It seems like these days all of my friends are married or are getting married. Sometimes a friend and her husband will ask me if I'm dating anybody and, when I say "no," they give each other funny looks as if I'm a disturbed child that needs special care. One time I responded by telling my friend, Donna, and her fiance, Eric, that my ability to experience intimacy in a loving relationship has been deeply affected by the dysfunction in my alcoholic family of origin. For some reason, this weighted dead silence came upon us that lasted for a good five minutes. Donna just kept sipping her margarita and Eric downed his beer. I considered also telling them that the role of a wife and mother has always looked like a special kind of hell to me, but since they're getting married soon, I thought that might not be appropriate.

It's OK to not be a traditional person. Many of my female friends are following traditional roles of becoming wives and mothers. I, on the other hand, am a single human being. Strangely, this is not a role that has a definition in our society, outside of the term "single." I once asked my mom if I could have a celebration of my singlehood and receive gifts for my home and she just laughed at me.

A few weekends ago, I attended the wedding of two friends who I have known since the 6th grade. It was a traditional Jewish wedding with environmental overtones (they put the planet in their vows and had the ceremony surrounded by trees) and Mexican food. They had a Klezmer band and some of the men lifted them each up on chairs. (Fortunately, I was in Fiddler on the Roof in the fifth grade so the dance moves were no problem for this Catholic girl.) Seeing my friends take this big leap of faith and follow in this long tradition made me wonder if there is something wrong with me that keeps me from trusting any sort of traditional role. I decided that I'm just untraditional and if that means that I still shop in the Jr.'s department of stores and have babies in my mid-forties, that's OK. My life doesn't have to be about finding a mate. Just for today, it's OK to not be traditional.

I am seeking Happily Married Couples for observational purposes! All I'm looking for are people who are happy in their relationships, non-traditional, on a spiritual path, and have been together for longer than five years (and still want to stay together).

Due to lack of proper role models in my early years, I am in need of people who make marriage look good - over the long haul! (Note to all friends: it's not that your marriages look bad, but it's only been a few months or a few years...I'm looking for people with some serious time!) All are welcome to apply (unpaid, save for the company of odd single lady) and all religions, races and philosophies accepted. (I read Oprah's issue on "Love," so I know you happily 25-year-long married people are out there!) Please note: I'm not weird, just midly eccentric.

I had lunch with my friend Carl and found out that despite fact that he and his girlfriend Kathy have been together for seven years, and are planning on staying together for the rest of their lives, they have NO plans for a wedding!! I, on the other hand, who am no closer to being married than Gary Coleman is to being governor of California, have my fantasy wedding all planned out (except for one vital detail)!

For some unknown reason, deep down inside the recesses of my feminist/hippy/raised by a single mother/knee-jerk liberal heart, I want a big poofy Catholic wedding! And I don't really know why?!
To add further to the irony, wedding day daydreams stand alone in the time/space continuum of my fantasy life. For not only is there no relationship to make the planning of nuptials remotely relevant, but there is also the fact that marriage has never been and (isn't really EVEN NOW) a goal of mine. But, a "Catholic Wedding,"...that's a whole other deal. That's a Sacrament and a spiritual experience, an event (...except for that part about affirming that "Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior.")
I guess we're all entitled to weird fantasies.

Just for today, I can plan my (husbandless) wedding.

A while ago I invited my mom and aunts to come and stay with me for a weekend. They couldn't get over what they perceived as the immense fabulousness of my life and both aunts repeatedly commented on how they wish they could live in my apartment single and alone. My mom has always pleaded with me to hold out as long as possible to get married (and when I say "always," I mean was the only girl in my fifth grade with an iron-on shirt that read "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle). Needless to say, the women in my family don't seem to have any qualms about touting the less attractive facets of domestic bliss. Such, however, seems not to be the state of the rest of the world.

I was watching a crime television show whose storyline was about a successful female doctor in her late 30's who dissappears and how the investigator, who is also in her late 30's, discovers that underneath the veneer of success lies the cold bitter sadness of a woman who neglected to get married and have children. What misfortune that the poor beautiful gorgeous brain surgeon and the equally gorgeous CIA investigor forgot to have kids! Question: where is the crime show about the wife/mother/successful (and super stressed) doctor who dissappears, and the crime investigator who discovers that beneath the happy homemaker exterior lies the cold bitter sadness of a woman who neglected to sing Karaoke, spend more time with her friends, sleep, and live a life not dependent on adrenaline and caffeine.

