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The view from here

By ⋅ January 23, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

“Smart,qualified, witty, employed young women, extro­vert, party ani­mals — in short “eli­gi­ble” in every sense but unmar­ried. Rea­son: they haven’t come across the “right” man yet. Are their expec­ta­tions very high? Do they want the looks of a Brad Pitt and the qual­i­ties of a Darcy and the wealth of Bill Gates prefer­ably with the voice of Amitabh Bachchan and the poetry of Neruda? Not really. They just want a man

So I asked one of them if they mean to say that they haven’t found any like that among all the men they meet. She said that she hasn’t actu­ally had the oppor­tu­nity to find out because none of the meet­ings has pro­ceeded beyond meet­ing at par­ties and she doesn’t want to make the first move and sound des­per­ate unless she is sure that the other per­son has some inter­est in her! And I have a sus­pi­cion that the men are not mak­ing the first move pre­cisely for the same rea­son. So you meet them every­where — young, smart, qual­i­fied… eli­gi­ble in every sense but unmarried!”

Usha wrote this inter­est­ing piece on her blog recently, a result of sev­eral con­ver­sa­tions we’ve had on the topic. And instead of a com­ment, this I thought deserves a whole new post. Or my per­spec­tive: the view from where I’m stand­ing!

Usha’s often asked me whether it’s more dif­fi­cult for us (read, in her opin­ion: sin­gle, eli­gi­ble, extro­vert women) to find “some­one” these days. The rea­son for her ask­ing is that she finds there are quite a few of us ‘seem­ingly’ eli­gi­ble women, who lead rea­son­ably active social lives but some­how have not man­aged to find these “spe­cial someones”.

Why, asks Usha, who’s always curi­ous about life and its ways.

Is it because women nowa­days are too inde­pen­dent? Or that your abil­ity to com­pro­mise has become lesser and you’re less will­ing to adjust?

When I look around, I do notice a grow­ing num­ber of friends who are doing quite okay on their own, despite being past what is the accept­able mar­riage­able age (I have no idea what it is today though, but I sus­pect it hasn’t changed much through the ages!). How­ever, in most cases, it’s not because they don’t want to get mar­ried. But by some twist of fate, they are yet to find the right man. So that leaves Usha won­der­ing if it’s really so dif­fi­cult to find the right person.

And more impor­tantly, won­der­ing whether our def­i­n­i­tions of the right per­son have changed.

It’s actu­ally a ques­tion that is of some con­ster­na­tion to me too. Firstly, I think most of us are real­is­tic enough to real­ize that there is no such thing as a per­fect man or woman. You try and build a rela­tion­ship that will be close to what you want. Not per­fec­tion def­i­nitely. But to achieve that you’d need some­one on the same wave­length, who shares at least some of your own inter­ests and yes, most def­i­nitely would want to spend time doing things with you.

Is it so hard to find such a per­son? Is it get­ting harder these days? It def­i­nitely seems to be. Despite lead­ing busy lives where you do encounter a lot of inter­est­ing peo­ple on a weekly (if not daily) reg­u­lar basis, and also a mul­ti­tude of oppor­tu­ni­ties includ­ing online forums to find peo­ple, the task has not become eas­ier. But why, I am yet to fig­ure out.

Are our stan­dards higher? Are we more ambitious?

“Do they want the looks of a Brad Pitt and the qual­i­ties of a Darcy and the wealth of Bill Gates prefer­ably with the voice of Amitabh Bachchan and the poetry of Neruda?” asks Usha.

No, I don’t think so at all. We have pretty much the same stan­dards but what has changed over time are our expec­ta­tions. Today, the man is not sup­posed to be a provider but a friend / lover / com­pan­ion and an equal part­ner in everything.

As Usha points out also in her post, this is not nec­es­sar­ily the case with men. They tra­di­tion­ally still look for a girl like mom, who will cook, clean and keep house and look good on their arms. Which is not to say again that men aren’t chang­ing either. But this change is def­i­nitely not hap­pen­ing at the same pace as it is hap­pen­ing amongst women. The result? A lot of sin­gle “eli­gi­ble” women, who are still looking.

