More and more women today decide to live alone. Some of them insist: this way they feel happier and freer. But in the soul of many lies the hope of meeting the man of their dreams.
Beautiful, smart, educated, financially independent… They prefer to live alone. These impeccable 40-year-old women lead an active lifestyle, leaving no minute in their daily routine for a man.
“Time has changed,” comments psychotherapist and sexologist Irina Panyukova. – For a modern person, it is not the fact of marriage that is important, but the quality of the relationship in it. If the union does not satisfy the need for love and emotional intimacy, then successful, financially independent and socially active women go for divorce more easily than their mothers and grandmothers, while realizing that new relationships may not work out.
They claim to have consciously chosen freedom. “I built a quiet life without the constant presence of a man,” Anna, 39, smiles. – A couple of times a week I go to a cafe or a club in the evenings with my friend, sometimes I spend the weekend with him, but still everyone lives at home. Weekdays kill love. I’ve been through two breakups and I know what I’m talking about.”
On average, one in two Russian couples break up. Increasingly, divorces are initiated by women.
Anna, a short gray-eyed brunette, a homeopathic doctor, is fond of modern art and refers to women who often cause bewilderment among acquaintances: everything is with her – why is she not married? “I made up my mind,” she says. “And I will never trade my freedom for a life in a marriage that doesn’t leave a single minute for itself, loads something all the time, keeps it in constant suspense.” But is this choice really so free?
Psychotherapist Irina Zemtseva is not sure about this: “Boasting their loneliness, many women actually experience real despair, hiding in the depths of their soul longing and a hopeless desire to find a partner. Their choice seems rather abstract reasoning, rationalization.
In some ways, this is a trick that hides a piercing fear of repeating one’s negative experience, and in other cases, the desire for an unattainable ideal or an unattractive image of a man that has developed in a woman. And only realizing internal contradictions, women find agreement with themselves.
Avoid suffering
On average, one in two Russian couples break up. “Moreover, more and more often divorces occur at the initiative of a woman,” Irina Panyukova clarifies. “Regardless of whether there are children in the family or not, more and more women are choosing a life without a man.”
“For 17 years I put up with the fact that he runs after every skirt, with his irritability, with his endless reasoning about my terrible taste and stupidity,” recalls 42-year-old Svetlana, a restaurant administrator. “I agreed with all his decisions: it was he who chose where we should go on vacation, which curtains to buy … But now that the children have grown up and began to live separately, I decided and left.”
But the past does not let go, memories feed resentment, anger (often well-founded), and often guilt. And women give themselves the word: “Never again.”
“Many women transfer their tenderness and expectation of love to children,” explains Irina Zemtseva. – And they involuntarily begin to perceive the child as their partner, who will never betray. This can lead to serious consequences: the son grows up as a helpless, dependent person, dependent on his mother.
“As an adult, he is likely to constantly experience failure in his professional and personal life,” agrees psychotherapist Mariel Garel. – Frequent job changes, quarrelsomeness, rebelliousness – belatedly, he will begin to live his childhood and adolescence.
Having lost her husband at 33, she gradually withdrew into her world alone with the idealized image of her late husband.
And the mother, who will be unbearable even at the thought that her adult child should leave her home, will support all his antics, thereby maintaining dependence on herself, including financially.
Elena, 38, is an architect. She remains alone for other reasons. Having lost her husband at 33, she gradually withdrew into her world alone with the idealized image of her late husband. “I can’t remove his photos or change the furniture we bought together.” It is hardly possible to introduce a new friend into a house where everything reminds of the past. Elena understands this: “It is impossible for me to start a relationship with another person, because this would mean betraying my husband and daughter.”
And 40-year-old Marina, who works as a veterinarian, likes to live “like a man”: spend evenings out, take guitar lessons, go on vacation to the ends of the world and indulge in short-term novels without obligations. “Most of the men I date are married—they only see me occasionally. There are also those who are experiencing the collapse of their family, they expect consolation from me. And some of my friends are bachelors with a difficult character. In the end, I’m fine on my own.”
“Having experienced a breakup with her friend once, Marina decided never to be a vulnerable woman again and chose a masculine position in life,” says Irina Zemtseva. “Becoming an all-powerful figure (behaviorally she is a man, and physiologically a woman), she unconsciously tries to protect herself from new failures.”
“You are better off starving than eating anything, and it’s better to be alone than with anyone,” wrote Omar Khayyam. Many women choose this life strategy. But the pseudo-freedom that Svetlana, Evgenia, Elena and Marina seem to cherish, actually hides their fear of re-experiencing disappointment and pain.
