On My Own: The Art of Being a Woman Alone - Hardcover

Falk, Florence

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1400098106 ISBN 13: 9781400098101

Publisher: Harmony, 2007

Synopsis

At some point over the course of the average American woman’s life, she will find herself alone, whether she is divorced, widowed, single, or in a loveless, isolating relationship. And when that time comes, it is likely that she will be at a loss as to how to handle it. As a society, we have an unspoken but omnipresent belief that a woman alone is an outcast, inherently flawed in some way. In this invigorating, supportive book, psychotherapist Florence Falk aims to take the fear, doubt, confusion, and helplessness out of being a woman alone. Falk invites all women to find their own paths toward an authentic selfhood, to discover the pleasures and riches of solitude, and to reconnect with others through a newfound sense of self-confidence.

Like so many women before her, Florence Falk found herself divorced, alone, and unsure of herself. Soon she realized that by embracing her solitude for what it was—a potentially enriching and life-altering experience—she could turn what once would have felt like “loneliness” into a far more positive and empowered “aloneness.” Falk notes that each of us has two opposing drives: one causes us to yearn to make close connections with others, and the other pulls us back into ourselves, into the need for selfhood and certainty that can only be shaped through solitude. In order to be whole, she says, we must heed both of those impulses. But in our modern culture, the former is stressed while the latter is neglected, even vilified. On My Own boldly shifts that paradigm.

With inspiring, intimate stories of women from all backgrounds, Falk illuminates the essential role that being alone plays in women’s lives. Whether she is in a stable relationship or on her own, every woman must learn to be by herself; for if she can be fully free, unfettered by society’s stigmas about being alone, life and all its possibilities will open up for her. And as Falk demonstrates, once a woman has discovered the richness of solitude, she is not likely to give it up so easily.

About this title

About the Author

Florence Falk has been a psychotherapist in private practice for the past twenty years. She has given lectures and workshops throughout the country.

Reviews

After two divorces and more than two decades as a psychoanalyst, Falk is an expert on the concept of being a woman alone—a term she prefers because "as a distinct category within women's culture, it formally elevates our presence and status, helps us to achieve visibility and expression, and allows us to redress our marginalized state." Hyperbole aside, there's no denying that to embrace being a woman alone isn't easy in a society where "bachelors are always eligible," while " 'spinsters,' almost by definition, are ready for the dumpster." But as Falk makes clear in this useful and appealing manual, it's inaccurate, unfair and unhealthy to equate being alone with being unwanted or a failure. Some may cringe at her flowery language, but she offers plenty of evidence for her central thesis that "aloneness is an opportunity, a state brimming with potentiality, with resources for renewed life." Drawing from her own experiences, those of her patients, and examples from such writers as Marion Milner and cultural figures like Kitty Carlisle Hart, Falk offers plenty of material to help even women with partners to understand the distinction between being abandoned and choosing to be alone, and to appreciate the healing and nurturing benefits of solitude. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

If I Am a Woman Alone, Who Am I?

It's January and breath-stopping cold, the kind of weather Lisa's Nordic blood thrives on. But today the tonic isn't working. Instead of her usual robust glow, Lisa looks wilted and solitary, as if she had rushed to get to a party only to find it was over. And in a way, this is true.

Four years after meeting at the hip downtown cabaret Joe's Pub and falling instantly in love, Lisa and Sam agreed to separate. The decision seemed to happen of its own accord, oozing out of their apathy like the insides of an egg from a cracked shell, and they were too battle-fatigued to bother cleaning up the mess.

Lisa used to say that in meeting Sam she had come as close as she could imagine to finding the right person for herself. Sam was a freelance journalist. Lisa thought he was the smartest, most exciting man she had ever met. "I fell in love not only with his mind but with his sexy bearishness--even his chipped tooth turned me on." She loved that he was left-handed and had a husky voice, the way he howled when they made love, how his body smelled. She marveled at his boundless energy, unfettered imagination, and a steady-handed discipline that allowed him to read an entire book or draft an article in one sitting. Above all, she loved that they were not only lovers but each other's "closest friend," often acting less like adults than five-year-olds, playing together in their own hermetic world, as if the one outside had ceased to exist.

A whole year had passed like that. Then slowly, subtly at first, things began to change. Was she imagining it, or was Sam becoming distant? He seemed less emotionally available. For the first time since they had been together, Lisa felt an empty space inside. She would have given anything to melt the distance between them. As time passed, the empty feeling came and went. When Sam was his lovable self, Lisa's world righted itself and she felt full again. But as soon as he seemed the least bit preoccupied or restless, she began to ache with disappointment and need.

Both Lisa and Sam had prided themselves on their independent spirits. They had even promised each other not to talk about their future. The problem was that despite herself, Lisa wanted more. She was surprised and disturbed by the feelings of longing Sam summoned up in her--feelings she didn't even know were there. But whenever she hinted at "longer-term possibilities," her cautious euphemism for marriage, Sam blocked her. "We're doing great," he'd say reassuringly. "Let's just see what happens." His resistance unsettled Lisa and made her doubt herself; in earlier relationships, she had always felt in control.

Lisa began to resent the very qualities that drew her to Sam. His writing seemed to take up more and more of their private time, and she convinced herself that Sam was using his deadlines as an excuse to "disappear." At first, Sam tried to smooth away Lisa's concerns, but as time went on, his anger flared. "Stop worrying about my work," he'd snap, "and worry about your own."