Are we too inde­pen­dent? I would con­sider myself inde­pen­dent. But what is too inde­pen­dent? I would obvi­ously love to share some of my errands and daily nec­es­sary chores with some­one else. Just the mundane-ness of every­day life gets a lit­tle more pleas­ant when you can share some of it. I would love to depend on some­one else for a change and not be mak­ing all the deci­sions myself (and share the reper­cus­sions with some­one also!). But until that hap­pens, I have to do it on my own. I don’t think we have a choice in this regard but to be independent.

But in a larger con­text, I don’t really see “being inde­pen­dent” as a deter­rant to a rela­tion­ship. But in amidst this inde­pen­dence, there has to be some inter-dependence.

A friend said some­thing really inter­est­ing the other day. He said that one needs to go from depen­dence to inde­pen­dence and then to inter-dependence and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. That jour­ney to reach a state of inter-dependence forms an impor­tant part in our rela­tion­ships and to achieve that state in a mutu­ally sat­is­fy­ing man­ner is quite a chal­lenge. Some­time, you never quite get there.

Are we less ready to com­pro­mise? I think this to some extent is true. We def­i­nitely are less will­ing to take the rap for things that we know we don’t deserve. We no longer need to be afraid of hav­ing nowhere to go or no one to turn to in a thwarted rela­tion­ship. Or tol­er­ate things that we shouldn’t have to just because it’s expected.

But what I’ve noticed these days is also an increase in the num­ber of women who like being alone and are quite com­fort­able with the idea of not hav­ing a man or another per­son in their lives just for the sake of it. It’s no longer a given that you need a man or a fam­ily because it’s the accept­able thing to do. So it wouldn’t be totally sur­pris­ing to bump into what you’d con­sider “eli­gi­ble” women who are sim­ply not inter­ested in tying the prover­bial knot. Alter­na­tive lifestyles are just as accepted, albeit slowly, but there has def­i­nitely been a change in the way peo­ple view these things nowadays.

Mean­while, I come back to the most basic of ques­tions: where are the (eli­gi­ble) men?! :)

Discussion

9 Responses to “The view from here”

  1. Hey thanks for sat­is­fy­ing my curios­ity on this count — I am not only curi­ous but actu­ally a bit per­plexed at the sit­u­a­tion because I find all these unmar­ried peo­ple of both sexes won­der­ful as peo­ple and as indi­vid­u­als. How come two nice peo­ple have dif­fi­culty being mar­ried — that is what both­ers me. Or is it that the indi­vid­u­al­ism is val­ued so highly even after mar­riage that there isn’t much of give and take?
    But what wor­ries me is the KANK kind of phi­los­o­phy where peo­ple say that if we find some­thing bet­ter out­side what we have we want to break up and go for it. Is it why peo­ple are unwill­ing to com­mit as it may close doors on choices? Now some­where or other should peo­ple not be will­ing to say “This is the best choice I made when I had the choice and now I will give it my best and make it work?” Or am I anti­quated in my think­ing.
    Mean­while I still cant get over the fact that peo­ple haven’t found you “eli­gi­ble” yet — I’d have imag­ined a queue as long as the one out­side the US consulate!Are all the men blind?

    Posted by Usha | January 23, 2007, 5:32 pm

  2. How is a man to know whether the woman is interested? :)

    I wrote a post called “The Sale”. The post isn’t what it appears to be– look at it from a sin­gle man’s point of view.

    Posted by Hyde | January 23, 2007, 5:46 pm

  3. @ usha: yes, it’s is a rather per­plex­ing sit­u­a­tion that i’ve come across per­son­ally also where the indi­vid­u­als are won­der­ful peo­ple on their own, but still can’t make it work together. Indi­vid­u­al­ity is def­i­nitely val­ued very highly. But I’m not sure whether we’ve becom­ing more inflex­i­ble when it comes to give and take in a rela­tion­ship. I most seri­ously hope that is not the case! I would tend to agree that peo­ple take much longer to decide and are prob­a­bly more cau­tious before mak­ing choices today. You’re def­i­nitely not anti­quated in your think­ing. But these aspects of life are chang­ing today and along with it our atti­tudes also.

