The Deliberately Single Man - Part II

Domestic & Social Literacy

This is the second in a series that highlights my framework for well-rounded single manhood that I’ve called “The Deliberately Single Man.” Originally published at Medium on February 12, 2022.

Embracing the Feminine – Domestic Literacy

Domestic literacy is critical to all deliberately single men, whether they live with others or on their own. Much is made, rightfully so, in feminist circles about a patriarchal society that says that men “deserve” to be taken care of by women. What gets overshadowed is the corrosive effect this social order has on men: it instills in them the idea that they not only deserve, but need to be taken care of by women.

Not only do they need to be our emotional guides, but our domestic ones as well. Many men are socialized with a hands-off approach when it comes to cooking, cleaning, decorating, shopping, and appointment-making. The dependency fostered in men when it comes to these routine tasks of life is a travesty – both for the women on whom the burden is placed, but also on the men who are robbed of the growth and learning potential that comes with engaging in these activities.

The deliberately single man who lives alone has, in my opinion, the best chance of developing domestic literacy. This is not because living alone automatically makes you literate in this way. After all, a man can live alone in filth and with a poor diet. Rather, it’s because it offers the best chance to escape the woman-as-care-er and man-as-care-ee dynamic that is so hard-coded into our behaviors by the culture.

Domestic literacy means, among other things, being able to procure food and plan and make meals that are healthy and provide variety. It means being able to find an efficient way to clean and do laundry. It also means understanding that comfortable, well decorated homes don’t just fall under the purview of married couples. This requires developing tastes in furniture, artwork, and all the other necessities of a home.

Domestic literacy also involves skillfully interacting with all the people who provide services to your household, such as contractors, and those who work in sectors as different as banking, medicine, and auto repair. Conveying to all of these various service providers what you need and taking an active role in choosing from different solutions allows, over time, the deliberately single man to gain mastery over his domestic life.

Embracing the Feminine – Social Literacy

The comedian John Mulaney said in his February 2020 appearance on Saturday Night Live: “My dad has no friends, and your dad has no friends. If you think your dad has friends, you’re wrong. Your mom has friends, and they have husbands. Those are not your dad’s friends.”

Beyond the realm of comedy, researchers have also found how common it is for men of all ages to struggle socially. I suspect this is due to decades of socialization whereby women, as the “heart” of the home, not only direct emotional life, as described above, but also do the work of maintaining social and familial ties.

The deliberately single man must recognize that men, particularly those who live alone, are uniquely primed to fall into social isolation unless specific steps are taken. This is centered around working to maintain ties with those he is close to. Steps that can be taken include keeping track of and recognizing birthdays and other important milestones, and taking the initiative to make phone calls and arrange times to meet. Any activity – work, volunteering – where people come together for a common cause is also fertile ground for creating social ties – especially if these situations are looked at in as expansive a way as possible.

Expansiveness, or open-mindedness, is the key. Too often, people come to believe that their most meaningful relationships will occur with those that mirror their own characteristics. This causes an obsessive search for social ties among those of the same age, education level, and economic class.

Romantic norms serve to further restrict the pool of potential social ties, as close connections with any non-familial member of the opposite sex appears to be off limits in many heterosexual romantic relationships. Add to this, asinine notions such as “men and women can never be ‘just friends,’” and many adults find themselves walled off from meaningful connection with half of humanity.

When we subconsciously shut ourselves off to the possibility of having “unconventional” relationships, the opportunities for connection that are missed are staggering. Realizing we have at least some common ground with everyone around us helps keep those possibilities open, and can lead to unexpected, beautiful things that unfold over years.

Another major aspect of social literacy involves the single man pondering the question that the author Wendell Berry asked, which also serves as the title of one of his books – “What are People For?” More specifically, what roles can I realistically expect other people to play in my life? The process of finding answers to this question begins with the realization that life is in essence a single-player game, by virtue of the fact that no one has the option of letting someone else enter their mind to do the work of dealing with day-to-day experience.

That’s not to say that society at large accepts this. In doing the frantic work of denying this existential reality, we have made Gods of other people. Looking to popular culture provides ample evidence for this. The “advice” industry is worth billions, and counsel from “the experts” on even the most trivial matters is easy to find. TV shows often use a main character’s journey toward “the one” as a plot anchor that can span multiple seasons.

The deference to the advice expert, or finally reaching “the one,” is often taken at face value as the pursuit of wisdom or love. But the rarely discussed subtext is that it’s also about the pursuit of existential security. The all-encompassing aura around a TV couple finally marrying after several seasons of pursuit is not only that they have found love, but that they are also now “safe” – that they will somehow cancel out each other’s existential aloneness. That they will not just ease the burden that can come with day-to-day life, but will actually take the burden away.

The most immediate and obvious result of these beliefs and expectations, which are so counter to our existential reality, is constant disappointment. And what is disappointment but the mismatch between expectations and reality? How do we bring our expectations more in line with the reality of the people we are in relationship with? We work to keep the relationship on a sustainable trajectory.

When we first meet someone, we only have very surface-level expectations of them. We assume they will follow standard social conventions, like being courteous. We may have positive or negative expectations based on stereotypes surrounding age, appearance, race, or gender. But we often don’t make sweeping assumptions about the role that person may play in our lives in the future.

After a few months or a few years of this person being in our orbit, we may start attaching labels to the relationship: friend, mentor, partner, spouse. Social conventions and what people are socialized to believe mean that sustainable relationship trajectories are much easier to maintain with some labels than others.

Let’s start with the label of “friend.” It’s accepted that this label can be used to describe a person you only talk to a few times a year, as well as a person who you interact with frequently and is a central part of your life. This broad definition makes it socially acceptable and easy for individuals in a friendship to define the expectations of the relationship for themselves. When those expectations are established gradually over years of friendship, the result is what researchers find to be some of the longest lasting, most durable relationships humans can have.

Now, let’s go to the other end of the spectrum and look at the label of “spouse.” Unlike with a friend, the expectations that come as a spouse are 1) extensive 2) front-loaded and 3) strongly reinforced by social norms.

The expectations are extensive as they encompass vast swathes of a person’s life, from finances to living arrangements and all manner of social behaviors. They are front-loaded because an individual agrees to these extensive expectations before their partner, or for that matter even they themselves, know if they are willing or able to meet them. They are strongly reinforced by social norms as evidenced by the severe social penalties faced by those who venture into “off -limits” behavior, such as an affair.

All this results in the spousal form of relationship having a much less sustainable trajectory, which is borne out in research that shows that over the lifespan, people’s spousal relationships are often among their most unstable.

In summary, the deliberately single man must be socially literate. He recognizes the factors that can lead men to be more isolated, and counters them by taking the initiative to reach out to and maintain connections with the important people in his life. He understands that those important people can come from all walks of life, and has an open mind about developing relationships with all kinds of people. He works to keep his relationships on a sustainable trajectory, and tries to have a realistic view of what those in his life are able to do for him, and he for them.