I may be extrapolating from a data set of one, but I think
women do better alone than men. I have known a number of older women who
outlived the men in their lives, but few men. Those women seem to be able to
enrich their own lives with various forms of fulfillment that don't involve
finding a man. The few men I do know of seem to be always in pursuit of some
connection. Even if I am reasoning from too little data indulge me with the
possibility that I am just using this to talk about myself.
In the interest of full disclosure I think I should confess
what prompts this post after such a long lag. This weekend my wife is away
visiting one of her children. It's not that we haven't been apart since we took
a long trip together where we spent every hour with each other in places
entirely new to us where we didn't speak the language. We were great travelers,
keeping each other going, solving problems together, being willing to improvise
a day when plans did not work out. She works and I work from home so we are
apart during the day. I also took a trip on my own to visit an old friend and
visit my son on the East Coast. That doesn't feel the same as having her gone
from the home we share, and what I notice is that I feel adrift.
I have felt that way before. During my last two or three
years on the East Coast when I was commuting on a monthly basis to the West Coast
and an apartment I had there, I often felt on either coast as if I was rattling
around in empty rooms. For the several months before I met her after moving
here, I felt the same way. I had some odd ways of filling the space and time despite
the necessities of looking for work and beginning to engage my new community.
She helped me get grounded here. Someone who makes friends
easily and is very likable, she was the beginning of my local social network.
It took a few years for me to begin to build my own and even now it is not very
extensive, but then I am not an extrovert. In Jungian terms I am an introvert
which means that my inner world is where I get energy. Through a lifetime I have
only two or three really close friends. My next circle is still pretty small
and includes my writing group friends and a few people I have worked with or
known professionally.
But here I am rattling around again and thinking about how I
would deal with this if it were more than a temporary situation. The pets would
probably keep me honest but without a 9 to 5 I might find myself slipping. I do
some work now but it is very part-time and intermittent. I haven't bumped
myself over the threshold to get some small but regular part-time volunteer
engagement. I think I'd have to do that if she were not here.
I think it is easy for a man to get purposeless when alone.
Now maybe I am talking about the difference between someone who makes social
connections easily and someone who doesn't, but there does seem to me to be a
little gender bias in this. I can't imagine my wife ever being purposeless, even
if she didn't have me to make a purpose of.
At least what I am doing today is writing and that's great.
A note of apology: Probably
not necessary since I only have three or four regular readers and they haven't
heard from me in months and won't be expecting this, but sorry I haven't been
continuing to post here. The writing switch seems to have been turned off. I
left struggling with trying to respond to a challenge to say what was "the
best of times" about the times I have lived in. The question stymied me
and I'm still thinking about it, none of that a bad thing. Hope to see you more
often.
