I Can't Help But Wonder (S1/E3)
I Can't Help But Wonder (S1/E3)
Is there a secret cold war between singles and marrieds?
Is there a secret cold war between singles and marrieds? (season:1 episode:3)
Yes, but it’s not really a secret.
If you’ve ever been a single person talking to a married person and their partner walks up midconversation to recreate the iconically awkward Elle Woods / Vivian Kensington encounter; you know the war between singles and marrieds isn’t a secret at all and it’s definitely cold. It’s not a full-out brawl but the air can be tense.
The hierarchy of high school still prevails in our social structures, but instead of the social divide drawn by popularity, it’s coupled status. For generations, the wedding band had a unique power that women felt pressured to obtain. It’s a beautiful representation of true love but being married also meant access to health care, housing, and a good reputation. Not all of that was guaranteed, but it sure was alluring. Thankfully, women have more autonomy now and relationships are viewed less as a necessity to survive and more of an added bonus. The deep history of marriage is one of the many reasons people find it sacred and the idea that it can be done away with flies in the fact of that tradition. Being single is now beginning to be accepted as an equally valid choice instead of a source of shame. However, those who opt-out of the institution still face some social criticism, thus adding fuel to the cultural war.
I have a wide range of friends in various degrees of boo’d up but when I think about the people I see the most often? It usually reflects my own relationship status and I think that’s pretty common. Yes, I have friends who are married. Do I see them as much? No. Does it make them less important to me? Absolutely not! But it does change our relationship? Yes. Generally the more committed of a relationship my friends are in, the less time I see them. Not because we like each other less, but their availability lessons and priorities shift to their partner.
It makes sense one’s social circle reflects your own status; be it single or coupled, kids or no kids, city or suburbs, tattoos or no tattoos, ketchup or mustard, sports or reality TV. I don’t think it’s wild to claim we generally keep the social company of people who are into the same things as us. That includes our comfortable with commitment. Usually, the married prefer a calmer side of life; barbeques, sporting events, and movie nights while singles tend to enjoy the nightlife, new adventures, and general debauchery.
Like most wars, the two sides are rooted in a difference in ideology. Married people and single people tend to have different values and thus enjoy different things. Obviously, that’s a gross overstatement and there are plenty of couples that are fun and singles who are boring, but we’re leaning into stereotypes here for the sake of the argument. The insinuation that this disagreement is reminiscent of the actual “cold war” rings true because neither side is willing to cast the first stone. Both are afraid that an actual attack would warrant the other side launching a more critical investigation into the daily choices of a coupled or single person, and no one wants that. Instead, it’s a pungent mix of jealousy, regret, and superiority from both sides, and there lies the common ground - in the belief that your side has figured it out and the other side is missing out. Or so we like to tell ourselves.
So what’s with all the hullabaloo? Why does this war exist in the first place? More importantly: can we ever make peace? Fear plays a big part in this divide. Fear that someone from the other side will become enticed by either the freedom or security of the other side; fear our partner or our friends will be lured away from us by the opposite lifestyle. Suddenly our confidants we want go out with have camping trips and weddings to attend, or our spouses now want to buy sports cars and travel alone. There is also the fear that whatever path we’ve chosen for ourselves is the wrong one, so we staunchly hold onto the fact it’s the right one. That’s why this divide persists because however, you define your relationship status; it’s comforting to be on a team. It’s clear-cut. An agreed-upon enemy always makes a team stronger, so a dissenting opinion from either side is met with hostility.
Married people don’t want single friends tanalizing them with the possibilities of a new touch, putting them in situations where they might be tempted and wishing they were single. It’s not good for the relationship to be acting single. Maybe married people just don’t think singles have any good perspective to give. Someone who dates people for a month and then dumps them because they don’t like the way they chew or how they pronounce “butter”, is not going to be able to give solid support or advice to someone 6 years deep in a relationship. They might be able to provide a cautionary tale or two, but that’s about it. Singles are notoriously selfish and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It’s good to be selfish with your time in the name of boundaries and self-care, but it does make compromise harder when you’re out of practice.
