The Jane Austen Loser Club

I love a good Jane Austen book or movie.  But I need for them to stop making me feel like a loser. 

I’m not married and I don’t have kids.  Many of my friends have made similar choices, so I’m not alone.  And yet too often I find myself feeling like a lonely loser even though my life is good.  Why?

As ever, I blame the stories we tell.  According to the denouements our culture reveres, there is one main model of normalcy and productivity: get married, have kids, live happily ever after. There aren’t enough stories told about those of us whose paths diverge from that model. Which, by the way, is pretty much everyone.  

Many of the books and movies I’ve loved since childhood have marriage-centric happy endings.  I’m not knocking that.  The problem arises when the dynamic looks the same in every story you hear. One woman marries one man, they have 1.93 kids, and everything is roses forever. 

Again, I’m NOT knocking marriage or kids.  Or Jane Austen.  I love and respect those things very much. But the marriage and kids have never been in my purview.  I never as a kid imagined my wedding day or named my kids.  I did imagine being a hero on horseback with a mask, a sword, and a flowing cape.  In fact, to this day my Zorro fantasy beats out the white dress every time.  I’m not disrespecting the institution.  I’m just saying I wasn’t wired for it and my life hasn’t played out along those lines.  So where do I fit in this world?

As ever, my suggestion is that we add/tell/find/pay attention to some new stories. Stories that reflect where we are in history and reality.  In Jane Austen’s day, and even Cinderella’s day, marriage meant something different than it does now, so why are we still upholding the standard that success, happiness and security=marriage?  Why can’t there be new forms of companionship, family, and romance in the stories that we learn from?

For example, my biggest fear as an unmarried, unchilded person is being alone when I’m old...Of course, being married with kids doesn’t guarantee that you won’t be alone at some point.  It’s a fear everyone has.  So why do the stories stop at the wedding day?  Why don’t we tell more stories about getting old, being alone, being afraid?  Because it’s depressing, you say? And we just want to hear stories that make us happy?

That’s the whole point.  The story we tell ourselves is that aging and being alone=depressing.  Maybe it is depressing at times, but so is everything else.  If we changed the narrative, depicted more of the angles and aspects, we might see more possibilities and stop telling ourselves it’s all gloom and doom once you get past the wedding bells and baby bonnets.    

Also, can there be some more stories about how difficult marriage and parenthood can be?  We all know the wedding or the first child is just the beginning of the story, so why do we keep using it as the main version of a happy ending? Life is epic, let the stories reflect that. Offer narratives about how difficult and isolating this undertaking can be for some. So many young spouses and parents--male,female, and otherwise--dive into the tasks of being spouses and parents thinking they can do it all on their own because that’s the model held up to them.  Have a good job, never let your kids watch TV or eat Cheetos, maintain a perfect house and yard, be a foodie and your well-coiffed best self, and love every minute of all of it.  No surprise that this can end up being a soul crushing vice.  We don’t have to be all French and angsty about telling these kinds of stories either.  Community, humor, resilience, self-discovery, change--all allowable plot points, so use them!  

Are we afraid that if we start telling different stories about families and relationships, if we redefine the happy ending as a slightly more complicated endeavor, fewer people will buy into the paradigm?  I don’t know if we will or not, but at least we won’t feel like such lonely losers when things don’t go the way we hoped or expected.  

Same goes for other models of family: single parenthood, step-parenthood, fostering, adopting, mentorship, non-parenthood, unmarried partnerships, long distance partnerships, open relationships, WHATEVER.  There are so many more options and manifestations out there and they are not a threat to anything.  The “traditional” way of doing things is awesome and not at all undermined by all the other ways people can live their lives. Write, tell, seek out stories that reflect this.   

I’m not saying any of this out of cynicism and bitterness (though I love and respect those things too).  I’m posing the question out of a desire to expand the paradigm.  To share new strategies and patterns and ways of getting by.  New ways of finding happy endings that incorporate more people and more circumstances.  Including those of us who don’t choose the “traditional” path, or who want that path but find that it doesn’t work out.  Let’s tell stories that give us all space, show us all the possibilities, and remind us all that we are not alone. 

For all the married, unmarried, demarried, single, Zorro-mask wearing, partnered-on-your-own-terms folx out there:  May there be rich, engaging, happy, funny, heart-wrenching, true, wonderful, romantic stories written by you and for you and about you and honoring you.  I’m pretty sure Jane Austen would dig it.