While I think I do want kids, I really appreciate the time that being single allows me to hang out, sleep, read and do whatever. I know that having kids will take all of that away.

Just for today, I am very cool with being single and childless.

I used to think that marriage and children looked like hell on earth. But it turns out, I had just been exposed to a lot of unhappy people who just happened to be married and have kids (and some happy people, who just happened to be single). The truth is, if I want a baby, there aren't too many other ways to go about it (that are pallatable for this feminist). Also, I never got the big hoopla about casual sex. (As much as I love Sex and the City, I have to say it has done nothing to even approximate my experience with casual sex....apparently some people don't need as much of a learning curve with new people...I mean new bodies). I do have fears that range from infidelity to boredom (because I don't want to run out of fears), but I have to say...I am really surprised by how conventional I really am. Lord, am I a cliche!

Just for today, it's OK to embrace the banality (fancy way of saying boringness...which is actually not really a word) of my nuclear family aspirations.

It's never been on my list of priorities, because I was never before able to fully understand what long-term committed relationships are for (besides having kids). Since I've seen and been in so many mediocre-to-far-less-than-mediocre relationships, it's taken a long time to create any kind of "Vision." Because without a vision, my life is nothing more than an inflatable raft being thrust about the sea in a storm. And Other People's Opinions or what other people think I should do because it justifies the decisions they've made in their own life, are the waves that crash down on me with giant loads of guilt and shame.

I know what I don't want in a relationship.

List of What I Don't Want in a Relationship

1) A son.
2) A father.
3) A pet.
4) A siamese twin.
5) A babysitter.
6) An accessory.
7) A stand-up comic.
8) An encyclopedia.
9) A movie critic.
10) A TV guide.

It really goes beyond the limits of even my own imagination, to be perfectly honest. An adult relationship between two people, free of any need for manipulation, or expectations to conform to a rigid list of behavior patterns, based on free will, grounded in reality and the mutual desire to shoot for every type of expansion possible in life (material, spiritual, emotional, etc.) It's really a lot to heap on anyone. But it's too late to go back. It's sort of like what my father used to say about powder snow. Once he got a taste of it, he couldn't go back to skiing on ice and slush. He would just rather not ski at all.

Similarly, I just can't do the old dance routines anymore without large doses of irony.

Just for today, I have a kind of a vision for a relationship.

I saw a play called "Dinner With Friends" the other night (which somehow won the Pulitzer, though to me it felt like a slightly glorified Movie of the Week). It’s about Martha's Vineyard WASPs who get all bent out of shape when their friends divorce and break-up their little bourgeois-Martha-Stewart-catalogue social scene. The writer went for the whole ambiguous, "let the audience determine what I mean because not taking a stand makes my writing profound."

ANYWAY, at the end of the play the old married couple are angry that their good friends have divorced and are having great sex in new relationships, and I guess all of this is what passes for tragedy and drama in the Bush Administration. God forbid, we write and watch plays about fear, mis-directed anger, and the hang-over guilt of being a petulant world super-power. So, you’re friends have rejected the oppressive suburban illusion of security and are having better sex than you are…big deal!

ANYWAY AGAIN (I keep getting tangential), aside the fact that Yuppies getting a divorce is not really tragedy, the play ends with the married couple trying to justify and rekindle their marriage and because it's ambiguous (the writer was being "complicated") we don't know if it's happy or sad. My friend, who supports the institution of marriage, thought that that the whole thing ended on a sweet note. I, on the other hand, thought the play ended with the couple awakening to the fact that they had metaphorically chained themselves to a cement block and were spiritually rotting on their path to stagnation (to be slightly dramatic).

I’m not entirely sure if I have a point, but I think it might be this…GENERALLY, most representations of marriage look not-fun to me. Many of my friends feel differently. And what I want to know is, why is that? Did I miss a class? When did I not get socialized to support the institution of marriage? I mean I do want kids, and I do want to fall in love with my soul mate, and I do want a summer house. It's just that placid domestic bliss looks more placid than blissful.

I know I’m going to have to marry my soul mate from many lifetimes over to keep the gig because I’m missing the gene that gives people an emotional attachment to the DREAM of MARRIAGE. And that just sort of narrows the pool.

Just for today, I accept my slightly negative view on the institution of marriage.

