Never Utter These Three Phrases To A Single Woman Over 40
When someone tells you to “step outside your comfort zone because you never know” in your 40's, you simply never speak to them again. PLUS: Stealthing and a hiring update sort of.
Hi Girls (in the all-genders highest-compliment-ever sense)!
I gave a little speech last night at Columbia University* and was talking about the importance of all-out honesty with you. So I asked what I should do for this intro today because typically these intros are love stories about how close I get with each writer during the editing process, but this one is more complicated than that. I was encouraged by these smart educated people to continue to tell the whole truth, so here it is.
To set the scene, Shani (as she will tell you in her much more interesting and funny writing below) and I started DMing on Instagram after I found out that she had been a contributor to my last defunct publication xoJane (as opposed to my three, count ‘em, prior defunct publications: Sassy magazine [1988-1996, not including the anti-Sassy years after it was taken over by the owners of ‘Teen magazine], Jane magazine [1997-2006, including the years when it was called Jane but no one with that name was working on it], and let's not forget equally defunct Dirt magazine – the Sassy for boys edited by Mark Lewman, Andy Jenkins and Spike Jonze briefly back in the 90s).
I was so so so excited that Shani was willing to write for me again and she sent me so many ideas that all were so absolutely fantastic that it was hard to pick one. This rekindled romance was going really really well! I chose for her to revive a hilarious and popular piece she wrote for xoJane called “Stuff Not To Say To Your Single 30-Something Friend.” I love when things come full circle, don’t you?
Shani quickly submitted her story and I quickly loved it and told her so and we got pictures and captions and all of that organized. As you all know, things have been super busy here for me – which is one of the reasons I need to hire one of you and will so soon, thank goddess. This was back in April and that’s when things got rockier.
I never ever mean to ghost anybody. Though, to be clear, a few years ago I did fail to return my fairly long-term (for me, anyway) boyfriend’s phone calls and texts for what turned into a year (I was busy) and was flabbergasted when I was thinking about getting back in touch with him and saw that he had married someone else. Harumph.
Anyway, I was so happy with the story (still am!) and slated it to run. But I was so overwhelmed and backlogged that our publishing schedule meant that about two months went by. Shani reached out to me. There was some tension, let's say. Understandably. So I wanted to ensure that this tiff didn’t become a full-blown split and told her the story would run in July. And here it is. And I think and hope that honoring my promise by publishing it now and making amends puts our longterm relationship back on track because I love her writing and she is one of the funniest people I know. Thanks for your forgiveness if I have it, Shani! Let’s all now tell our own stories in the comments about stuff that’s been said to us at our ages that we can’t stand, as Shani does so well here (that time-tested make-up trick of turning both of your anger onto someone else - it works, right?).
I love you and thanks for bearing with me. You all are so great.
Jane
P.S. Thanks to that Platner guy, I now not only know what stealthing is but that it is common enough to have that name and illegal in California (and hopefully other states soon). Thanks?
*Let’s at some point ponder why my own alma mater Oberlin has never once asked me to come back and speak there. There are many valid potential reasons - like taking 18 shots of Bacardi 151 on my 18th birthday and then throwing up all over their cafeteria or that experimental semester when I made the stance to not study at all to see what I actually naturally retained and the answer was nothing at all. Anyway, I want to talk there so if you go to Oberlin, tell them to please invite me.
And now, over to more important stuff from Shani!
By Shani Silver
If you read AJPT, there’s a solid chance you read XOJANE. If you read XOJANE, there’s a flea’s chance in the ocean that you remember my name. Thirteen years ago, I wrote “Stuff Not To Say To Your Single 30-Something Friend” for Jane Pratt. Everything has changed since then except my relationship status and my willingness to share too much on the internet. Therefore I give you: “Stuff Not To Say To Your Single 40-Something Friend.” I’ve missed you.
“You Never Know.”
Being single in your 40s is very different from being single in your 30s. I want to make it clear that hope for love and openness to romantic connection do not fade as a result of age alone. But by god motivation to participate in the fruitlessness of dating culture sure does. In your 30s you still have the delusional energy it takes to put on clothing and makeup for a first date with a stranger even after you’ve already done that four times this month and have nothing but disappointment and therapy visits to show for it. You just keep going and going thinking that surely one day your efforts will be rewarded, because that’s how life is supposed to work. A decade later and you’ll learn that nothing works the way you think it does, least of all dating. In your 40s you know the difference between a new connection that’s got juice, and all the other ways modern dating culture is a fucking waste of your time.
