We get treated like we're some kind of freaks because we don't conform to the stereotype of women as more social.
Being a loner means that things that "typical" women do confound me. Mani-pedi? Girls Night Out? WTF is the purpose of all that? I don't get the appeal, and even when I've been dragged into doing that, to mollify someone who insists, I've still been confounded at why women want to do things like that--together. When I was 30 years old, I still had no idea why women always wanted to go to the bathroom with me. What the hell...? My thought process was, Do they want me to wipe for them, or what? Do your business, get out! My ex-MIL explained to me at last that the purpose of going to the bathroom together was to gossip, usually about each other's dates or husbands. I had no idea that's what it was about. I had missed the memo about it because I avoided the "traditional" socialization.
Then again, my mother and her friends were shocked that I could do things that they feared doing, like go to movies or eat at a restaurant by myself--when I was 10 years old. Heck, I went to a movie by myself during vacation in a city I'd never been to before, and it didn't faze me in the least. I had just turned 11 when I did that. Everyone else wanted to go to one movie, but I wanted to go to another. So I did. What's the big deal?
Many years later, my mother told me that she had been frightened when I insisted on doing things without supervision or companionship, because of course she feared someone would try to nab me or hurt me. At the same time, though, she had envied me for being confident enough to want to handle life on my own, and for how I didn't need others to be comfortable in my own skin, with my own thoughts.
Of course, being a woman loner also wreaks havoc on the dating life. Our independence and need to be alone either frightens men, or, dumbest of all, makes them see our need to be alone as a "sign" that we don't care about them because we aren't always available to them at the drop of a hat like too many of them expect or demand. Too many of them see our self-sufficiency or aloofness as playing hard to get, then they're frustrated and angry when they can't break us of our need to do our own thing--alone. Then comes all those uncomfortable scenes of being accused of infidelity when we're doing our own thing, of not caring enough.
Some men seem to have this belief that a girlfriend or wife is supposed to become the social directors of their life, overseeing the maintenance of all their family and work colleague bonds, cultivating all those connections in the background to get them ahead or make them look good with their boss, or keep them as a favored son in a family, or whatever social expectations they have of us. And we don't play that game, either, which pisses them off.
My love life got much better when I started rejecting all the extroverted challenge seekers that glommed onto me all the time, and instead bided my time to find another introvert. I was miserable until I hooked up with my own kind. We've been married for 22 years now, and still going strong. Like me, my husband wanted to live a quiet life, and was eager to be independent of his family. We both feel understood and accepted as we are. It's such a relief not to be pushed into social nonsense all the time. It's a relief not to have to explain myself all the time, or justify what I was up to when I've done something alone. I feel trusted here, and respected.
My poor husband, though, is having to take the brunt of interacting with the outside world during this coronavirus insanity, to protect me, and I feel bad about that. I'm a housewife, so my "job" is handling our domestic life while he's at work. That's included all those things like grocery shopping, general shopping, dealing with the credit union and post office, going to the dry cleaners and all the dozens of other little errands outside the home that I handle, week in and week out, that takes some of the burden off him. I feel like I'm failing us, somehow... I mean, I know it can't be helped, but still--handling such things was my "job." For now, I'll have to be content with taking care of the house, being our finance manager (we do nearly everything online now), planning all the meals and keeping straight all the errands that need doing when. I guess I'll get in more reading since I'll be at home more. So I'll try to see that as a positive.
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