Great points on all fronts in this article. I wish I’d written something like this first.
It’s hard to be single and not feel like an intruder, so it’s nice to find a niche where there’s a standing arrangement to meet, or where others have reached out and made a point to invite me to be part. Organic relationships and communities like the one’s described in this article are particularly rewarding to all participants.
As a single, I am happy to coordinate (and often do) or do the leg work of getting together with others, but I do confess that when I am the only one who ever reaches out, it begins to feel as if I am the only one who cares about spending time with others. Would they normally want to spend time with me? At the same time, I worry about intruding on couple and family time. I don’t know others’ schedule and routines, I just know they’re juggling exponentially more things than I am. And I worry that time with me takes away from necessary time with family. I don’t want to add one more “to do” to their lists, but I would love to be integrated into their lives. It shouldn’t always be one person who has to include others, a give and take reinforces the importance of the relationship. And it helps to know that despite how busy their lives are, they want to make time for me.
I am friends with a very busy mother of a larger family, and she once explained to me that her schedule is such that she can rarely join others in their adventures, but she can invite others to partake in her own world. And she did — I became a welcome addition to family dinners, sports games, whatever her busy family was engaged in, and as a result community and inclusion were fostered with her and the crew of similar singles and couples she’d fostered.
In contrast, I was once trying to explain how lonely I sometimes feel in my current town to an older married member of my church. He suggested that his wife was quite good at mentoring and that I should consider individuals, like them, who were outside my age group. Little did he know that his wife had previously told me I was not her target ministry because she was called to work with young and newly married women. Neither of their comments inspired me to feel wanted within their lives. I do have friends of many ages and in varying degrees of single, dating, married without kids, and married with kids. The secret to each of these friendships is common interest in each other as individuals though. Without a willingness to see beyond a particular identifying characteristic to the individual him or her-self, a relationship is futile.
Sadly, I’ve found that my busy friend’s perspective is rare, and that many couples only want to invite couples so as not to have an uneven number, or have someone who relates to one-half of the assembly. The few that have, usually invite another single man to “balance things out” and then explain privately to me that they’re not trying to set us up. That’s all well and good, but it does tend to increase the awkwardness. I’m still only invited when I become a false matched set for table arrangements. Similarly, without kids, I cannot offer their children a play date during which the adults can have some time together as well. I know the time together will ebb and flow with how others’ schedules are going. But I’m willing to come alongside and support them in the craziness of their lives if they’re willing to show me how to naturally do so.
Lastly, on the topic of kids. Just because I am a single adult does not mean I am free babysitting. I was never very good at babysitting and kids are not my forte. As an only child, I didn’t have much exposure to children growing up. And I haven’t changed a diaper since high school, which is many, many years ago. That doesn’t mean I’m not willing to learn. And I’d love to be a friend and pseudo-aunt in the lives of children of my friends. A lot of my reticence around kids simply comes from a lack of experience. And I’m much better with friends’ kids than strangers’, and I’m still learning with both.
Here’s the thing, though, if someone has expressed no interest in getting to know me as a person, anywhere along the scale between acquaintance and true friend, I can pretty much guarantee that I will refuse a request to babysit for them. It’s too much responsibility and not within my natural skill set to be something I voluntarily undertake for individuals who have no desire to get to know me in other capacities. And I rather think that’s their loss because I’d willingly offer my services as a free babysitter or extra set of adult hands for any of my friends because I care about them.
I don’t mean to end on a negative note. Communities arise in the most unusual way, just as friendships and any relationships do. And it takes effort on everyone’s part.
Irene Adler in Sherlock
My two cents. Warning about spoilers if you haven’t watched episode one of season two of Sherlock.
Full disclosure: I like Sherlock Holmes, but I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of his escapades. I read all of them in junior high and high school, but have only periodically returned to read any of them since that time. Since the first time I read “Scandal in Bohemia,” however, I have loved the depiction of Irene Adler as a foil to Sherlock’s usual methodology. The woman confounded him, and through him off his game. Unlike some, I never saw their attraction as being physical, but rather an intellectual respect between equals whose genders provided different motives and methods.
And in a bit of typical fan appreciation, I’d filed away as an idea for the future that Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes would be a fantastic couples costume for a Halloween party. (Admittedly not entirely original, but still unusual enough to likely be the only pairing at a typical party!)
The first episode of season 2 of the new, modern, adaptation Sherlock by Stephen Moffat is loosely based on “Scandal in Bohemia” and is entitled “Scandal in Belgravia.” When I first heard that they’d turned the opera singer Irene into dominatrix Irene, I was appalled and deeply skeptical. Why does a powerful and “equal” woman to a modern Sherlock have to be a sexualized woman? But, having some faith in both the series and Moffat, I decided to reserve judgment and watch.
The first part of the show was pleasantly surprising. Irene was witty and clever. Despite her being a dominatrix, the editing and directing was not overtly sexualized. Spiler Example - Although Irene is nude when she first meets Sherlock, it is clearly designed to throw Sherlock off his game (a successful move) rather than to scintillate either him or the audience. I was intrigued and drawn into the story, and decided that although I would have modernized her in a different way, this approach kept the core of the character and her relationship in tact.
If only the final few scenes had lived up to that initial impression. In the final few scenes Irene went from being written in keeping to her original spirit to being a lamentable figure in the hands of a chauvinist writer. I do not mean to call Moffat a chauvinist so much as to suggest that he simply fell into such a pattern in how he treated Adler in the end. More Spoilers to illustrate my points - Instead of being an independent foil for Holmes, Adler “didn’t know what to do” with the information she possessed until she consulted with Moriarty. He is the mastermind, and she is the pawn. While I can understand the desire to stage Moriarty as Holmes’ primary nemesis, that is unfaithful to Doyle’s vision for Adler. There is no need to have every adventure pit the two men against each other. The episode implies that Adler’s call to Moriarty “saved” Holmes and Watson from the predicament that ended season one. But that point is all but forgotten when Adler is unable to match Holmes independently later in the episode, and it serves simply as a plot point neatly wrapped up without having Adler be a truly clever behind-the-scenes force. Even worse, in the final scene, Adler is shown being beheaded by terrorists, only to have Sherlock be one of her captors who rescues her. A cliched damsel in distress tale if ever there were one. If she’s so clever, why can’t she save herself? Or have Holmes assist, certainly, but then have them working together instead of helpless woman and savior man.
In less than ten minutes, Moffat managed to deconstruct all that was the core of Irene Adler. Shame on him.
(Last caveat - I haven’t seen the second and third episodes of the season yet. Based on titles, I don’t see that Moffat will have the opportunity to redeem himself from these criticisms relating to Adler, but perhaps he will.)
![thedailywhat:
Heartwarming Tearjerker of the Day: The sheer cliffs at the mouth of Sydney Harbor have long been a popular Australian suicide spot. But they’re about to get a lot more deadly — the local man who is credited with talking at least 160 people out of killing themselves since 1964 died this week.
Window-watcher Don Ritchie, known as the Angel of the Gap, could spot the troubled ones from his home across the street; he’d wander down to the cliff-edge and calmly ask, “Can I help you in some way?” More often then not, he could. He’d chat with them a bit, then invite them back to his place for a cup of tea.
“My ambition has always been to just get them away from the edge, to buy them time, to give them the opportunity to reflect and give them the chance to realize that things might look better the next morning,” Ritchie once said. “You just can’t sit there and watch them. You’ve got to try and save them.”
[advocatingprogress]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m44hk3hZjO1qzpwi0o1_500.jpg)