Strong, slender, preferably a banker
It often seems that behind the loneliness of a professionally successful woman lies a dream of an ideal family. “I have always admired my parents’ family,” says Nadezhda, 39, an antique dealer. — 45 years of family happiness! Mom supported my father in his business, he took care of us, protected my mother, valued her. You don’t see that kind of relationship anymore. The paths of men and women are parallel and intersect only occasionally, almost by accident. I have not yet met a man who could become the father of my children.
Today, between 20 and 30 years old, most women do not yet feel like women, they are more like big teenagers who are looking for a boyfriend or a passionate lover, and not a life partner. Around the age of 35, many of them start looking anxiously for the perfect man.
By the age of 40, they understand that they need to make the dream of a child come true as soon as possible, and they complicate the search conditions: now they need not only an ideal partner, but also a responsible father.
“Between 30 and 40 they strive for success in the profession, family life, motherhood … But how difficult it is to achieve everything at once! Some go to work, others to the family, and only a few find a balance,” says Irina Panyukova. Those who have put all their efforts into professional activities are not averse to having a loving family, but … Who will share the loneliness?
Every woman is looking for the “perfect man” whom she can proudly introduce to her mother.
“A prominent, strong, financially independent man – everyone needs him,” ironically psychoanalyst Marie-Laure Colonna. “It’s enough to read marriage announcements. Every woman is looking for the “perfect man” whom she can proudly introduce to her mother. But what can be understood at 25 years old, at 40 already seems infantile behavior.
The director of one of the St. Petersburg marriage agencies Valeria, talking about such exactingness, shakes her head in bewilderment. One of her clients, the financial director of a consulting agency, insisted that she find a lawyer. She did not agree to anyone else, explaining that her demanding, wealthy parents would never accept some “hungry man” into the family!
So, a young woman of 40 wants to meet a handsome prince. “The first image of a man is a father,” recalls Mariel Garel. “And the one for whom the father has become an ideal will always unconsciously strive to find a man like him, a handsome prince who will wake her up with a kiss after many years of sleep.”
Just like the heroines of fairy tales, such women prepare trials for their hero: the future husband must hold an important position, have an enviable financial position and, moreover, be physically attractive. But life is not a fairy tale – most men fail this exam.
frightening image
In the imagination of those who are waiting for the handsome prince, a completely different image of a man lives. “In the dreams of many of my clients, he looks terrifying, appears as a treacherous dictator,” says Marie-Laure Colonna. Some women even in reality do not see anything good in men: always an irresponsible egoist, he chooses younger women, because “he only thinks about it” …
Our experts say that many divorced women dream of finding a new life partner who would be, above all, “soft and understanding”: “You would think that they all married tyrants!” What kind of mirror so distorts the image of a man in the psyche of a woman?
Mariel Garel concluded: “It’s all about the look of her mother. The way a woman’s mother looked at her husband and other men, what beliefs she received in turn from her mother, remains in the daughter’s unconscious. Sometimes words are deceptive: “Your father is a decent person, he found his place in life …” When a mother says them insincerely, her daughter feels it.
“Unconscious hostility can also be associated with relations with the father,” Irina Zemtseva clarifies. – It happens if he rejected the love of his daughter when she was three to five years old, was cold with her.
Being under the pressure of society and family, women defend themselves, preferring to talk about their choice as a right they have won back.
Or, on the contrary, the relationship with the father was warm, he was a significant figure for the girl, but his departure from the family or early death made her perceive this as a betrayal. And unconsciously hate all the men who will appear in her life when she grows up.
Listening carefully to 40-year-old women who are “better without men,” one has to admit that their celibacy is not always a free choice. Employers look at the unmarried with some doubt, and parents, relatives and other acquaintances are often ready to remind you that “the years go by” and it’s time to “find someone for yourself.”
Being under the strongest pressure from society and family, women defend themselves, preferring to talk about their choice as a right they have conquered, rather than as a vital necessity.
Basic Ideas
- Women prefer to be alone so as not to suffer from disappointment and pain again;
- Those who do not trust men still unconsciously hope to meet the ideal partner;
- Loneliness does not hurt only those who have managed to accept themselves and their lives … without rejecting the possibility of a new meeting.
“I couldn’t bear the attempts of my friends to “attach” me, their tactless questions: “Well, how is it on the personal front?” – recalls 41-year-old Yana, editor of the news agency. – Parents did not directly reproach, but did not miss the opportunity to sigh: “I wish I could babysit my grandchildren.”
When I met Andrei, everything changed, as if I again fell into the category of “normal” women who have a man. Married people no longer looked askance at me, as at a hidden rival, the men no longer wondered what my secret shortcomings were … It was nice. But once Andrei said a strange phrase to me: “Sometimes I have such a sad feeling that we meet only to go to a corporate party.”
I was suddenly struck: he is right! And I don’t know at all what I really sincerely want – including from our relationship. Today I still can’t say how they will develop. But I know for sure: I don’t give a damn what other people think about it. ”