Single people want to keep their unkempt freedom; the option to have a whole container of hummus for dinner, being lenient with hygiene, and making plans on a whim. Coupled people have more of a responsibility to coordinate their time, but they get the added bonus of a Sunday kind of love. It’s comforting to some to know that there will always be someone to have their back, a personal support system to rely on. The issue then comes when that foundation turns out to be hollow. Socially we still view being coupled as a sign of accomplishment, an indicator that you’re thriving; however, the real question shouldn’t be “are you in a relationship?” but “does your relationship make you happy or are you tolerating it just so you don’t have to look for a new apartment?” People need to start Marie Kondoing their relationships; holding them up to the light and asking if it brings them joy instead of just shoving it to the back of the closet for the next few months to only bring out for parties.
While this is definitely not always the case, it’s also worth saying that being in a relationship requires work. On top of your day job, trying to fit in self-care, normal adult responsibilities AND a busy social calendar? It’s wild anyone gets anything done! Singles have more time to make plans and a greater incentive to do so. A Psychology Today article notes that “studies show that singles have more friends and are better at maintaining their friendships than married people. In contrast, married couples tend to spend a majority of their time with their partner, and often leave friendships behind.” (Psychology Today, 2019). Why would you go through the hassle of arranging plans with someone when you can turn over in bed and say “let’s go out to dinner”. Done. No anxiety about who to invite or not invite, no extraneous planning, no text thread of a million inconsequential in-the-moment updates. “Text me when you leave!” “Okay about to head out the door!” “In the uber, see you soon!” “Two minutes away!” “I’m here!” None of that with a partner. It’s a phone call or you see them at home. However, that familiarity can also lead to monotony and isolation from other social groups.
An observation from my own life is that all my ex’s who are married (3) don’t speak to me, and all my exes who are single still ask about my plans at 2 in the morning. The married ones don’t reach out on birthdays, holidays, or big life events, and to be honest, why would they? Once that ring is on the finger, there seems to be an understood agreement that we don’t know each other. It’s not that I’d wish to be friends with these people - there’s a reason we broke up - but I hate feeling like a piranha. As if they were to reach out a friendly hand, I’d snap it off in one bite, unable to control my lust for flesh. The subtext that married people don’t hang out with single people is that it’s riskier. If one party is unattached, there might be a better chance for a flirtation-turned affair to occur. Or even if you have no attraction to said single friends, you might be more likely to engage in single behavior alongside them, ie flirtations and affairs. So I guess you can have as many friends as you want as long as they’re all ugly?
I’m not saying there’s any merit to the idea that it’s common for people to cheat, but the endless forbidden love dramas that Hollywood cranks out, timeless jokes about the “old ball and chain”, or all the men who use their wedding photos on tinder would have us thinking otherwise. Theoretically, affairs could happen all the time. However, if someone wants to cheat they will do so regardless of the company they keep. Singles, married, or otherwise; fidelity is not contingent on the relationship status of your friends.
The Huffington Post article “Why Opposite-Sex Friendships Will Destroy Your Marriage” by Debra Macleod is super subtle. Macleod argues that “before you know it, the spouse and his or her extra-marital friend are comforting each other, turning to each other for advice, sharing details of their intimate life and relationships, and texting each other with increasing frequency and intimacy. As the excitement of their forbidden friendship grows, the dynamics in the marriage deteriorate.” I can’t tell if she’s speaking as a scorned spouse herself or setting up the gripping plot of her new romance novel; Forbidden Friendship. Macleod continues on. “While there are a lot of ways to screw up a marriage, spouses who have close opposite-sex friendships are toying with one of the riskiest and most short-sighted behaviours that commonly lead to infidelity and ultimately divorce” (Huffington Post, 2019). That all feels very… personal? While definitely dramatized, it does seem to be a common fear that friendships outside the couple could lead to cheating.
