SANFORD: Dating not key to happiness

I don’t date.

It’s not a matter of principle, religion or even a lifestyle choice.  I just don’t get asked.  I very rarely meet anyone I feel like asking, and when I do, I usually meet their wife or girlfriend shortly thereafter.

Ironically, I meet plenty of great guys when I’m out of town (or they are).  I met a cute geologist with a wonderful dog, someone who enjoys the empty spaces just as much as I do, while visiting Snake Falls near Valentine, Nebraska, last weekend.  He asked me out for a drink. 

In May, I met a nice guy in Phoenix.  He rides his bicycle miles every day in the hundred-degree heat and disc-jockeys on the weekends at rooftop pool parties.

In January, I hosted a couch surfer on his cross-country journey.  We explored the bell tower of a local church and talked about philosophy until one o’clock in the morning.

Spring break a year ago a friend gave me the number of her nephew in San Francisco while I was there.  He picked me up in a beautiful 1960’s Volvo convertible and introduced me to the wonders of a Jamaican coffee shop.

My last boyfriend was in Colorado, where I spent a couple of summers.  We’ve had a steady on again, off again partnership.  As in, on when in geographic proximity, and off when not.  Even then, only the charitable would call it a relationship.  What we have is more like a long-distance friendship with benefits.

I seem to be good at friends with benefits.  I couldn’t say I’m bad at relationships because I really don’t know.

I’m not bemoaning my ill luck.  I really don’t see it that way.

I have a lot of things on my lifetime “To Do” list: graduate from college, get a dog, travel to Japan, live in another country for a year, study Tai Chi, ride a horse across North America, write the Great American Novel, achieve supreme perfect enlightenment.  You know, little things.

Finding Mr. Right is not on that list.  Getting married or having kids is not on that list. 

Those things remain firmly on the “That Would Be Nice Under the Right Circumstances” list.

I’m not down on myself for my lack of a love life (here in Lincoln anyway).  I like who I am.  I’m smart, healthy, sexy and self-sufficient.  And yeah, I’m opinionated and stubborn.  I don’t like to cook.  I’m good with power tools and computers.  I don’t give a damn about sports and I won’t pretend I do.  I like to read and don’t like to be bothered when I’m working.  I don’t wear makeup.  And, once I’m out of college, I’ll have an above average earning potential.

And I don’t believe for one second that any of that has anything to do with why I’m single.  Anyone who believes otherwise, isn’t someone I’m interested in dating.

Here’s the thing: not everyone accepts that this is OK.  Some even go out of their way to make women who aren’t with someone seem inadequate and women who just don’t date (for any reason) must have something “wrong” with them.

The first thing a recent high school pal asked upon chatting with me for the first time in over a decade was “Married? Kids?”  When I answered in the negative and told her I was in graduate school, she replied “That’s rough,” as though I was admitting to being in the penitentiary (Although, my circumstances are to the contrary). She then went on to recite which of our old high school pals were married, engaged, divorced, or had children (single parent or otherwise), and I couldn’t help but feel that I was being subtly rebuked. 

Apparently, I was a failure for not, at the very least, having a boyfriend.

Such ideas are flat wrong, but I understand where they’re coming from.

The biological drive to reproduce is probably the strongest drive we have after hunger and thirst (and sometimes before). Making babies and then making sure they survive long enough to produce grand-babies has structured human society and culture since before there was such a thing.  Evolution, plain and simple.

As my Anthropology 101 professor once explained, culture is just as prone to evolution as biology.  Social conventions which are detrimental to the survival of a society either change or lead to the death of that particular tribe.

So, when the world was a tougher place, life expectancies were short, maternal and natal death rates were high, and men became fathers the same year their voices dropped, certain social conventions made sense.

Times have changed and whether or not I mate and have kids is highly unlikely to impact the survival of my tribe.  I’m pretty sure main stream American culture will go on regardless.

So I’m not going to let outdated social standards decide what’s right or wrong for my life or tell me whether it’s OK for me to be happy.  No one should.

I have good friends, a family I’m very close to, a (future) career I love and more interests than I have time for.  Plus, a lot of work to do if I’m going to get on that whole enlightenment thing.

Monica Sanford is a graduate student in architecture and community and regional planning.  Reach her at monicasanford@dailynebraskan.com.