    As far as the queues go, thanks Usha for the vote of con­fi­dence ;)!! I will def­i­nitely let you know when I see it. Hehe!

    @ hyde: I think a woman would def­i­nitely give some kind of a sig­nal if she wanted the man to know :)

    Posted by Anita | January 24, 2007, 9:07 am

  4. Hi Anita,

    Vinod here, and Im into pho­tog­ra­phy for hobby and I have been watch­ing ur space 4 quite some­time and felt really inter­st­ing — both your blog and Flickr. I need a lot of help from you regard­ing tech­niques and lens details as Im going to invest in DSLR — Canon 400d( i heard that KIT lens is not good and i plan to get body & lens seper­ately, please sugggest me a good lens which has a MACRO, WIDEANGLE, TELEPHOTO — any 2 is enough, pls give me as many options as pos­si­ble) and Good thoughts should be a click Away so, I have tagged you in my blog ‚if you have any con­cerns regard­ing that then drop in a com­ment in my blog — http://www.invisiblechina.blogspot.com/ !!!

    Vinod

    Posted by Vinod | January 24, 2007, 9:56 am

  5. Good post, Anita!I think you raise a lot of impor­tant and inter­est­ing points. What I see here is what I saw in the 80’s and 90’s in the US. Women here are start­ing to real­ize that no mat­ter what their fam­i­lies tell them, they do not need a man to help define them. Now, no one is say­ing that hav­ing a ful­fill­ing rela­tion­ship is unwanted, it’s just that women are real­iz­ing that they do not need a man to com­plete them. And because of that real­iza­tion, we are much much less lik­ley to set­tle for a man that doesn’t meet our (newly updated) standards.

    No longer is it enough for the man to sim­ply have a job, be a good earner and look OK. We want some­one who matches us intel­lec­tu­ally, who has some sense of him­self, who can con­tribute emo­tion­ally… and WANTS TO! Is this being too picky? Hell no! We’ve all seen the mis­ery of aunts or friends or per­haps our own moth­ers suf­fer thru things that did not really fit. They did it out of neces­sity. And luck­ily we have dif­fer­ent choices.

    Inde­pen­dence is good. If you can­not take care of your­self, what good are you to another? We must be whole in order to be func­tional in a rela­tion­ship. Inde­pen­dance is some­times not fun, but it is a necessity.

    Are some peo­ple too choosy? Maybe they are. Who is to tell. I mar­ried late by all stan­dards (Indian and US) because until I met my hus­band I was not com­fort­able with the options I had. My par­ents thought I was being ridicu­lous and too choosy. I think I had every right to wait until I was sure.

    What I learned is that it is much bet­ter to be alone than in the wrong rela­tion­ship. If you do not value your­self, you can­not expect oth­ers to fol­low suit.

    Posted by smallsquirrel | February 5, 2007, 3:42 pm

  6. Anita, a nice, thought­ful post. straight up, inquis­i­tive and non-judgemental as always. and my first com­ment here :)

    Im not sure if choos­ing to remain sin­gle is just about ‘mar­riage’. I often see that the age of lomg mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships too is passe’. I have con­sis­tently seen the aver­age age of an ‘unmar­ried’ reln slip­ping from say an aver­age of about 2 years to some­thing as short as 3–4 months in the last 2–3 years. Has hap­pened to me and has hap­pened to SO many of my friends. And these aren’t just flings, but mean­in­ful rela­tion­ships with a strong emo­tional con­tent too. One rea­son is def­i­nitely the social changes and stuff related to women. another would be the fact that most men too (the ones to whom this would apply — sin­gle, 28–35 yrs, climb­ing up well, mak­ing good money) have grown beyond their think­ing of their 20–25 yr time. men in this bracket have already seen there done that. most have had their share of var­ied rela­tion­ships and have come to expect a lot more from a woman than just a pretty face and hot body. so now both men and women want not just phys­i­cal and emo­tional attrac­tion but also a host of other things like com­mon likes, sim­i­lar friends, sim­i­lar lifestyle..yada yada. In my opin­ion, at the end of the day, these times are just a func­tion of the age, the life expe­ri­ences, cyn­i­cism and lack of trust in oth­ers. if you kinda think about the age of ‘these’ sin­gles — i bet the num­ber of them under 28 yrs could be counted within half the fin­gers on a hand.