Hoping for a wider range of people to crowdsource I turned to Reddit, the internet’s watering hole. The fear of infidelity continued. Carol Carmel, an “Armed Recovery Agent” answered the thread, “What is a good way for a married woman to nurture a good friendship with a single male friend?” Her response:
“I have to ask why you would want to nurture a close or good friendship with a single guy if you're married. Have you considered how this will make your married husband feel? Are you trying to create a jealousy or side fuck? What is your point here? Stick with your husband. If you two are married, there's more important nurturing needed there. After all we are talking about an institution here…you know that little commitment you made when you got married?” (Carmel, 2018)
Carmel immediately interrogates the married woman’s intentions. By the third sentence, she aggressively implies that the only reason a married person would want to have a friendship with a single person would be to “create a jealousy or a side fuck”. That assumption leaves very little room to interpret a married and single-person friendship as purely platonic. The lines definitely become more blurred when we’re talking about people who would be attracted to each other, but a healthy relationship should give the space for people to have friendships no matter what their status.
However, if you are in a mature, respectful relationship it’s natural to want to put a certain amount of time into fostering it; spending quality time together, creating memories, and experiencing experiences. The priorities of a person in a relationship revolve around two people whereas the priorities of a single person revolves around one. The goal would be to nurture a relationship while also having time to maintain strong friendships but there are only so many hours in the day. The other side of capitalism telling us we can “have it all” is the pressure to actually have it all; self-care, a romantic partner, strong friendships, a successful career, interesting hobbies, and basic chores accomplished. Most days there aren’t enough hours to do just one of those.
Not to say that justifies friends ditching their fellow singletons once they’re coupled, but it makes sense. Just like it makes sense that I don’t want to be out dancing at a bar to see my friend in the corner stress texting her partner instead of enjoying the night, or asking to leave early so they can cuddle. When the “I”s become “We”s, and plans start getting canceled, it’s a good indication that your friend might be converting to the other side. I don't think we need to keep framing it as a war, but it is a choice. If you choose to get married, you’re sacrificing some of your personal autonomy. If you choose to be single, you’re sacrificing dependency. There are goods and bads to both, and even though we tend to hang out in our own camps, it’s good to comingle!
In rebuttal, user Gino Rospigliosi, “married once, had several long-term relationships” answered the question “Why do all my married friends keep asking me when I’m going to settle down? I feel like they won’t leave me alone”. Rospigliosi replied that married people want their single friends to get married because “misery loves company. You’re free and they’re prisoners.” Maybe internet chat rooms are the last place to go for an unbiased opinion, but at least the opinions are unfiltered. In both responses, fear seems to be the main driver. Fear of infidelity in Carmel’s response, and fear of commitment in Rospigliosi’s. There is honestly some truth in both of their answers as well. Cheating is a risk when entering any relationship, but that doesn’t mean it will happen to you; being single does give you a lot more freedom, but relationships don’t have to be imprisonment.
So who’s grass is really greener? Writers Sarkisian and Gerstel for Psychology Today say that “single people are more likely to keep in contact with and receive assistance from friends, family, and neighbors than those who are married.” Not only do singles statistically have more social connections than married people, “a 75 year Harvard study on human happiness found that the best indicator of happiness is good social relationships” (Psychology Today, 2019). Okay well, they’re not trying to sugarcoat it. By being single and maintaining a lot of various nonromantic relationships, people are generally a lot happier.
In other news, CNN released an article, “Sex and finances are better for married people. Don’t worry, singles — you win sleep,” which is condescending at best but does raise some interesting points. It compares the statistics of money, sex, cats, and happiness between single and married people in the US over 18. It’s a toss-up. In the more quantifiable categories like income and childcare, married people are the clear winners; yet on the more ambiguous topics like animals and sex, it’s less clear who comes out on top. Writer Amy Roberts notes that “marriage is good for your health, but only if it’s a healthy marriage!” which feels like a pretty big caveat (CNN, 2018).
