Choosing to be single is every woman’s right.

@davidhofmann unsplash.com

It is not lack of love but lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages . — Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

In high school, while experiencing my first heartbreak from love unrequited, my mother told me that I would never find love. Somehow, it wasn’t a right that I was entitled to. Like her, she told me that my life would be “arranged” in a way that suited others and not myself. I would have to adapt my own expectations. Otherwise, I would be destined to have a miserable life.

My father did not want me to know any of this. My mother risked herself by telling me all this. She did it out of love.

Still, I was not convinced. I brushed the conversation off as her own projections of her life. Then, I spent the next decade of my life dating whoever I wanted despite my family’s disapproval. At one point, I even married quickly at an early age to send a message, “I could find my own person. I owned my life”.

Growing up in a paternalistic household has its own costs.

“Male superiority” in decision making defined my low self-esteem in my 20s and 30s. I was a woman entirely financially independent, well traveled and thrived on my own.

Yet, I felt the need to please male bosses, male coworkers, male friends, and male family members.

When I looked at every one of those relationships up close, I could see the dysfunction. My inability to assert myself meant that I was trampled each time decisions were made about the relationship.

When I relinquished my right to assert myself in subtle decisions such as “Can you come over on Friday even though you are tired from the week and in need for rest?”, I also relinquished my right to bigger decisions such as “Can you go out with my friend who I think might be a good match for you?”

With the breakup of my marriage, I began to see the effects of letting men impose their will on my life. Slowly, I find myself giving up inches of my freedom in an effort to keep my independent lifestyle. I didn’t know that my life only “looked” independent from the outside.

In fact, I stopped being the driver of my life with every chance that I failed to assert myself.

Being close to my paternalistic family meant that every life decision I wanted to make was put under a microscope and discussed at the dinner table at my parent’s house. For the most part, from the outside, my family “looked” understanding. But, there was passive aggression from male members of my family when I didn’t make decisions the way they thought I should make my decisions. Often, there was gaslighting and emotional abuse involved in trying to bend my will to theirs.

At work, I served my male bosses diligently. I thrived on compliments from those bosses. I believed that following male bosses up the ladder was the only way to thrive in those organizations. Instead, I was met with routine harassment, humiliation and gaslighting. Due to the financial burden of carrying a mortgage, I endured abuses that few women would be able to endure in the workplace.

Throughout the years, my family and friends subtly hinted at an arranged marriage for me. I was already “used” up (from the divorce) and close to thirty (over the hill). It was much easier to find me a mate that would secure them a lifetime of obedience from me. There was a time window of five years before I turned 35. At 35 years old, it would be impossible to marry me off. I would be expired then.

There was the bi-coastal millionaire who made a fortune in the early Internet days who just so happens to be the son of my father’s friend.

There was the soon-to-be a doctor whose mother just so happens to be my mother’s friend.

There was the coworker who was a “brilliant” programmer who my friend at work thought I should go out on a date with.

There was the banker friend who just made his first promotion that my friend wanted to befriend.

Each time, I refused, I was met with emotional repercussions. Eventually, they were successful in arranging one of my relationships without telling me. I spent three years in that relationship giving away more of my freedoms.

In a paternalistic culture, an “arranged” marriage is the ultimate form of control. Even if the woman worked alongside the man with a stable career, every other decision in her life would be deferred to her husband. The only way for that woman to gain any influence in the family is through “loving” her husband and asserting herself through his decisions.

Having a job outside of the home and bringing in money into the family just means that she will not have time to take care of the children. Instead, her extended family with her father at the head will be involved in the decision process involving her own children.

As long as all the men in this equation saw eye to eye, this was the perfect arrangement to keep the “female” me under a tight leash.

Instead of saying “yes” to an arranged marriage, I chose to be single. Choosing to be single is the hardest choice. It is also the one time that I asserted my rights as a woman in the culture that I lived in.

Instead of taking chances with the “husband” in an arranged marriage and putting up with all the rules of the paternalistic culture that governed my life, I am entirely on my own. I had to sever relationships with my family, my career and my friends who didn’t like the choices that I made. I had to set boundaries with those who aimed to control my life. I also had to give up all the support I had from them.

Every day, I work hard to keep up with my independent life.

Without a husband, I had a child on my own. I am a single mother who now find myself in an entirely different financially unstable situation. I feel bound to this life decision that I made for myself. I had to start from the very beginning of a new career path with much fewer opportunities for success. Without support, I’ve had to trade my own freedoms to secure a life for my own family.

It looks like a no-win situation.

Perhaps it is. When we are born into a situation that we are not in control of, there are only two ways out of that situation. Either you put up with the situation all your life and give up your right to assert yourself, or you assert yourself and remove yourself from that situation.

I wish I asserted myself earlier. I wish I chose to live my independent life in every way when I was in my twenties instead of living under the facade of independence.

But I am still very grateful to come to my senses in last few years. That paternalistic culture I lived in could’ve ruined my entire life. I didn’t let it.