The Flowers I Bought

There is a beautiful vase of flowers on my little kitchen table tonight, which I bought for myself. This is not a sad thing.

I didn’t buy them because no one else would. I bought them because I saw them, liked them, brought them home, cut the stems and put them in the blue vase that I already owned. Now they’re sitting in a house that is peaceful, comfortable and entirely mine.

And lately, I keep having conversations with women who have reached some version of the same conclusion:

Maybe we don’t actually want to live with men anymore.

Not necessarily because we don’t like men. Not because we’ve all sworn off dating or sex or companionship. Quite a few of us would still very much like to meet someone.

We just don’t necessarily want him in the house.

There is a surprisingly large contingent of women I know who would happily create some kind of slightly feral middle-aged-woman commune instead. Separate bedrooms. Good coffee. Dogs and horses everywhere. Someone who remembers when the trash goes out. Somebody else who notices the porch light burned out and simply changes the bulb instead of announcing it like a gold star should be produced for the effort.

Things would get done.

This may be one of the least-discussed developments in modern dating: a lot of women have discovered that being alone is actually pretty nice.

Once you figure out how to support yourself, fix enough things, hire someone for the things you can’t fix, and build a life that belongs to you, the calculation changes.

A relationship is no longer competing with loneliness.

It is competing with peace, and that is a much higher bar.

My house is quiet when I want it quiet. My dogs are here. My things are where I left them. I can light a candle, put music on, work on something I care about, teach flute lessons, write, make dinner or eat crackers standing over the kitchen sink.

There is no emotional weather system moving through the house that I have to monitor.

On that note, if a man asks me to dinner, I would like him to pay.

I realize this is controversial now.

But please understand the economic model.

You are not competing with another man.

You are competing with me staying home.

I already have food here. Good food, actually. I do not need transportation to my own living room. There is no wait for a table. I can wear sweatpants. The dogs are excellent company, and none of them will spend forty-five minutes explaining cryptocurrency to me.

Going out requires showering, hair, makeup, clothing decisions, driving somewhere, parking somewhere, making conversation with a stranger and temporarily abandoning what has become an extraordinarily pleasant little ecosystem.

Dinner is not compensation for my time.

But it does demonstrate something increasingly important to me:

effort.

Because the problem is not that women have become too independent.

The problem may be that a whole lot of us became independent and then discovered how peaceful life could be.

And some men have not adjusted to the new competition.

For generations, men didn’t necessarily have to be more appealing than a woman’s solitude. Marriage could mean financial security, social legitimacy, housing, children and access to an entire structure of life that was difficult for women to build independently.

That bargain has changed.

Now I can own the house.

I can have the career.

I can build the business.

I can make the reservation.

I can take the trip.

I can buy the flowers.

So what exactly are you bringing into my life?

I don’t mean money, although I am long past pretending that competence and financial stability aren’t attractive.

I mean: Are you kind? Are you interesting? Do you make my life bigger rather than smaller? Can I trust you? Can we laugh? Can we talk about things that matter? Will you notice when something needs to be done and just do it? Can you exist beside a capable woman without treating her competence as either a threat or a convenient excuse to contribute nothing?

Because women are talking to each other.

And quite a few of us are realizing we would rather build community with one another than accept relationships that require us to trade peace for companionship.

Maybe that looks like neighboring houses. Maybe it looks like a big old farmhouse someday, with gardens and dogs and somebody yelling from the porch that she made too much soup again.

Maybe the men visit.

I’m kidding.

Mostly.

I still believe there are good men. I still want love. I still like the idea of having someone sitting across from me at dinner who knows me deeply and chooses me anyway.

But I no longer think a relationship is automatically an improvement over being alone.

It has to actually be better.

And if not?

That’s fine.

I know where the florist is.

P.S. – I fully acknowledge and support the men who would also prefer to live platonically with other men, for their own reasons (built in fishing buddy, buy a boat together, maybe NOT be dragged into conversations where feelings are discussed).