Before long, light kisses on the check replaced lingering kisses on the lips. Lisa complained that they hardly ever made love anymore. She and Sam began to argue all the time, hurling insults and accusations back and forth: his "need to be the center of attention"; her "crazy temper"; his insistence on always being "right"; her "godawful prying"; his "sadistic putdowns--especially in front of my friends"; her laziness. Fights that had once ended in renewed vows of love and bouts of passionate sex now drained all their energy.

But when Sam finally told Lisa he needed his own place, she was heartsick and filled with dread. For the first time since they'd been together, she let her mind stray to the one thought she had scrupulously avoided until now--being alone.

On the day Sam moved out, Lisa sat on the couch in stunned disbelief while he padded from bedroom to study to bathroom, sorting through clothes, books, CDs, even bottles of shampoo and vitamins, separating out his stuff from hers. When he was finished packing, Sam walked over to her. "Be good to yourself, darling Lisa," he said, planting a kiss on her brow. "No matter what, this has been a great adventure for both of us." The ease with which he had already seemed to slip back into his own life and away from theirs infuriated Lisa. She both marveled at and was enraged by his composure. "Just leave me the keys, you arrogant bastard," she shot back. With a sigh, Sam set them down beside her. Car service rang up a few minutes later, and he let himself out the door.

Feeling too drained to move, Lisa curled up on the couch and fell asleep. When she woke up, it was already dark. She had to pee badly, and her arm ached from lying on it, but she couldn't bring herself to move until a cramped foot forced her to sit up. Her body felt sluggish and weak, and she could barely lift her feet. The phone rang. Hearing her friend Katherine leave a message, she didn't bother to pick up. It was Sam's voice she was waiting for.

That night, Lisa couldn't bring herself to sleep in their bed, so she brought her pillow and comforter back to the couch and stayed there, zoning out on old movies. She slept on the couch the next night, too, and the next. With Sam gone, she found herself listening to the silence. It's odd, she thought. I've been by myself a thousand times when Sam was out. Only now it's different. Before, I was alone, but not really. I was waiting for him. Now I'm not waiting for anyone. She started to sob, and finally the pain and hurt came pouring out. She felt frightened and confused. This didn't seem real, but of course it was. He was gone and he wouldn't be coming back.

LISA IS A set designer who first came to see me when her "honeymoon" with Sam was over, and she was struggling to understand how a relationship so magical, so light and luminous, could have begun to collect the dust of ordinary existence. She wanted to be wanted again. She wanted Sam to feel her longing and respond to her longing with his own. In her heart of hearts, she wanted to hold on to the rosy candlelight glow of romance, rather than have to deal with the bright, sometimes glaring day-to-day life with another person. And who could blame her? To be spun off earth and float above it for a while is exhilarating. But real love must take root in the soil of reality; otherwise, it can't last or modulate into deeper form. Lisa and Sam's relationship didn't have such durability.

Still, for Lisa--and almost every woman I know--the problem is the hard landing that occurs when a relationship ends and she falls backward into the shaming belief that somehow she is to blame.

Today, the woman who sits across from me still feels too bruised to try to pick herself up. "It feels like there's something terribly wrong with me. I don't even understand why I feel so bad." Lisa speaks more slowly than usual, and in her eyes I see a threading of loss and bewilderment. "I think I knew for a long time that this day would come, but I didn't dare let myself think about it. I guess I swept it under the proverbial rug." She is silent while she struggles to make sense of her feelings. "It's not that I want to be with Sam. I mean, I do," she corrects, "but only if it could be the way it used to be, and I know it can't. It's just that . . ."

"Just that what?" I ask.

Lisa is staring at the floor. "That I'm alone, completely alone, and it's terrifying." She pauses for a moment, then looks at me helplessly. "I don't know how to be a woman alone."

I AM STRUCK by the intensity of Lisa's feeling--as if she had just described the greatest calamity that could befall a woman. What Lisa didn't know--at least not then--was that she was articulating the same fear, doubt, confusion, and sense of helplessness numbers of women feel at all stages of life when they must learn for themselves what aloneness is and what it is like to be a woman alone.

"I keep telling myself it won't be so awful after all, this living alone." Lisa sighs and straightens her shoulders. "All the same, I'm not sure I can do it. I'm really not." Yet, before she met Sam, Lisa was alone; she had a budding career, plenty of lovers and would-be lovers, good friends, and a lively curiosity about life. Her life. I remind her that she more than once described herself as "comfortable in my own shoes" before Sam came along. "Yes, but there were always other men around," she protests. "I never had to worry about what it would be like without one."

Like many of us, Lisa assumes that a woman alone must be miserable, and, worse, that she somehow deserves to be, as if she bears full responsibility for her manless state. Striking a vein of black humor, Lisa wonders if she is like Typhoid Mary, carrying some unmentionable flaw that sends men fleeing and might be contagious. Without Sam, Lisa's self-esteem has plummeted. She no longer knows who she is or what she wants. She struggles against two bullying emotions: shame for being a woman alone, and fear that she will remain one. She cannot, no matter what her rational mind tells her, shake the belief that a woman alone is statusless: an outcast.

Although this fantasy sounds exaggerated, some version of it hovers in the imagination of most women--whether partnered or alone. Indeed, the famous scarlet letter A that once stood for Adultery might now be said to stand for Alone. How is it that even the most seemingly self-assured woman falls prey to feelings of inadequacy if she is not with a man? And where do her feelings of neediness and dependency arise from?

Lisa exemplifies a paradox that besets many women today who continue to live an "as if" story. A modern woman may be the very model of independence with respect to her...

Edition details

• Publisher: Harmony
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1400098106
• ISBN 13: 9781400098101
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304