The Tribune

SOCIAL media is, and has always been, complicated. The platforms are fickle and the moderation is never strong or swift enough. Open to everyone, these platforms can become chaotic. While we can largely curate our feeds by choosing who and what we follow and like carefully, more and more, we are being exposed to what they follow and like. Many of our feeds are flooded with content we never chose to see, both because we are seeing others’ activity and ads are taking up a significant amount of space.

There are two tweets that have been circulating quickly and widely this week. In the first, a woman posted about her 60-year-old mother who “needs a man” because she’s “super lonely.” She went on to say that it is not okay to tell women that it is fine to grow old alone, noting that it is “not a pretty sight to see.” My immediate thought was, “What a wretched daughter,” because who would want this kind of detail about their personal life broadcast to the point that over 20,000 like it, more than 3,800 respond to it with their own opinions, and another 3,400 people use it to start their own conversations on their own pages?

The replies on the post itself, of course, run the range from “This is disrespectful to your mother and people can be single and happy” to “Absolutely, how is it possible to be happy and unmarried?” One person said, “Maybe she’s sad and lonely because her daughter puts her personal business on a website for strangers to judge and gawk at. Hope she doesn’t have Twitter to read about how pathetic and desperate you think she is.” Another said, “My mom divorced decades ago. She’s 67, retired, has a dog, travels, and has her grandkids and her family functions. I never heard her once say she is lonely. If your mom is lonely, it doesn’t mean she needs a man. Our universe should not ever revolve around a man.”

Today, marriage is not a priority for many women. We have come to learn that marriage has been thrust upon us under false pretenses. Generation after generation has convinced women that they need men to take care of them, even when women work and contribute to household income in addition to carrying the unfair burden of domestic and care work. They have convinced women that we need the protection of men when, really, for many reasons, it is men that we need protection from.

In addition to the threat of being without protection of a man (from other men), the threat of loneliness is regularly used. This threat completely ignores the companionship women find in each other and in platonic relationships with people of all genders. It ignores that romantic and sexual partners do not always turn out to be the best or the most consistent company over time. In fact, there are many married women who are bored and lonely, and not only because their husbands refuse to meaningfully engage them, but because many of the same husbands have systematically coerced or forced women into isolation from their support systems so that they depend entirely on those men who later withdraw.

I n the second tweet, a TikTok video is shared with the simple caption, “She had a cancer treatment earlier in the day [by the way].” In the video, a woman asks a man what he is doing as he makes jalapeño poppers. He says, “I asked you to do this while I was golfing, and, uh, I come home, and you were sitting on the couch. So, apparently, I gotta do this myself.” He went on to say, “If you could have done this while I was golfing, I’d just come home and eat this.”

At this point in the video, it has not come up that the woman behind the camera is not only going through cancer treatment, but was receiving treatment while her husband was golfing. It is absurd and selfish that he expected her to return from a grueling treatment to make jalapeño poppers, as a matter of urgency, while he played golf. She commented that he was doing a good job of making them himself. He then tried to guilt her by saying, “Sometimes you gotta figure it out if your person — you—isn’t gonna help you.” He later said, “You just sat on your keister today, because you had a “treatment”.” Yes, he used air quotes on “treatment” as though cancer treatment is not legitimate healthcare or reason to be tired or need to relax.

Some people in the replies said there were indications that the second video was a skit. Others said it was a play on another video with a similar issue. Whether this particular incident was real or not, we all know this happens and it is not particularly unusual. Women are expected to be superhuman, to meet everyone in the household’s needs, and to choose their own suffering in order to be pleasing to others. The expectation is that this will somehow secure their futures, working as credits toward good treatment, eventually. Unfortunately, not many ever get to cash in on that, dying early, getting sick and being left because they are no longer useful appliances or robots for their husbands, or ridiculed by their children for not doing a better job of securing their own futures.

Many women make consistent deposits to these accounts of care from which they will never be able to withdraw. Still, those who refuse to participate in the farce are ridiculed if and when they find themselves in a less than desirable position.

Marriage is not synonymous with companionship, security, protection, or a loving relationship, no matter what people try to say about it. No two marriages are the same. It seems, especially when we look at the public discussion about marital rape, that many marriages are, in fact, violent.

They are certainly not all happy or fair to the people in them. The same goes for romantic and sexual relationships.

Their existence does not mean that they are good, much less fulfilling. Sometimes they are meeting a particular need, and sometimes they are a habit, or exist only because one or both of the people is/are too scared, lazy, or tired to end them.

There are many ways to meet the need for companionship. One of the best ways of doing this is to build community. Make friends. Be genuine. Create a space where you can share your experiences, name your needs, and show up for one another.

Do not let one relationship dominate your life and end your participation in others. It is important to have friends.

It is critical to maintain relationships with people who understand you and care about your wellbeing. Some of these people may be relatives, some may be longtime friends, and some may be people you recently met and with whom you have built a strong connection. None is necessarily more important than the other.

Women with friend groups fare better in the long run. There is always someone who can bring dinner, accompany you to a doctor’s appointment, help plan a vacation, talk you through a difficult decision, listen to your rants, and give advice on starting a new hobby or project. There is someone who can stay with you through a tough week. There are people to pool resources and buy property or a house that allows you to be together, with ample space, and more than enough support.

Not being married or in a romantic or sexual relationship does not mean you have to grow old alone. Women can be good company for each other. There do not have to be strings attached.

The love and care does not and should not only travel in one direction. Building community results in shared resources, consistent support, and companionship.

Communities grow and change over time as people enter and exit, and they reshape to suit members’ needs. Even with more people involved, this can be easier to manage and more satisfying than a one-on-one relationship where gender norms dominate and define.