    After a a cer­tain age, sin­gle men and women come across a lot of sim­i­lar sin­gles, but no one trusts the other one as in – oh he isn’t really look­ing for com­mit­ment, oh she isn’t look­ing to set­tle down. And then prob­lems of all the past bag­gage, and look­ing back. And also the inabil­ity to like really really get inter­ested in some­one — you know THAT inter­est that makes one pur­sue and pur­sue. And then scares of ruin­ing friend­ships through romance. and most would be com­mit­ment phobes. I mean look at it this way, some one who was pre­dis­posed towards com­mit­ment, would have already com­mit­ted ear­lier than reach a 30 years, right? :)So all in all, you have a whole bunch of eli­gi­ble peo­ple who are all so good together and none of them seem to be get­ting hitched. Oh well, so goes on life. lets see what the esteemed vatal nagaraj has in store for us the next few days in Bangalore :).

    ciao
    Amit

    Posted by Amit | February 6, 2007, 12:24 pm

  7. Here after so long! Your blog in par­tic­u­lar is blocked at work :p.

    And I can so so so iden­tify with this topic! Where are the good eli­gi­ble men, please tell me. Every­one I meet, either gets intim­i­dated or is not inter­ested in some­thing like “last­ing com­mit­ment”. And these days, peo­ple are so short of time that they dont even want to explore the pos­si­bil­i­ties of a rela­tion­ship — they would rather stick to their iner­tia laden lives.

    Posted by Twilight Fairy | February 6, 2007, 4:10 pm

  8. This sort of ties in with the age old canard/query: “What do Women Want?” It’s kind of an odd ques­tion.
    If you’re using the word Women, to describe some sort of mono­lithic social group who all think exactly alike and all come from iden­ti­cal cul­tures, you’ll never get an answer. Chances are, if you’re male and you do get “The Answer” it will be the one you didn’t want.
    I’m a per­pet­ual Batch­e­lor, who would be impos­si­ble to live with at this point. Too set in my ways and per­haps a bit too much like Homer Simp­son minus the Beer.
    I could go the route of the Per­sonal Advert. (Just for research pur­poses, naturally!)Pudgy impov­er­ished teato­tal veg­e­tar­ian dude, 42 y.o.a., who likes roam­ing the liv­ing room in his ‘Y’ Fronts. Burps uncon­trol­lably after every meal and has an opin­ion about every­thing, seeks incred­i­bly arti­fi­cial look­ing wealthy super­model. Only replies with pic. will be hon­oured.
    A few days later.….….“Hmmm.More spam.….Another Fel­low from Nige­ria ask­ing me for some help in re-directing his funds from his bank account to mine.…and “Re: If you like Pina Coladas/Re: Your per­sonal ad.” It’s got an attach­ment so this one has got to be seri­ous!
    I’ll be shal­low and open that bit first. She’s got blue hair?! Why does the name Midge sound so famil­iar? Something’s rot­ten in Springfield!”

    Posted by R.A. Levin | February 9, 2007, 11:12 pm

  9. jes­sica: that’s a really inter­est­ing per­spec­tive. and i whole heart­edly agree with the fact that “women are real­iz­ing (more and more) that they do not need a man to com­plete them.”

    amit: thanks for your first com­ment here :)
    I often see that the age of long mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships too is passé. — It might increas­ingly be the trend, but I hope this is just a pass­ing phase! and i would agree with the fact that the bag­gage does come into the way and act as a deter­rent once you’re older!

    twi­light: nice to see you here after ages too!! why are they block­ing me? I am a nice per­son, please tell them!

    exactly the point we come down to even­tu­ally! where are they? :)

    r a levin: i don’t think there are any answers either. prob­a­bly some trends of the way life is going that has to be accepted and dealt with! and btw, by your descrip­tion, there’s def­i­nitely no hope for you ;)

    Posted by Anita | February 13, 2007, 3:03 pm

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