Woman; 103; The Woman Alone

A. Good evening and welcome to a woman the woman alone is our topic for this evening. Almost 40 percent of the women in the United States are living alone. Some are divorced. Some are separated. Some are single and some are widowed. We have three guests this evening and they are all women who are living alone. Our first

guest is Harriet Lebar who has written a book called A Life of your own. And Harriet is a widow. Our second guest is Patricia O'Brien who's written a book called The woman alone. And Patricia is divorced and on the end of the couch we have Gail North who is a freelance writer and separated from her husband. Welcome Harriet. In your book there are many things that you say that please you about being alone. But one of the first things I noticed was that it seemed very strange that I had all this time to do exactly as I pleased with and for instance I could take a bath of midnight or if I wanted I could just have a slice of pizza for dinner or I could if I wanted I could just skip dinner altogether and read a book or do anything like that. And I thought well this is very strange. And and I realized that when I had been married there were an awful lot of things that I really could have done.

But I always felt guilty if I wanted to do any of them. I always felt as though I ought to be doing something in the kitchen where I ought to be shopping for something that was if you know you're always out of something and you and you feel very guilty and I think that perhaps I was a little more of a perfectionist than most but I do have a feeling that at that an awful lot of marriages could have been could be better and I think mine could have been better if I didn't try to do so much if I had to. Oh have you always thought in terms of the other person to an extreme. You know we hear it for you time as you're describing it now was a luxury that so many women don't have when they're married you're so right. After many years of marriage and living in a house I know how it can just disappear on you. But I found it. At one point in my life that time was a very frightening thing. It was 0 years ago now and

and I had already had my fourth child and I felt that there there wasn't enough there and I wanted to do more with my life Miss going through it there was a lot of people go through. I had a girl come in to help me with the cleaning and so every Thursday I took off and went downtown. I'd get all dressed up and go down the very first week I went down I started shopping and I went around all the stores in this little town and I spent some money and had a great day. So that was you know that was her film has been afterwards and really had perked up my spirits. Next week I went down and I went to a movie I didn't particularly like going alone but I went to the movie the third week I went down and I stood on the corner of the main street in that little town which was Eugene Oregon. And I thought I don't have anything to do. And I think that was my very first realization of how empty the lives of women can be once they remove themselves from home from family and husband. Even for a temporary thing. And then how much worse

that is for women who are widowed or divorced or separated and then they're left with all this time they don't know how to feel. But Pat you were who you would consider that you were a housewife and yes that right. But I had a job I had a career and I was trying to write. So and I'm an absolute Tiger about my time but every time I sat down to write I thought well I shouldn't be doing this. I should be doing something else contributing to you know mutual love my marriage and I would of course I was absolutely wrong because if I had been doing what I should have done which was writing spending that time I would have been contributing. Are you even is that you can as a separated woman living alone for a short time I know the business about having free time on your hands. It's very strange. I'll go into my apartment and look around it. Coming home alone in the evenings and wonder with the interesting person that lives there she has so many interesting things that she seems to be doing and I have to identify that person with me before I can do that is a long time with pacing back and forth and

pacing back and forth trying to find a room to sit in. It's that time again because it's a home going on the back of my head. I should be doing something else even though I've got this freedom. There's something else I should be doing. It's like of the 430 syndrome which I call it at 4:30 every day to pick fix dinner. Something goes off a cliff goes off an overtone which says I should actually be doing something else I'm not sure what it is but of course I know what it is because for 10 years at the time I cleaned up the house and start shopping getting things ready for dinner. Of course you don't have children. And now I have a whole array of it's the same thing. You think what what's different for me. Do you have children. Yes. And that neither of you do and it you know that that home goes on in that home that's going on with kids yelling for their dinner to which is in actuality you do it right you have to do with us to do what we're doing it with the fattest and but you know we're talking about what it's going to about time as if in some ways. You started off by asking about the good things of being alone but I think of what's of

tremendous importance to women now are they the real difficulties of being alone and it's of importance to men to women. What are some of the difficulties. I mean you must have some of them in common even though you're alone for different reasons. I think one very crucial one is the way society looks at women who are alone. Women who are alone really don't fit. This is a couple society and except for a very few fortunate women and professional women can be exceptions. But for most women you take the woman out in the suburbs who's been widowed or divorced and she doesn't get asked to the neighborhood parties anymore because she's now the the single woman the available woman. And if she were actually doing house to do I think well I think she ought to be a threat to them. Better learn to let them talk. Yes I got told you there was no I think good for you and I think it's selfish and I think that that's just an example of the way I know how certain amount of selfishness. Oh you know she's doesn't have to be in purdah or arrest or a wife. But I think that that

she should have something else going for her besides a social life. All I want is a social life anyway. When you compare it to all the other things that you could be doing that are so much more exciting. OK you have a social life when you were married what was it saying a bunch of people playing bridge or this or that. Well what do you good man you know we do are really good and he backs to it but of course all that is frosting and what is missing for so many women what I have found missing in my life and the many women I talk with for researching the book is a sense of self-reliance a sense of being able to walk into the room that is yourself and to find a sense of happiness there of completeness of being able to be alone without being lonely. And there's something terribly important that very very few people men or women have not yet managed to accomplish. It's in my opinion the sense of being able to handle aloneness as a as a happy way way to life.

