The Lazy, Fear-Based Argument That Keeps People In Bad Marriages — And Why It’s So Absurd
The idea that leaving a bad marriage guarantees a lifetime alone is not only outdated, it's ridiculous.
George Huffman | Unsplash Have you heard? If you, like me, are a middle-aged divorced woman who has no interest in remarrying, you are destined to die alone with your boxed wine and your cats. Or so men on the Internet frequently claim. This is supposed to be a threat, but it sounds pretty great to me. —
I already enjoy a nightly glass of boxed wine, and aside from my shredded curtains and the occasional mounds of vomit strategically deposited on my living room rug, my cats make for excellent roommates. Once I’m an empty nester, I look forward to being able to find everything I need when I need it and brushing my teeth at a sink that is reliably toothpaste splotch-free.
Of all the boneheaded arguments people out there make in defense of marriage, the argument that posits marriage as insurance against dying alone just might be the most boneheaded of them all.
'You're doomed to die alone' is a lazy, fear-based argument that keeps people in bad marriages
Look Studio / Shutterstock
Considering that the average lifespan for women is five years longer than for men, this is a particularly boneheaded argument to make to a woman. Both my grandmothers and all four of my married great aunts outlived their husbands. A couple of my great aunts outlived two.
When people make threats about dying alone, just what do they mean exactly? I assumed they meant that I would be alone in the years and months leading up to my death, but then a reader told me he was glad his mother stayed in her marriage because she got to hold her husband’s hand when she died. That’s a lot of years to put in for the off chance that her husband would not only still be living, but also present and awake at the exact time of her passing.
Either way, this whole “dying alone” business merely exposes the false equivalency our society insists on making between “being single” and “being alone.” We automatically conflate the two, and then we weaponize humanity’s understandable fear of loneliness to encourage people, particularly women, to stay in unhappy marriages.
To be fair, the 'doomed to die alone' narrative is shifting.
While there is no shortage of people who are happy to predict my solitary, feline-filled death, there is also a rising tide of women who are flexing their single status. Vogue wonders aloud if having a boyfriend is “embarrassing,” claiming that while “there’s no shame in falling in love … there’s also no shame in trying and failing to find it — or not trying at all.”
The article continues, “Where being single was once a cautionary tale (you’ll end up a ‘spinster’ with loads of cats), it is now becoming a desirable and coveted status—another nail in the coffin of a centuries-old heterosexual fairytale that never really benefited women to begin with.”
I like to consider myself part of this rising tide, but with a few caveats. I’m less interested in “flexing” my single status as I am in embracing a life that doesn’t position romantic intimacy at the center. I won’t necessarily say no if a viable opportunity for romantic intimacy presents itself.
But I’m not interested in spending 350-500 hours a year, as most people on dating apps do, trying to find my perfect match. I’m not interested in allowing any quest for partnership to encroach on the time I’m currently investing in my kids, my friendships, and my community.
I find it highly ironic that in workplaces, we’re advised to “build redundancy” for the purposes of business continuity and resilience. That means if Michael from accounting gets hit by a bus, the company can still stay up and running.
But in our personal lives, women have traditionally been advised to put all our eggs (figuratively and literally) in the man basket. As the aforementioned Vogue article points out, for so long, “women’s online identities centered around the lives of their partners, a situation rarely seen reversed.” Not just online, either. Hetero women have long centered their identities around their men, socially conditioned to put men’s needs first.
You could say I’m focused on building redundancy right now. That means that even if I find myself in a long-term partnership, I will have an autonomous sense of self, a thriving social life, and a robust community that all exist with or without said partner. Hinging my personal continuity and resilience on one single person isn’t just unrealistic, it’s unhealthy. There is no man on Planet Earth, or in any galaxy far, far away, who will ever be my everything.
I find myself hanging out with a lot of women in their 70s these days — I’m an old soul at heart — and I find little to no correlation between their partnership status and general sense of well-being. What my happiest elders have in common, whether or not they’re partnered, is exactly the elements I noted above: autonomy, friendship, and community. Those who live alone generally delight in living alone. In fact, it’s those who live with husbands who tend to complain the most about their living arrangements.
