Inside the Single’s Head--A Dizzying Set of Beliefs, Hopes, Fears
AIDS isn’t a serious threat to heterosexual singles.
An overweight man in his 50s can expect to date trim, attractive women in their 30s.
In a relationship, you should be able to make your partner happy all of the time.
Surprising statements? Surprise--those statements represent opinions common among local singles.
To find out what issues most concern unmarried adults, Single Life contacted four local professionals who counsel singles. Interviewed were a psychotherapist, a membership counselor at a video dating service, a college counselor and a pastor. We heard the predictable (women want commitment; men want freedom), the encouraging (after the “assertive” ’70s, singles in the ‘80s are learning the fine art of compromise and negotiation), and the patently dumb (blithe bed-hopping in the age of AIDS).
What we heard, in fact, producedmore questions than answers.
“Orange County is a wild and woolly place to be single,” said Nina Miller, a marriage and family therapist. “There are a lot of things happening on a lot of different social and financial levels. You can either have a sense of wonderment--and delight in all the opportunities--or you can be scared to death to go out and get your feet wet.”
Miller said the singles she counsels--who make up roughly half of her clientele--range from “people who are extremely isolated and barely have a social network at all” to “people who have really good friends but have difficulty with intimate relationships.”
As varied a group as they may be, Miller said, her single clients are united in pursuit of answers to “the heavy existential questions.”
“People in serious relationships are likely to be concerned with the unfinished business from childhood because they’re acting that stuff out in the context of the relationship,” Miller said. “People who do not have an ongoing, intimate relationship are dealing with questions of isolation and aloneness. ‘Am I OK by myself? What’s significant to me besides a relationship? I’m going to die one day--am I going to do that alone?’
“I don’t think we ask those kinds of questions as much when we’re involved with someone.”
Yet for all that reflection on meaning and mortality, Miller said most of her single clients haven’t asked themselves one practical question: How am I going to protect myself from getting AIDS?
“I think the heterosexual population is still a little disbelieving,” Miller said. “I hear discounting of the importance of the issue, both from men and women. ‘I don’t need to worry about AIDS.’ ‘I’m not going to get AIDS.’ And usually that’s a rationalization, because they want to keep doing what they’re doing. They want to keep sleeping around.”
Carol Lynn, a membership counselor at Great Expectations video-dating service in Irvine, seconded Miller’s observation.
“I see maybe five or six singles per day, people who come here to find out about the program,” Lynn said. “Surprisingly enough, not very many of them have said anything to me about AIDS. Maybe one out of a hundred will ask if we do (AIDS) tests, but even those people don’t seem to be that concerned.”
On a more personal note, Lynn said she had accepted dates from six men who are clients of the dating service--three of whom “got extremely pushy” on the first date.
“One guy said something like, ‘Do you live closer to here or do I? Let’s go get friendly,’ ” Lynn recalled. “I said, ‘Are you crazy? You’ve got to be nuts! I just met you! “‘
Though the singles she sees may not be afraid of AIDS, Lynn said other fears pervade.
“What I hear every day is fear,” she said. “People are scared of being alone. They’re scared to give of themselves. What if they meet someone they really like and that person finds someone else? They want so badly to have somebody in their lives who loves them, but they’re terrified of it--they’re afraid of getting and losing.
“On our application, everyone says, ‘I’m open, honest, sincere, ready for a one-on-one relationship,’ ” Lynn said, but “what I hear in the personal interviews is bitterness, anger and fear.”
And unrealistic expectations.
“People are totally unrealistic when they come in here,” Lynn said. “Here’s an extreme example: I had a man in here who was 56. I tried to show him some videos of women in their 50s, but he said: ‘Oh, no. I’m not dating those old broads. I don’t want one of those old bats.’ ”
The 41-year-old membership counselor laughed.
“This guy wanted to see tapes of 35-year-olds! He’s sitting in front of me with his pot belly and wrinkles and he doesn’t even want to date anyone my age! He says he’s very ‘active’--that’s what they all say. Active. They play golf, maybe they play tennis, and they perceive all women over 40 as dull and fat.”
Age isn’t an issue for the students Daryl Rowe, a UC Irvine counseling psychologist, sees daily. But unrealistic expectations are.
“There’s the expectation: ‘I’m supposed to meet all of my partner’s needs,’ ” Rowe said. “Or, ‘I’m supposed to make him or her happy all the time.’ Or, ‘If we argue, that means I must be doing something wrong.’ If you have those kinds of expectations, you’re not prepared for the inherent disappointment and hurt that’s part of being involved in an ongoing relationship.”
Rowe, who also teaches an undergraduate course titled “Man/Woman Relationships,” said students have become more interested in relationship issues in the past few years.
“The trend I see is that more students are interested in finding out about how to establish, maintain and even terminate relationships,” he said. “We host psycho-educational workshops at the counseling center. . . . Over the last three to four years we’ve had increasing requests for workshops on relationships. I interpret that to mean that students are having significant problems with managing the whole process.”
“In the ‘70s, there was such an emphasis on individual needs, wants, rights and desires,” said Rowe, 32 and married. “That was a time when students were interested in assertion--how to stand up and express your opinion, assertion training. Nowadays students know how to do that part, but they don’t know how to compromise and how to negotiate.”
Like his colleagues in the secular world, Tim Celek, pastor to the singles congregation at Calvary Church of Santa Ana, mentioned loneliness and fear as issues he helps single people deal with.
Among divorced or widowed singles--the “single-agains” in their 30s to 50s--Celek said he senses “pressure to be super-sexed. These people have experienced the physical intimacy of marriage, and now the question is, ‘How do I maintain a godly life style in an ungodly world?’ The books, the magazines, the whole idea of sexual technique--people have become concerned, almost in a neurotic way, with sexual performance.”
Of AIDS, Celek said: “Society says use a condom; I would say ‘abstinence.’ ”
Married and the father of two young children, Celek, 28, said the younger singles in his congregation are postponing marriage “because of the great number of choices society bombards them with . . . and their ability to acquire so many things. Younger people are postponing making decisions about the future while they decide about today and tomorrow.”
The way singles envision their futures may well determine how they deal with everyday fears and depressions, according to therapist Miller.
“What I hear from singles of all ages is not a fear of being single now--today--it’s that they’re afraid they will always be single,” said Miller. “Most people are OK with being alone as long as they don’t think it’ll last forever. The fear is that there is something within them that is preventing them from having love in their lives.”
Forty and single, Miller quickly added: “Let’s not forget that some people really like being single--they like their sense of independence, they’re happy with their social network, they may or may not have a lover. It’s a choice, not an imperative.”
Christmas Gift Guide
How serious do you have to be about someone to buy that person a present? What do you give someone you’re crazy about but haven’t known for very long? Men, have you ever tried to impress a woman with a gift? Women, have you ever given back a gift, and why?
Getting What You Want
Here comes the New Year--a time for assessment. Have you achieved what you wanted to during the past year? Where do you want to be next year at this time, and how are you going to get there? Do you want to be married? Have children? Own your own business? What do you want to accomplish in 1988, and why?