Well it was really a sophisticated aloneness as differentiated from loneliness and I think people who are lonely are people who don't know how to handle aloneness that they don't know how to appreciate it and they don't. You have to have I think some particular function some interest. That's why I was talking about just being social playing bridge or whatever it is that that isn't enough. If you're not and deeply involved with your children then you should be deeply involved with something anything. As you became deeply involved with certain social questions and you're now in on with doing this you're not going to spend your Harvard pursuing these interests. I can't imagine what it is that you feel lonely I don't know. Oh of course at times I feel lonely. I don't think anybody and it's true you don't have to be single to feel lonely. There are many lonely married women in this country and there are probably many lonely married men. It's loneliness. Is is no respecter of

lifestyle. It's something that we have to find a way to deal with better than we do now. But. For women I feel very strongly that American women are going to continue finding divorce and widowhood and singleness past the age of 25 maybe 30 nowadays. A very difficult state of life unless they begin to grow without this basic idea that their primary goal in life is marriage. And that's a real thing that has made you the best you very beginning because it seems it was that my life was was split up into two places there was a fantasy in my childhood of becoming famous and wonderful and then that stopped when I got to be around 12 I got to be a man will come in and take over the whole thing. I'll be right then. Whatever abuse is I think I suffer as a child. It's all going to change now and that I call the mantrip and the mantrip lasts and lasts and lasts. It is the education in the home. In my home we were not brought up to. What do you want to do you know

what are you going to do with your life it was you'll get married it'll be nice. Everything will be OK. So there was no chance for me to feel I could develop something now at the point I am now I feel like I am going back in some way trying to renewable an acquaintanceship with a self that you know what do you say when Pap says for instance that this is in effect a married world and that the single people are on the outside. Yet when we face the statistics now that 40 percent of women who are known to go in your city get a partner and you are changing or very much years older but you have to move you have to I mean the whole they let Hanson of the retirement community for older people there are now these great singles communities. Now that is for a certain age but it indicates a whole change in attitude that you're going to have to. Retirement Community Well they will I mean these are as an example. Younger people now have great

singles communities I mean these tremendous Ildibad place and well any place is a sad place if you're in the wrong place. But if it's right for some people and they enjoy it that's great. If you don't belong there I know somebody who you know middle aged schoolteacher who moved in and she was totally miserable she didn't belong there. The tragedy so I left that apartment to a 23 year old girl is having a marvelous time there and she went in to teach and live in a house where the with that rented rooms to people that she enjoyed and she's having a fine time which you need to survive and that wouldn't need to survive right. Yes it is a woman that I don't know off the top of my head I can think of you know self-reliance perhaps ride one of the jewels practical things. You do need the ability to make a living. And I think this is paramount and one of the things that is happening nowadays that I'm very glad to see are a number of organizations popping up around the country

that are geared to helping the woman who is suddenly left alone either through divorce or widowhood at a time in her life when she's just bereft of any ability to take care of herself. They are providing counseling and pointing the direction saying look you can do this you can do that and giving people a kind of a structure because marriage has been the structure for women. And that with a lot of the women sitting and watching the show right now may feel very comfortable. Yes they're in their homes their husbands or their children so the children are there but they may be widowed. Divorce may come and there has to be a sense of self-reliance going from either. And also there has to be a facing of certain practical aspects of life so that you don't become a very helpless and hopeless. Pat I think all those things that you're talking about shouldn't be something that you learned when that event arrives. So there there I am suddenly a divorcee and I have to go for help or there I am suddenly a widow.

This should be in one training from the beginning and I think everyone should be. Prepared so that when they are going to say that except there are a lot of women you know who right now they're there 30 had better be there 50 or 60 or 70. They're not. Unfortunately we're not all at the moment 18 and able to make our major life. No but if you're 30 and you're married and you're 40 and you're married and you know that someday you might be a widow you know that that you have to be be a whole person. You should be in your marriage anyway so we got that same thing with same regard death. It's not going to happen to me. Well but realistically and there's also another thing about the training. I really believe that the kind of institutions that Pat is talking about that would be would be the equivalent of halfway houses would be very interesting for single people single women to have a place to go during the abrupt severing that is wrenching away that they could go to to get. Psychological support a kind of reorientation about the possibilities that they can the things they can do the jobs they could possibly do and not just maybe