This idea that the two lifestyles are divided is socially true but deeply flawed in practice. I wish this schism didn't exist because friendships are vital to everyone’s mental health, married or not. Your social circle shouldn’t be comprised of people who are all the same, yet that’s usually where we find ourselves. If you don’t have kids, do you really want to be surrounded by people only submerged in that lifestyle? Gross. If you do have kids, it’s probably really nice to be able to talk with other parents experiencing the same hardships.
Neither lifestyle is greater than the other, but what keeps this divide alive is the glimmer of hope that one is right and our lives will be better if we can figure out how to make the best choice. Sometimes life sucks for reasons unrelated to relationships at all; sometimes you’re the problem and no amount of single nights out or married nights in will fix that. So is there a war between the two? I think the real war is between the people who like themselves and those who don’t. There are plenty of married and single people who are miserable and plenty of married and single people who are happy. Happiness can not come from a relationship status, making the validity of this war slightly obsolete. Can you talk to a married person if you’re single? Sure! Is it a little weird? Yep! Will it probably lead to a crush? Maybe! Do you have to act on that crush? NO! Are crushes important to give us serotonin and keep the juice alive if we’re married or not? Absolutely. See, there are so many ways this can go. Just like gender, it feels silly to have only two categories. The real tough pill to swallow is that if we’re boiling this fight down to who is happier; the only relationship that’s going to fix all of those fears is your relationship with yourself.
Shit We’re Loving: WATCH
Blaze’s Pick: “Thot Shit” by Megan Thee Stallion
It’s officially Hot Girl Summer! Last week Megan Thee Stallion released a new music video that has heads turning. Thot Shit is her debut summer anthem and it does not disappoint! The video is pretty graphic, least of which is all the ass shaking. She dropped the music video with the song and its pure brilliance; just 5 days after its release it has over 7.5 million views on YouTube.
Last summer, Meg’s mega-hit WAP with Cardi B created quite the stir on social media as men and women all over the world commented on these two women’s right to talk about their own bodies. While I loved the song, it took me by surprise how many other people had such strong negative opinions about it, namely senators and other political figures.
Stallion directly addresses these pathetic bullies and opens the video with an older, white senator anonymously commenting on her Youtube video for Body, “stupid aggressive whores” and then proceeds to unzip his pants. After writing a degrading comment online, the audience is to assume he’s going to masturbate to her performance, but then his phone rings. It’s Megan calling to warn him to stop messing with all the Black women in his life. It’s a stern threat that she makes good on throughout the rest of the video.
While this is a very clever way to address all the negative online comments she gets from malicious men who have nothing better to do, it’s frustrating to see such a loser take up so much screen time in one of her videos. Even if that video is recreating his personal nightmare.
I absolutely love the song and have listened to it on repeat, but the video is something special. It’s about politics, race, feminism, structural inequalities, revenge, and lots of booty shaking. She manages to fit all that and a thorough storyline into one 4 minute video and the vision definitely comes across. This is by far the last we’ll see from her this summer, but it might be the last we hear from these senators for a while.
Show Your Support: GLAAD
Happy Pride Month! Here at Our Trust Fund, our love for the LGBTQ+ community is palpable. To celebrate our queer-identifying writers and readers, plus all those working on making the world a better place, we’re spotlighting GLAAD as our Show Your Support: June organization.
GLAAD, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, rewrites the script for LGBTQ acceptance. It is a media force that narrows in on discrimination in the media. GLAAD takes tough issues to reshape the narrative and provoke progressive dialogue that leads to cultural change. They stand for protecting everything accomplished for the LGBTQ community and for holding those in power accountable. On their website, you can check out their Accountability Tracker for President Biden. This tracker monitors the Biden administration’s executive orders, legislative support, and speeches that affect LGBTQ people and rights.
Their current campaign is the & Together Movement. This is a pledge to declare you stand with all communities subject to discrimination. For GLAAD, the “&” represents the power of our voices together to accelerate acceptance for all. If you’re interested in learning more and signing up, check out their campaign page.
Daily Intention:
Today I will…
To be a better friend.
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