Do you think it'd be easier with someone by your side?

SWR member and author of the blog Sex, Lies & Dating in the City, Simone Grant, writes a monthly post for SingleWomenRule.com. This month, she shares an honest perspective on her tendency to contemplate her life if she were married. Check it out, and SingleWomenRule.com’s response.

Simone Grant of Sex, Lies & Dating says:

I have a confession to make. Sometimes I play the “what if” game.

What if, back when I was in college, I didn’t go study abroad, but instead cancelled those plans because I had a boyfriend who said he loved me (and because we both knew the relationship probably wouldn’t survive my being away)?

Or what if I worked harder to make my last relationship work? What if I had more patience and faith?
What if I were married, now?

I don’t play this game when I’m lonely (loneliness isn’t a major issue for me). I play it when things are hard or scary. When I’ve spent all day on the phone with the health insurance company or the bank. Or when someone I love dies. Because that’s when it hits me: This might be easier if I didn’t have to do it all alone.

I remember saying something like that to a married friend, years ago. I was having a weird legal issue with a former employer. I was clearly in the right. It was hurtful and upsetting because I’d worked hard for them for years and they were treating me poorly. And I’d called her because I knew that a friend of hers was a labor lawyer. Anyway, as we were wrapping up the call I muttered something about how it’d be easier if I had a husband.

She reacted bizarrely. As if I’d just said that all my problems could be solved if only I had some cotton candy.

She couldn’t understand how much more stressful that kind of situation might be for a single woman (and a young one, at that, I was in my early 30s at the time). I had no one at home to talk to, no one to back me up financially and no one to help me through it on an emotional level. Good friends and boyfriends are wonderful, but they can only do so much. Anyway, I realized that it was something she couldn’t understand. She’d been with her husband since college. She couldn’t relate.

I’m guessing that it’s a feeling that most single people can relate to. That no matter how independent and competent we are, there are times when we think about how much easier it could be if there was someone to share it all with.

Or maybe it’s just me.

Keysha Whitaker of SingleWomenRule.com says:

It’s a slippery slope to regret past decisions. (Trust me. I’m queen of a little country called Regret. It’s a self-defeating behavior that yields nada good.) Our decisions are the binding threads in the fabric of our lives: pull one out and the whole garment is sure to unravel. And you know how bad you feel when you’ve got a thread hanging from your dress, you’re self-conscious, you keep picking at it, it’s all you can think about. You’re generally unhappy for the whole day.

So it is with the What If Game; playing it will definitely make you unhappy.

As I’ve said before, at SingleWomenRule.com, we’re not anti-relationship or anti-marriage – we’re pro-both, as long as you have the right perspective.

Thinking life is easier if there is someone to share it with, in my opinion, is a myth that can keep us miserable, and a perspective that we need to abandon if we’re to truly learn how to “revel in life’s magic and feel truly fulfilled – whether the knight in shining – or newly refurbished – armor ever arrives.”

Ironically, I’m reading a book to review on SingleWomenRule.com – Solemate: Master the Art of Aloneness & Transform Your Life, by Lauren Mackler. (I invite you to pick it up and read with me.)

After reading Simone’s post, I randomly opened the book and fell to a section headed Overcoming the Fear of Being Alone. Mackler writes:

For many people – men and women alike – it’s fear that fuels their intense drive to find a mate: the fear of being unloved, the fear of being financially insolvent, the fear of being alone. For women, the fear of being alone often centers on an underlying belief that they can’t take care of themselves either emotionally of financially. For both men and women, the fear of aloneness can revolve around the issue of emotional dependency. Many people are simply afraid that they can’t be happy without a mate. These fears are grounded in our limiting beliefs, not in reality.

Though Simone said “I don’t play this game when I’m lonely (loneliness isn’t a major issue for me). I play it when things are hard or scary.” I’d propose that the uneasiness of facing hard or scary things without someone’s shoulder to lay your head on and ball, at night, comes from an aspect of feeling alone.

Remember Simone’s friend’s response to her lament:
She reacted bizarrely. As if I’d just said that all my problems could be solved if only I had some cotton candy.

Perhaps, it’s not that Mrs. Married didn’t understand the struggle, perhaps she understood all too well, that the presence of a live-in-lover, husband, girlfriend, or whatever, doesn’t guarantee support: emotional, financial or otherwise. Perhaps she understands that it’s possible for another’s presence to be good and satisfying initially, but like cotton candy, dissolves faster than we’d like it to, and never, ever, fills us up.

What do YOU think?