I'm starting to think that maybe I'm not "the marrying type" (as Mr. Big said said to Carrie in season 5 of Sex and the City...LOVE THAT SHOW!). If there ever was a "Charlotte" (the traditional idealist) period in my life, I've long since passed it. My therapist wouldn't allow me to get bitter enough to turn into a Miranda (the bitter cynic....LOVE HER!) and I'm far too sensitive to be as promiscious as Samantha (the wise don't-give-a-damn slutty one...SHE ROCKS! ). What's left? Maybe I am a new archetype. The contented unattached serial monogamist (still working on the contented part).

On top of full-time professional employment, personal upkeep, and endless striving for self-improvement, the idea of "wifedom," (it's too tiring to even describe...you know what I mean) is not sounding too attractive to this lonely soul. Maybe I'll just find a closeted gay man to keep up my wardrobe and decorate, so I'll feel more balanced taking care of the kids and the cooking (because let's face it, I like kids and I like to cook...)...

In a society where thirty-four single women become sociological studies, it's important for me to face the facts of who I am.

Just for today, I can entertain the thought of eternal singledom (that can't be a word...I need to go to bed).

I'm starting to think that maybe I'm not "the marrying type" (as Mr. Big said said to Carrie in season 5 of Sex and the City...LOVE THAT SHOW!). If there ever was a "Charlotte" (the traditional idealist) period in my life, I've long since passed it. My therapist wouldn't allow me to get bitter enough to turn into a Miranda (the bitter cynic....LOVE HER!) and I'm far too sensitive to be as promiscious as Samantha (the wise don't-give-a-damn slutty one...SHE ROCKS! ). What's left? Maybe I am a new archetype. The contented unattached serial monogamist (still working on the contented part).

On top of full-time professional employment, personal upkeep, and endless striving for self-improvement, the idea of "wifedom," (it's too tiring to even describe...you know what I mean) is not sounding too attractive to this lonely soul. Maybe I'll just find a closeted gay man to keep up my wardrobe and decorate, so I'll feel more balanced taking care of the kids and the cooking (because let's face it, I like kids and I like to cook...)...

In a society where thirty-four single women become sociological studies, it's important for me to face the facts of who I am.

Just for today, I can entertain the thought of eternal singledom (that can't be a word...I need to go to bed).

Sometimes, when I'm feeling depressed or a little lost, I like to go to the wedding websites of people I sort-of know who had or are planning elaborate six-figure wedding extravaganzas in some remote idyllic vineyard with lots of rolling hills and adorable Bed and Breakfast places. Ideally, these sites detail the five showers, and three bachelor parties leading up to the elaborate wedding ceremony, and followed by the home-based post-wedding party for all the po' folk who couldn't afford to shell out the cash to fly to the grand location...sometimes there are cool things like links to the plans for their eco-conscious tract home that mysteriously still supports the wetlands...

The fascination lies in measuring their seeming disconnection from reality as defined by own admittedly judgement-ridden mind. Ok, so call me a cynical wench if you must (hey, I'll call myself that), but from my urban, 12-stepped, therapy shrunken, urban, Sex and the City (LOVE THAT SHOW!) brainwashed, psyche, there's something fascinating about the blind embrace of the American Dream as interpreted through the next generation of Orange County (insert your favorite suburban mecca...I personally, am fascinated by the other side of the orange curtain...as well as the curtain itself, actually, I would like to get a pair for my French doors). Maybe it's being raised with the hippy vibes of a single mother or just my own admittedly perverse insistence on being different...all I know is that I wasn't the only who went to see American Beauty...so the question remains, just how medicated is young America? And where can I get my hands on some of that?...hopefully, they have a generic version (I have lame health insurance).

Just for today, I can be honest about my cynicism.

My friend called me this morning to discuss whether or not she should end a relationship with the charming guy she's been dating who "doesn't know what he wants" (i.e., not interested in the whole marriage and kids package). I started to wonder about this conversation and how many times it has taken place in American society in the past thirty years...a kajillion?

Seeing as I have failed to connect with the Nuclear Family concept (or even the Nucular one) at this point, I've been doing some research and am reading a book called "Marriage, A History." The author, Stephanie Coontz, offers, among other things, some historical alternatives to the modern concept of marriage and family. My favorite is a Chinese society called the Na, wherein the primary relationships were with parents and siblings. Women rarely married but had "visitors" at night and when they got pregnant the siblings and extended family helped raise the child.

No need for any uncomfortable "Where are we going?" conversations, and dealing with all that hemming and hawing. Sounds like a good fit to me. Where do I sign up?

