Husband-Free Happiness

"The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, not on our circumstances."
- Martha Washington

A Gift That Keeps On Giving

Another tale from the trenches, stranger than fiction, you cannot make this stuff up. I am a little spotty on the details, but according to my source, a Husband-Free woman recently received, from a married friend, as a gift which the recipient neither asked for nor wanted, a six-month subscription to eHarmony. As ever, I almost didn't know what to say about this -- how presumptuous. Really. And the real insult, the real shame of this gift, is that a six-month subscription to eHarmony is expensive, but cannot be exchanged or returned for a credit that could be used for some tasteful accessories or a sweater -- a nice handbag would be so much better!!!

Check out YouTube for some truly hilarious spoofs of eHarmony -- there were so many I couldn't even pick one!

Finding Balance

Sunday -- yesterday -- was the perfect summer day, breezy, warm, not too humid -- and I had the great good fortune to spend half of it volunteering for a program that helps little kids learn how to ride bikes. All of the kids who showed up to learn except one were girls, from which I drew no conclusions, since the sample was so small, but it reminded me of when I first learned and how frustrated I used to feel before I finally got the hang of it -- kind of like becoming Husband-Free, and embracing your single life -- you have to find the balance and fight gravity. And practice, practice, practice!

Bicycling has done more to emancipate woman than any one thing in the world...It gives her a feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammeled womanhood.
- Susan B. Anthony, American suffragist, 1820-1906

Guy's Eye View

While we're on the topic (these last few posts) of celebrity marriages that don't work out and what they have to teach us, check out a FASCINATING blog I came across recently for the guy's eye view on why the fellas are not so eager to get hitched these days:

Read it yourself at Men's Guide to Women.

A brief summary of the MGTW position: basically, most men do not stand to benefit very much from marriage, while the risks it presents are substantial. Check it out, and keep an open mind, ladies. Men (or your man, if you have one) might not be commitment-phobic or immature -- they (or he) might just be smart, honest and realistic. Would it be so bad if you were, too?

An excerpt from MGTW:

Men do not marry women in this day and age because legally, marriage is one of the stupidest contracts a man can enter into, though I for one am a happily married man.

And gentlemen, if you've come over to this blog from the MGTW, feel free to point your girlfriends in a Husband-Free direction -- it may get you both on the same page, although from different perspectives! And comments are MOST welcome from the other side of the side of the marital divide -- weigh in with where you're coming from; open dialogue can only help.

Three Strikes and You're Out

I don't want this space to turn into a post-mortem on celebrity marriages, but I cannot let the follies of famed baseball player "A-Rod" go unnoticed, only insofar as the sordid details illustrate so well that the truth of the matter is that getting married is no guarantee of happiness -- to the contrary, it is a huge gamble, with a lot at stake. Did "A-Rod"'s wife ever think -- did she ever even suspect for one single second -- that the sacred union with her beloved would culminate in such a humiliating spectacle? I doubt that she did, or that Chrystie Brinkley did, any more than any of us regular non-famous gals would when getting ready to marry a regular non-famous guy. Who gets married thinking their spouse will cheat? Drink? Get addicted to gambling, porn, drugs? Work too much? Work too little? Ignore them? Refuse to go to counseling if things are clearly falling apart?

This is not to say that no one should get married because it might not work out -- but it should make any rational person realize that NOT taking on that amount of risk is not a bad thing, not at all.

Movin' Out

I can only imagine that this Uptown Girl's latest divorce makes her split with Billy Joel look like a walk in the park -- it turns out that retired super-model Chrystie Brinkley, soon to return to the ranks of the Husband-Free, was married to a grade-A SUPERFREAK. Who knew? Her louse of a spouse looks so vanilla on the outside, and it turns out that he makes Rick James look tame (I think, in New York State, it's called "Pulling an Elliot Spitzer"). An underage mistress on the payroll, three grand a month on porn, and tacky screen names ("hornylad"???) -- if this is not enough to make her swear off the altar and buy her own damn diamonds, I don't know what will!

It brings to mind a timeless quotation I came across recently:

Marriage is a lottery, and the more [a woman] thinks about it, the more she feels the independence and safety of a single life.
-- Charles Dickens

Independence Day

Happy Fourth of July! What better day to celebrate your independence than on the day our Founding Fathers (and Mothers!) claimed freedom for all of us?

We hold these truths to be self evident...

Independence is happiness.
- Susan B. Anthony

Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either.
- Benjamin Franklin

Independence is loyalty to one's best self and principles, and this is often disloyalty to the general idols and fetishes.
- Mark Twain

Now get out there and celebrate your Husband-Freedom!

Lord, Hear Our Prayer

Now that wedding season is in full swing, I expected some great dispatches from the trenches, but nothing quite as wonderful as what popped into my in-box recently: in sum, a dear Husband-Free friend of mine went to a wedding, and during the church ceremony, was seated with some other Husband-Free gals. Imagine their shock, when during the Prayers of the Faithful, along with prayers to end the war and heal the sick, they heard "...and we pray today for all single people, that they, too, may one day know the joys of holy matrimony..."

I don't even know what to say to this!!! I had no idea that Being Single had been added to the Seven Deadly Sins view the deadly sins here -- although, if you stop and think about it, being single (instead of being Husband-Free) could be construed as Lust, and perhaps even Envy and Sloth as well. Silly me, I thought that God helps those who help themselves...