In your 30s, You haven’t found your rage yet for the phrase, “you never know.” I can assure you that in your 40s, it’ll show up. You’ll stop thinking that you have to give literally any man who exists a chance because “you never know.” You’ll stop thinking that if you don’t agree with your friends when they say “You never knooooowwwwww!” they’ll shame and blame you by calling you “jaded.” As if they wouldn’t be “jaded” too if they hadn’t married the barely cute guy they hooked up with while shitfaced senior year of college. Or they’ll blame you for your own singlehood because you dare to know what you like and you have the audacity to reject what you don’t like. Typically we only let men get away with that behavior. In your 40s, when someone tells you to “step outside your comfort zone because you never know,” you simply never speak to them again.
“Omg I could never date nowadays, I don’t know how you do it.”
You’re right, Rachel. You couldn’t do it. You couldn’t withstand it. Ten minutes on a dating app and most partnered women would throw their phone into the sea. Dating is as bad as you think it is, probably worse, because the dating industry built an ungoverned world where anyone can say and do whatever they want to anyone, free from consequences apart from a block button; all under the guise of finding a romantic partner. There’s no way they’d have been able to bait this many people into their web otherwise. Then they put actual human connection behind a paywall, and gathered enough data on everyone to keep us intentionally separate from good matches on purpose. Babe, that’s what they’re doing. When two people find love on a dating app, that registers as an algorithmic failure in a boardroom. Think about that the next time you want to blame your lack of matches on your profile photos.
Offline, we’re dealing with invisibility, because men our age still think they can pull 26-year-olds, even with those hairlines and child support payments they’re sporting. They’re fresh out of marriages that ended because they cheated but all they’ll ever say to us is that their ex wife is “crazy.” And that’s assuming we ever come into contact with human men at all. Straight men in their 40s are either married and their social calendar is 100% reliant on their wives, or they’re not married and they literally don’t know how to leave the house. When we go out, it’s all women, everywhere we go—and in your 40s you stop complaining about that. Go out to a bar tonight. Count the number of men who aren’t there with a woman. It won’t take long. “You could never date nowadays” because dating doesn’t exist if only one gender can be found in the wild. Telling your 40-something friend you couldn’t handle dating right now is just a glaring reminder that you don’t have to, but if we want companionship, we do. You’re not paying us a compliment for withstanding a firehose of bullshit, you’re reminding us that you get to stand entirely out of the way.
“You’re so lucky you’re single.”
If you have a spouse and you want to say this to a single person, either get a divorce or keep quiet. We don’t want to hear how envious you are of our way of life when you have absolutely no intention of living it. This is a polite society way to say “I hate my husband” without any pressure to do something about it.
No, women in our 40s are not pining for relationships with men. The general sentiment for our age bracket is that we’re “open to the right relationship” if it comes along, but we’re not settling, hell no. We’ve come too far for that. There are many of us who feel this way, but we also never meet anybody, so hearing that you did meet somebody and you don’t want him anymore but you also don’t want to leave him—where does that leave us? Where does that leave your 40-something friend who is “so lucky” she’s single but also you don’t want to be like her? It leaves her feeling insulted, because you’re not really saying that she’s lucky. You’re saying you’re miserable and hoping we’ll let you vent about the thing you got that we didn’t. Nah.
We are lucky. Women who are single and never married in our 40s (we exist by the way, women in their 40s aren’t exclusively reinventing themselves post-divorce), we are extremely lucky that we’ve been single this entire time, growing wiser and hotter every day. We’ve statistically and literally avoided so much strife and so many divorce attorney’s fees, “lucky” feels like a mild way to put it. But it’s never said that way, is it? It’s never said in celebration of singles, it’s always said in complaint of marriage. So don’t say it to us, but maybe say it to your spouse. Unless you’re afraid to, in which case, what are you afraid of? Becoming single again? But I thought you said singles are so lucky?
If you tell me I’m lucky I’m single at 43 I have only one response for you, and it’s not going to involve listening to you complain about your husband for half an hour and then forgetting everything you just said the moment he walks in the room. I’m so lucky I’m single? Yeah babe. You’re right.
Also: If you liked this essay as much as I did, Shani Silver’s new book, What If We Never Get Married? A Happily Ever Answer, is available now.