jump into a typist. Let's take a concrete example Harriet in your book you talk about when your husband died suddenly you didn't even know how to write a check. Well why would I feel sure I was I was I was I considered myself a career woman and a writer and everything and I didn't know anything about the mechanics of living. I didn't know how to drive a car. I learned to write my husband always drove well. When you're when you have children of course you know you're the chauffeur and all the rest carpool. But I still don't know what I did to have you on and I didn't I don't know anything I don't know any of those things either but you know I get saved even one month ago. After all the things that have occurred in my life and feeling very self reliant on this electrocuted myself trying to change a few As I forgot to turn the master switch what Massasoit. What. Kid Should you imagine not knowing how to make out a check. No I don't when I want to but I asked my husband to make out a check and and that was it. And when you came a long way area that's that's really that was a tear.

The thing what I discovered was that there was absolutely no one else who was going to do this. But you simply had to do it or it's just like sitting down writing a book. No one else is going to do it for you. But then one of the things is you take it a day at a time and a thing to tell you don't do you really plan for the future or do I tears of frustration all the die you know you look at this thing and it's an insurance policy or something. So you know it's going to take me 10 years to to read this and understand it. There's something and I know two hours later you you have the gist of it and this happens in absolutely everything we own a piece of property. And I thought I'm never going to understand any of these papers. And also you're tempted to depend on other people like the banker or the or the insurance man and all these people descend on you like the insurance man. People try to sell you all kinds of things and you learn that you can't depend on anybody to get a tax to do it yourself after a certain point for a while they were a great

deal of rating court and now this says and you know I I mean when I say that I'm drawing from what many other women have told me you know. Process of getting material together for the book and my own experience it was it was easier because the transition was a much slower one. Over a period of time and yet there is no way it's like it's late it's like death. You made that analogy. People who have had a parent who has been very very ill and they know that they're dying of cancer or so are some disease. And yet when the death comes there has not each person has told me this and two or three friends have talked about it. There is no full reconciliation until the exact moment it happens. And the adjustment to that kind of severance as the adjustment to the severance of widow of divorce is abrupt.

I wondered oh I don't know about when you're divorced and I'm when I know that. As I was a widow when my husband died my feeling was what could I have done to prevent it. But will there come a day I get a divorce and you know that I thank you over and over in your sad way to you if I don't. If I hadn't done my act. Well you know I don't think you go for was that process no matter what the severance has been I find now when I leave the house the children are off to school and I'll get on the bus to go into into Cambridge and without without drawing you know without even consciously trying to think of things I find myself remembering many things that happened in in my life with my husband and figure well what if something different happened here. What if I had been stronger here and could it have been different. And I think what would you go into and I don't know where the end of it is but there's a certain grieving process because really I don't think there are many people men or women who really want to be alone permanently. We all want

someone to love and we want someone to love us. And it's you know we have to die alone anyway and it would be nice if we could live with someone who cared. But it suits you. Since people are living well many people are living on. They should learn how to do it right and it is an art. I think that I don't understand why when there are 48 million courses in ceramics in all the schools why there isn't a course in how to live alone it really isn't hard to be a terrific if you are you getting this course for under your law. Well no you have to learn it. Or you can have a good time you can have a rotten time it's really up to you you have to fashion it. It's all it's a life and when you learn how to do it then you can you can marry successfully. I think you can have a better marriage when you know how to get along because you know you are your whole person and you can marry and live. You're not really going to be marrying someone to complete you in a sense you are saying I'm complete I'm marrying you I think this is that's one of the reasons why so many women get divorced because I don't

mean you have to. Let her you know. That is that is you know I don't write about. It well because I think that women up to now have all gotten married most of them have gotten married for the wrong reason which is status and catch a man in all this. What about really to have that out of love for that right other person not as look what I've gotten here is my ring and to me and I made a choice and not necessity I think women have been treating men like sex symbols all these years. Right Kind of interesting you say we're live in Sweden now you thought we were and you got is oh you're going to find me a trick a man into marriage or you Shrek Volume 4. Oh come on that's all you. You act like this new you don't act really like areas I want to get any in the way of women has been down addition to the ass's condition but not now. What we should be conditioned we should condition ourselves to be whole people and so I well I'm list whole person and if I LOVE SOMEBODY enough I will live

with that person or I will marry him and I think that if you love a person a lot you will marry him. Why would you marry again her enough certainly but you know I love somebody I know. Yes yes. At first I said No never. And I thought don't. Don't be silly. If it was the right person yes I would. But no other way. When I married and I married very young part of it really was to legitimatize my own sexual needs to my husband too. We married because at that time it was not considered perfectly normal to live with someone you got married if you wanted a sexual relationship and I think it's a really a wonderfully freeing thing and I don't mind saying that I'm glad the world my daughters are growing up in. Even though it's got lots and lots of pitfalls and problems does not have the the rigid