The single/partnered binary we promote blatantly ignores all the forms of emotional intimacy and connection we can find beyond romance.
Even the positive connotations we might associate with singledom — freedom, adventure, self-determination – risk glorifying a footloose, untethered life in which we are free to do exactly as we please.
This is the same way we glorify the “childfree” life, and it makes me uncomfortable for the same reasons. Opting out of marriage and/or opting out of parenthood shouldn’t be synonymous with opting out of care and connection. Do you want to know who some of the most lonely folks seem to be right now? The digital nomads, those roving bands of “free” and “single” adventurous young people who are gallivanting around the world while working remotely and posting all those mouthwatering photos on Instagram.
The views from their windows may be breathtaking—and far more social media worthy than my basement bedroom/office—but as it turns out, a breathtaking view isn’t the secret to happiness. These days, I find myself salivating over photos not of Indonesian beaches or Mediterranean villas, but of co-housing communities, like this ecovillage in Ithaca, New York.
“Footloose and fancy free” doesn’t in any way describe my single life, and I’m glad it doesn’t. Yes, I’ve gained more control over my own emotional well-being since my divorce. I no longer answer to a husband whose needs consumed my own for the better part of two decades, and I do look forward to some of the freedom I’ll have when I’m not spending every weekday evening shuttling kids to sports practices.
But I still want to be rooted. While there may not be a lot of glory in raking my neighbor’s leaves, or sending invites to a potluck, or hugging fellow recovery members in a church basement, these are all the small, ongoing activities that build the foundation for lifelong connection and fulfillment.
There’s another reason I struggle with the single/partnered binary: there can be a lot of gray area between the two. In fact, it’s this gray area I’m currently most interested in. Why do we have to be all in or all out? As long as my emotional needs are largely fulfilled elsewhere, I’m perfectly fine with exploring friendship with benefits, benefits without friendship, non-monogamy, long-distance romance, or whatever else may present itself to me.
A recent article from The Economist, which warns of a great relationship recession, posits that this is in part because “women’s standards have grown more exacting.” I guess you could say that wanting a partner who manages his own emotions and makes his own sandwiches is “exacting.” The same inane article goes on to say, “But the prospect of avoiding lifelong loneliness and celibacy will surely serve as a powerful incentive for men to change.”
There’s that tired old “dying alone with the cats” trope, except this time with the gender roles reversed. (As an aside, I was going to suggest that perhaps men die alone with their dogs, but some studies actually find that men are more likely to own cats than women. If that surprises you, you’re not alone. Old spinster tales die hard.)
So, according to The Economist, you’re either partnered or you’re lonely and celibate. There’s no in-between state. There’s no world in which you can be unpartnered and still find ways to fulfill your emotional and physical needs.
As it turns out, the threat of lifelong loneliness and celibacy is indeed inspiring men to change.
It’s created an entire movement of incels who have decided that liberal feminists are to blame. According to The New York Times, we’re now to blame for ruining the workplace, too.
It’s fascinating how threatened so many men feel by women who aren’t interested in marriage or committed relationships. For years and years, they complained about how we harangued them to commit and settle down. A lot of that was back when our ability to stay financially solvent depended on marriage, and even when that was no longer the case, our social status and sense of self-worth continued to be largely defined by whether or not a man put a ring on it.
But now that many of us are shaping a sense of self that doesn’t center hetero romantic intimacy, men are not happy. That insufferable ball and chain they complained about for so many centuries is releasing them from her clutches, and they’re finding that they have to navigate a world in which they’re responsible for their own emotions, not to mention their own sandwiches.
The good news is, de-centering romantic intimacy and building community is work we can all be doing, regardless of where we fall on the gender spectrum. Contrary to popular opinion, hetero women aren’t opting out of relationships because we’re man-haters. Also, contrary to popular opinion, women can be very good at both logic and math. We’ve done the calculations and discovered that stubbornly persistent patriarchal norms make the odds of finding fulfilling, lasting relationships outside of the context of romantic partnership far, far better than the odds of landing “Mr. Right” on Bumble.