Like I mentioned before, I would consider embracing a Biological Clock Panic, but I just don't have the energy right now (too much Salsa).

Just for today, I can research alternatives to the Nuclear Family.

I finished reading my big encyclopedic book about the history of marriage, only to find the most important information on the last four pages. Yes, it's filled with all sorts interesting and pathetic facts like, until the 1970's men could still force their wives to have sex with them (under American law), and the idea that professional women over forty are more likely to get hit by lightening than get married is a myth (tragically, the population least likely to marry consists of young African-American mothers living under the poverty line).

However, the most important piece of information FOR ME, is that when women get married they have less free time and do more housework, and when men get married they do less housework and have more free time.

'Nuff said. Yet, another valid reason for my revolutionary Intimate Neighbors Situation. Two seperate residences, one relationship. I get to keep my bathroom obsessively psycho clean and he (that mythical person), can watch his billboard-sized television with 5,000 chanels and keep his dirty dishes on the coffee table until the cleaning lady picks it up (all stereotypes inspired by ex-boyfriends).

Just for today, I can be validated by a history book.

This weekend, I attended the wedding ceremony of a good college friend in Palm Springs. Seven other women from college attended and we had a great time milking the open bar for all it was worth (which was, apparently, more than what we capable of drinking), and rehashing stories about college and our early days of living in LA. Of course, I got stuck at Table #8 (AKA, The Randoms) right next to the bride's old boyfriend, Five Foot Two Lawyer, who I never got along with (to her endless credit she maintained a relationship with him) because he used to taunt me ruthlessly about my personal life. Why I let short guys get under my skin is another matter. [As an irrelevant aside, I confess to going on his cable access show twice. The second time, the other guest was a guy I went on one date with once and the entire show was about what happened on our date. Everyone who saw him on the show insisted he was gay...].

Needless, to say mid-way through the salmon I realized that certain relationship dynamics never change, as FFTL kept threatening to set me up with the only other single person there. When I asked him and his wife what made their marriage work, I got.

"Money," he said.

"Kids," she said.

The night included dancing to a few 90's hits including "Groove is in the heart," and a varied list of mixed drinks including White Russian, Mojito, and Irish coffee (gee, no wonder I'm so hung over). The real joy of the weekend was realizing how much history I share with these women and how much fun we had together.

Just for today, I can enjoy my friend's wedding.

I feel deeply for working mothers. Especially, single working mothers. Here I have no children, no husband and I can't see through the back window of my car because of the encrusted level of dirt. Without rain, the dirt refuses to un-encrust itself from my windshield. Last weekend my car looked like it had participated in a mud wrestling contest. This week it could have been an extra in The Road Warrior. That is, if Mad Max drove a Honda Civic. (Look, if the world ran out of oil, which it will very soon, I'd stick with my sick shift EX...yes that's right, I said stick shift.) But it's not just the car. Up until tonight, I hadn't eaten a vegetable in a week, washed my coffee mug, and have been going to work wearing the Overwarshed (no, that's not a typo) Jeans because the Indigo Blue Work Jean pile of laundry refuses to wash itself. I come home everyday and think, "Why are papers still on the coffee table? Why is that dish still not washed?" And then it dawns on me...

I need a wife.

As soon as I hit the next income bracket milestone (it's a couple zeros away), I'm going to hire a full-time Wife. It'll be awesome. I'll pay her well because, shit, wives do REAL work. None of this "Oh, I wrote fifty emails and sat in meetings all day." I'll give her health insurance, pay for her kids ballet and SAT prep classes, set aside a college fund, and she/he (I'm open to a male wife) can sleep with whomever she/he wants. (I don't think it's ethical to sleep with a wife...even a male wife.) Ok, fine, they're called "assistants." But I've seen one too many marriages where you couldn't tell the difference. What? Did I hear an eyeball hit the cerebral cortex? (sorry, I didn't take anatomy). Fine, then, I'll bust out some research...

"...it is still true that when women marry they typically did more housework than they did before marriage. When men marry, they do less. Marriage decreases free time for women, but not for men."

- Stephanie Coontz (she rocks).

Sure, I've had my girlish moments when imagine a lovely spiritual bond between two people who share the burden of life. And then I talk to a married woman. I realize now that all those healthy meals I ate as a kid were cooked by my mom during her off hours. It's a lot of work to live.

Just for today, I appreciate the value of domestic work.