Bachelorettehood

Over the last couple of years, I’ve come to realize that I’m more of a seasonal lover.  Sometimes I want a partner, sometimes I want to be free.  I’m okay with taking on a lover, and I’m okay with letting him go.  It’s not that I view love or companionship as disposable – I don’t.  But I’m constantly-evolving, fiercely independent, and I don’t want to force a relationship to work when things get hard.  I’m sure that idea makes some people cringe, to want to explain to me that relationships are hard and that marriage takes work.  I agree, and that’s why I question the whole thing.  I don’t want hard.  I want light, easy, drama-free relationships.  I also don’t like feeling boxed in, caged, or possessed, and relationships often make me feel this way.  The idea of possessing another person is something I find really bizarre.  On any level.  Influencing their dreams, defining boundaries for them, and certainly, staking claim over another person’s body.  No thanks.

I like being single, but I also crave connection, so how do I strike the right balance?  We live in a society where being a lifelong bachelor is fine, even glamorized.  Can’t it be just as lovely for a woman who doesn’t desire to settle down and have children?  I woke at 3am two nights ago, pondering just that.  Even the terms bachelor and bachelorette have very different cultural connotations.  Strictly going by lexicon, bachelor refers to an unmarried man, and bachelorette refers to an unmarried woman.  But when you think of the images and feelings connected to the words, the two terms are quite different.  For me, the term bachelor describes a man about town, a single guy living the life, one who resists being tied down.  I don’t really think of a guy pining away for love and marriage when I think of a bachelor.  However, when I think of a bachelorette, I do.  I picture a woman who’s actively dating, searching for Mr. Right, dreaming of the day she can change her last name, flipping through the pages of bridal magazines on her lunch break.

I have male friends who are the lifelong bachelor types, and their lives certainly do not suck.  Frankly, they’re the male version of what my life is like, as a bachelorette.  I certainly am not dreaming about babies and weddings.  I’m focused on myself, selfish as that may seem.  I enjoy working on my own growth, pushing my boundaries, growing spiritually, professionally,becoming the best version of me.  When I started thinking about this with my hazy 3am brain, I had an epiphany.  I like having companions—I do— but I don’t necessarily want a serious one.  It is wonderful for a lot of people – most even.  But maybe not for me.  Not based on my past experiences with serious relationships, anyways.  I am a bachelorette, but I want to strip away the negative associations I have with the term.  I started considering what all of this meant to me, trying to understand the programming and memes that seem to propel me toward things (serious relationships, marriage, picket fence, etc.) I don’t really want.  If I’m honest with myself about what I do want, it’s simple.  I want a free, happy, peaceful, purpose-driven life.  I want to embrace the connections that come into my life, for whatever length of time they are present.  I want intimacy, love even, but I’ve outgrown antiquated ideologies surrounding those things.

So, I started this blog as a place to unpack these ideas, and maybe to offer a new concept of bachelorettehood (which, by the way, is not a word, although bachelorhood is).  I’d like to start a new conversation for women, especially those who are single or who stick around in unhappy, dysfunctional relationships because they are culturally compelled to couple or they fear the consequences of being uncoupled.  I want this blog to be empowering for women when it comes to dating and sex.  I also want to make my readers laugh, because God knows my experiences as a bachelorette are often hilarious.  When I hit the road again in May, I will resume posting on www.thehighwayandi.com, but I want that site to be a legitimate travel blog.  So much of what I’ve posted over there is content that would be more fitting for this site.  And so, let’s see where The Bachelorette Diaries take us, shall we?