definitions of what is right and wrong for men and women as it didn't when you know when I was growing up because I think that that that was one of the things that that led so many of us into early marriages. MM Yes I think you have to resist. You were surprised when I said sex symbol but at the same at the same time you said that you were waiting for that fat man back and I why not if you're going to write him to come along and what was he supposed to do a little bit and limb for you to take over. Right here I do and all that and you have the little ring and he does all that work and there's your status in your life and your and and you have this down and cushion I suppose that you. Really please want to really want to get married. I want us to live together in the house that was 11 years if you didn't do it what it needed to Marilyn. I got married for funny reasons I got married what I did because we were living together for a while and he didn't like the look of it.

So we got married but I wouldn't have I wouldn't have done it then I would have waited and it was very strange because I want to I needed him there but I didn't want to get commitment if you know that what do you mean you didn't want the commitment I think that you have an affair you should commit yourself whatever you want yes I love it I love the way I hear it and that the problem is I mean it in a you know an affair if someone is if a man and woman are living together it really except for the legality of it what is true is that it becomes very much a marriage I mean after all you do you make commitments. Yes we're going to care about you so much. And so there isn't as much grief as a lot of young people are finding out and breaking up the long term living arrangement as there is is there is a breaking up a marriage presuming there are no children in either case. Well one of their children I'm saying Pat is that if you want to have a good affair let me put it that way. I think you should make a commitment. Just as much of a commitment as though you were married Sure so you might get hurt. So there might be but if you're just going to stand outside the door with one hand on the door knob or something you can't really

expect a good but are you saying that if you when you say you want to know my share you mean mine. You mean if you if you love someone and that someone you want to sleep with as well as be with and talk with and eat with then you should go for broke no you should live together and you should live together and see if you want to get married. Well it's a commitment but that still is without taking the final vow that still is what you call having one hand on the door no I don't know I think. Then why not the absolute marriage but the committee because you don't know. You commit yourself to each other and you say well all right we love each other and I would but you're not always absolutely sure no knots but well do you live to get more if you have an affair for awhile you know very well after six months whether you want to marry that man or not you know whether you want to marry that maybe I am not sure I agree with that right then you know after nine months but you only will know what five years you know I mean I thought looking a little bit off the cemetery thing a little bit I want to go back to you.

If you were going to watch a course for women and being alone what would you include in that course. For one thing I think this is terribly important the aesthetics of living alone. To have a place that you love to come home to and that it's a statically pleasing to you as well. For instance I think that people who are in the poverty level have such a lack of ascetics in their lives that I think that they're there they're suffering a deprivation. And I think that an awful lot of us have no poetry in our lives. No no aesthetic pleasures. And some of us are deprived of it because of certain parts of urban living and others of of us just don't do anything about it I mean I know a girl who comes home from a very good job in the drabness department in the world and you know she has a couple of drinks and bursts into tears.

There's nothing in her refrigerator to get right. This may be because you have taken all these things to be taken out to dinner and she cried or if you have a halfway decent place to live here and you're going to you know not enough self-pity and I don't feel that I went about like eating in restaurants alone. Do you do that. And yes comfortable that some of that Betson are just learn how to do it. That's very uncomfortable for me that's one thing I've always not at home you know how to do it. I call it this terrible business of eating alone clothes I like it. Eating now anything that you do you think oh I don't want to eat you know alone is another story altogether because when you've shopped for more than one for years and all of a sudden you're shopping for one and you're I think you mentioned this in your book. Yes let. Me. And that's when everything got many portions of things because you keep seeing things go moldy in the refrigerator because you're feeding one person and unless you have guests in that you know make things for impromptu. Listen I think the greatest contribution to the women's

emancipation is the freezer. I don't have one way out of that yet I want to write. But I hate it when somebody says well I don't have it. Well you know just keep it on one million dollars. I think that that that you should have certain basic things that are going to make life simple and pleasant but in parts of the book in your book that I read you did mention this that the aesthetics of where you go home to and I kept thinking as I was reading it that's terrific I should be poetry in there should be this this lovely sense of color and music. But what if your apartment is very tiny. Well move. What's wrong with it. I mean you know you don't want to just mention freezer that it was a request of someone not a builder and say What have you what how the monetary OK I think things are I mean the upper part of the refrigerator. I know that so many things. I mean when you say for children and you have maybe $300 money coming in and all you can do is get work as a waitress because you've had no training and what you're concerned about and stay awake at night thinking about is how you're going to pay the bills not whether or not you can buy.

I have to interrupt you can paint a room carried our time is up. I'm really sorry because this has been very enjoyable. Good night from women. And we'll see you again next week.