Considering the rise of forced-birth, anti divorce extremists in this country, people really need to appreciate the no marriage no bio kids norms/values of the Jedi
Purpose. Through my autoethnographic account, I aim to explain how and why women's various social and cultural encounters shape singlehood.
Purpose
Through my autoethnographic account, I aim to explain how and why women's various social and cultural encounters shape singlehood. Through autoethnographic tales, I narrate the experiences of a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) student as they navigate polarizing professional and cultural expectations and confront academic loneliness.
Design/methodology/approach
Autoethnography is a unique method of systematically analyzing one's perspective to understand a cultural experience. In an autoethnography, the researcher continuously switches between the researcher and the researched to provide reflexive insights into the cultural and social experiences of the field.
Findings
Lack of social support, loneliness at work, the stigma associated with singlehood, and current social practices and policies have led me to define singlehood in my own terms. Women constantly face the social and cultural pressure of “having it all,” and alternative life choices such as singlehood can lead women to be stigmatized and isolated.
Originality/value
Subjective accounts provide detailed longitudinal data of the singlehood journey. Layered accounts of my singlehood experience can create an image of how multiple intersectional identities, such as age, gender and cultural identities, shape the identity of single women in Academia. It is the multiple subliminal messages around single women that shape the experience as lonely and deeply difficult to navigate. To the best of my knowledge, this is one of the few papers dedicated to understanding women's views of singlehood identity in an academic context in the Indian subcontinent.
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Autoethnography is where the "researcher" and the subject are one and the same. You might think I'm kidding, but I'm not. That's literally what it is. She's doing nothing but writing about her feelings.
It's not research, it's mesearch. And it's fraudulent.
of the world. And the Carrie Bradshaws and the Bridget Joneses.
I used to think their hopeless romanticism bordered too closely to desperation. I judged them for turning over every rock to look for love. For constantly embarrassing themselves in the name of finding 'the one'.
And now I'm 27. The same age as Ted in season one of HIMYM. I live in NYC, with my best friend from college, I have a career, an okay apartment, and meaningful friendships. And all I can think about is the love that I don't have.
Longing is so time consuming. It fills my head in every silence. It stings deep when I walk alone through the farmers market. I have no one to yearn for, so I yearn a little bit for every person I meet. I fall in love for 5 minutes and then move on to the next. Hoping one of them will ever make the first move, too many rejections have left me too scared.
Sometimes I convince myself that intellectualizing my loneliness is the same thing as feeling it.
i know i am not the first woman to say that we are being plagued by a epidemic of sassy men. “the sassy man apocalypse,” as the world wide web would call it. it is truly an apocalypse. okay, maybe i’m being dramatic, but an apocalypse wouldn’t be out of question if women actually stood on business.
i have written multiple times about how men now a days just aren’t giving the way that they should. from their sassiness to weaponized incompetence to them now asking if women are going to plan the date, pick them up and treat them like a princess. how do these man expect to get married and have babies and, oh … that’s right. they believe that we are desperate enough to take them as is. and they’re right. countless women would happily pimp themselves to have a man mouth breathing in their ear for decades while they are begging for crumbs of attention and affection.
as a woman, if your realtionship standards are to have a partner and not a man-child, you are going to find yourself alone more often than not. you will want respect, you will want reciprocity, you will want attentiveness, and you will know that you are more than deserving of receiving those things without having to beg and conjure ultimatums.
I think I've been single for the longest I've been single since I started dating and that's super depressing rn. Finding a local (single, monogamous) Top has been so fucking difficult lately. 😢
“'There are some, like me, who are called to live a single life,' I said softly. 'For them it is always easy, for they are, by their nature, content. Others, like Ellen, are called to prepare for marriage which may come in later life. They, too, are blessed, for God is using the in-between years to teach them that marriage is not the answer to unhappiness. Happiness is found only in a balanced relationship with the Lord Jesus.'”
Is it okay to give up on the dream of love, marriage and family? I don’t know. It’s a choice I have to consider and it’s a difficult one. Torn between the life of singlehood, childlessness, freedom, spontaneity, and the life of deep union, devotion, fellowship with a man, having a child or children and living life with an extra role of parent /wife. It’s a serious divergence. I don’t know which one calls to me more and if I will regret either choice.