You can call it heteropessism if you’d like, but this isn’t just about men and women being fed up with one another. It’s about realizing that this happily-ever-after fantasy we’ve been force-fed our whole lives is really stupid. Instead of “heteropessism,” I’d rather call it community optimism. Instead of a “relationship recession,” I’d rather call it a friendship resurgence. Instead of flexing my “single status,” I’d rather flex my status as self-directed and socially connected.
I’m going to pick on the aforementioned article in The Economist one last time. In its opening paragraph, it claims:
"For most of human history, coupling up was not merely a norm; it was a necessity. Before reliable contraception, women could not control their fertility, and most were far too poor to raise children alone. Hence, the centuries-old convention that, whereas a tragic play or saga ends in death, a happy one ends in marriage."
Really? Most of human history? Are your fact checkers sure about that?
For most of human history — meaning the approximately 278,000 years before the agricultural revolution in 10,000 BC—the notion of a woman raising a child alone was beyond ludicrous because we raised children communally. Yes, humans have coupled up throughout history, but not to save women from the dire fate of poverty-stricken single motherhood. No, that fate is purely a patriarchal invention.
I say this to emphasize that the ways we’re conditioned to think about “how humans do things” are often limited to the history of the patriarchy, which comprises about 4% of total human history. We would all be well served to look through a broader lens, because the social structures at the heart of the remaining 96% of human history actually served all genders quite well.
There were no loneliness epidemics, no women trapped in abusive marriages, no children going hungry while others gorged themselves. Life may have been brutal at times, but everyone got through it together.
To pop culture’s credit, getting through things together is becoming an increasingly prominent theme in contemporary movies, shows, and songs. My most recent Hulu binge, Dying for Sex, markets itself as a show about intimacy, but it’s really a show about female friendship. When the main character, Molly, is diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, she leaves her husband in search of finally finishing. She has never experienced one with another person and is determined to do so before she dies.
About two-thirds of the way through the series, I started feeling squirmy. Molly was getting close with her neighbor, one of her various partners, and I wondered if the show was headed into dark rom-com territory. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Girl climaxes. Girl dies.
That’s sort of what happened, but in the end, neither the romance nor the quest for a climax comprised the driving plotline. That was reserved for Molly’s friendship with Nikki, who stepped in to serve as her caretaker at great cost to her own romantic relationship and to her career. When Molly ultimately passed, Nikki was there by her side. Not Molly’s husband, not the neighbor guy, but the bestie who had seen Molly through.
I have no idea who, if anyone, will be physically present with me when I pass, but as long as I continue to do the work of maintaining strong social ties, I have no fear of dying alone.
In fact, I was far lonelier in my marriage than I am in my divorce. I was so emotionally exhausted by my ex-husband’s needs that I let my other relationships flounder. I worked so hard at defending my choices and maintaining the pretense of a happily married woman that there were few people I could turn to when I needed a shoulder to cry on.
My kids now see a much more confident, connected version of their mother whose emotional well-being doesn’t hinge on any single person. When I told my teenage daughter that some people online like to threaten me by telling me I’ll die alone with my cats, she said, “What’s so bad about that?”
She and I don’t agree on a lot of things these days — screen time limits, snack time choices, and beauty product budgets, to name a few. But in that moment, we were kindred spirits. I can only hope she’ll follow my lead and learn from my earlier missteps.
Turns out, life may not ever give us the happily-ever-after glorified in our childhood fairytales. But we can build an emotionally-supported-ever-after, and Prince Charming doesn’t have anything to do with it.
Kerala Goodkin is an award-winning writer and co-owner of a worker-owned marketing agency. Her weekly stories are dedicated to interrupting notions of what it means to be a mother, woman, worker, and wife. She writes on Medium and has recently launched a Substack publication, Mom, Interrupted.
