Brave Men: Not Dragonslayers Anymore

Ok, so I'm here in England again after a soujourn in my "homeland," Rhode Island, USA.

I was walking today in the city of York, picking up a few odds and ends that I needed. It must be vacation week out here like it is in the US because the city was the kind of zoo I only expect on the weekends. Parents, kids, frustrated bands of teenaged youth, the city was full of people everywhere. Of course that meant that my accomplishing any errands in good time was a moot point.

However, that got me looking around. Here I am, single chick in the Mary Tyler Moore-esque tradition, walking in the city, by the river, expecting the "You're gonna make it after all" theme to start playing any second. I see girls younger than myself pushing strollers, young women older than I am who were those girls years ago, but now toting more than one child hopping about all over the sidewalk uncorrected.

Now, although I have no plans to end up one of your bored, average, frustrated housewives watching the new opportunites of this world pass me by, I do have respect for the mothers of this world. I do not buy into the whole idea that one day, I am going to have an epiphany, decide to "settle down" and then my life will progress as follows: I will marry the guy who I suddenly meet and "know" is the "love of my life," then I'll work for a little while, see the light again, get pregnant, quit my job because I am overcome with love and adoration for my newborn child, then I'll either continue to have children and stay home until they all pass the age of eighteen or I will try and juggle working and raising kids because God knows that no young man today is being "educated" by their parents as to how to participate in the raising of his own children, let alone how to clean a toilet. See: The Mommy Myth.

One generation after The Mary Tyler Moore Show, people like myself are the embodiment of what probably seemed like a near improbability thirty years ago. But that doesn't make it easy. There aren't many precidents for us that go back very far historically. We aren't compelled to make relationships the center of our lives. We go places, do things, take steps that others say when they're sixty, "I wish I had done that."

We've probably been with men, maybe multiple men, who have "wanted to marry us" but "just couldn't" either because we are so unconventional or because of some other present hinderance. Most men out there, like previous generations before them, still live thinking that some woman is going to come along and be that female figure that John Mayer describes in his horrible anthem to the Laura Bushs of the world, "Daughters." They want the supporter, the one who subverts herself for them, the child bearer, the caregiver, that woman who invests all of her happiness in themselves. Then, they marry that woman, and oh, they're not happy. But, they're too afaid to be with someone like us. We're scarey because we can teach them things and learn things from them and we, oh no--this is the proverbial cherry on top--want something from THEM. We don't want to be the eternal givers. We are not going to fill ourselves up with the moment he comes home from work, our precious children, and the mop and bucket in the corner of the kitchen.

Does this mean that ladies like me--mid-twenties, without a date to speak of at present--will end up perpetually single?

This question can be answered in one of three ways.

Either no, we'll settle and become what we don't want to be in order to subvert feeling alone.

Or, yes, we will continue to be single rather than settle, but we may still feel alone.

Or, no, we will be fortunate and will find someone who will be brave enough to stay with us.

Brave men out there when it comes to relationships with ladies like me? Come out and show yourselves and prove me wrong.