watching Scotland play rugby against Ireland, when I discovered I had no key.

"No problem," I thought. "I will bang on the door of the H.H. manager, for she will let me in."

The manager was not home.

"No problem," I thought. "I will cross the fields to the neighbours, for they will give me a cup of tea and shelter and B.A.'s mobile phone number."

The neighbours were not home.

"No problem," I thought, although rather crossly now. "I will walk to the shore and take refuge in the hotel restaurant. Surely the rugby will be over soon."

I left a note for B.A. and went to the hotel. I had a pot of tea and cheese on toast and waited for B.A. to call. He did not, however. Seeing that it was nearly dark, and being afraid of walking through the woods in the dark (where in Toronto stranger rape happens), I rushed back in the twilight to the H.H. to wait for B.A. to come back. I sat in a niche in the aedicule under the balustrade, ready to chuck my missal through a window of the locked door should a rapist approach. (This would set off an alarm so mighty it would immediately summon an army of H.H.-protecting police, firefighters and curators, including B.A.)

It was much colder than I expected. It was also very dark. To while away the time I counted the airplanes and watched the clouds blow away gradually, revealing Orion in all his starry splendour. I listened to the trains pass, to sudden snatches of music, and to men's voices suddenly loud in the woods. Not having a watch, I did not know how late it was. But I did know that it was very cold and that surely the rugby game must be over. Soccer lasts 90 minutes. Surely rugby doesn't take that much longer?

It occured to me that although it is much warmer in southeastern Scotland than in southeastern Canada, it was still February. And it also occured to me that although B.A. said he'd be back after the rugby game, he never said exactly when. If he called the H.H. to say he'd be late, he might assume I was asleep and go on to another pub with our hard-drinking friends, and then another one, and then with them to dinner, and then stroll back at 2 AM, by which time I would be dead of cold or fright.

The Historical House is thickly ringed by woods. I would rather freeze to death than go through the woods at night. This is one thing men never seem to get about what it means to be a woman. Men worry about being raped in jail. The whole world after nightfall is woman's jail.

As really the safest place for me was in the aedicule, my missal at the ready to be chucked through the window, I stayed there, and I pondered the long string of careless actions that had led there. This would not have happened if I were Single because when I was Single I was a lot more careful. I planned in advance. I never left a house without checking for my key. I always had a route mapped out. I would never sit outside a semi-rural house in the dark waiting for hours for someone to come and let me in. I would never have let that happen.

In addition, I had a G.P., a dentist, my own bank account, a lawyer, and an entire network of professionals that I built up over twenty-odd years. Do I have that here? No.

When I was a Single woman, I was lot smarter about my basic survival. Now that I am Married, I've started getting slack about my basic survival. Maybe it's different if you have kids, because the kids' survival depends on your sense of survival. But if you get used to having a man to lean on, look out, because if suddenly he isn't there, you might topple over.

B.A. came home at eight, rather concerned that I hadn't answered the phone when he called at 7:15 or any time after that. The sun had set two hours and eighteen minutes before he arrived. I cried.

She Disnae Read My Blog

From Allan Morrison, Ah Couldnae Believe Ma Ears: A Hilarious Collection of Overheard Banter (Hachette Scotland, 2009):

Overheard in Castle Street, Glasgow, on a Saturday afternoon:

"You and me is finished. Finished! Dae ye hear me?"

"But ah love you, ma wee pet."

"Don't 'wee pet' me! You say ye love me. Aye, you love half the women in Glesca and love drinking in half the pubs. You're just a big pain in the arse, so ye ur!"

"Okay then. Why don't we get merrit."

"Ur ye serious?"

"Aye."

"Oh, ah cannae wait tae tell ma mammy."

Moreover: Shiraz sent in this sobering Salon article. I think it is yet another argument not to settle for (1) Mr Wrong (2) premarital sex. The fact that women are reluctantly but resignedly acting out scenes from pornography makes me sad. Are they so lonely or that starved for simple affection that they'll do things they find distasteful? My guess is yes. This is clearly not about economic survival or even a masochistic belief in male supremacy--although sometimes I wonder about the latter.

How to protect yourself from sinking to that level? Never become that lonely, that starved for affection or that self-hating. Cultivate your friendships. Ponder your fruitful role in your birth family and your community. Read about the lives of long-term Single women. Ask the intercession of Single women saints, including the nuns. Read F. Carolyn Graglia's Domestic Tranquility: even if you don't agree with her conclusions about housewifery vs. career, you'll find a lot to console you about authentic feminine sexuality.

Go ahead and get that cat or dog. Get two. Have you ever wondered why Single women fear being called "the Cat Lady" whereas Single men are never, ever called "the Cat Man" or "the Dog Man"? Society has so many ways of intimidating and punishing unmarried women, be they chaste or be they sexually active. Don't let it.

Fourteen Minutes on Irish Radio

Whew! That's my second Seraphic Singles radio interview done! Did anyone hear it? What did you think? Thanks to Carole for setting it up! Thanks to Ronan of Spirit Radio for mentioning the title of my book so often, for this is the kind of thing that makes my Canadian publisher happy. His name is Joe, and he took a chance by publishing a book by unknown (and unteaching) little me, so I like it when he is happy.

Thank goodness for coffee, for my jet lag is immense. I'm going to get some more, and then I'm going to put up a new Auntie Seraphic letter. I'm sure I have one or two hanging out in my IN box.

Day Off for Jet Lag

Oh, poppets. Zzzzz. And tomorrow morning I have to sound bright, shiny and human for Irish radio!

I am trying to think of a quick bit of Advice for Singles, but all I can think of is:

A) It is very odd how in many books written before 1970 (e.g. the Ruth Rendell mystery I read on the flight to Canada), it is assumed that unmarried women eventually go funny in the head. I cannot imagine that there was any scientific evidence for this whatsoever, and yet people keep alluding to it in early 20th century novels. Goodness knows how many women gave up being Single just because they worried about "Old Maids" going batty.

B) In my Catholic dating website days, I NEVER clicked that button that said that I would be willing to relocate thousands of miles away for love. However, I did. Which just goes to show that concrete reality beats hypothesis and theory hands down.

See you soon!