Turn Down the Volume

In "Which End Is Up?", Jack the Super comments to Mariel that he thinks it's strange that women pay someone else to help them figure out what they want. Mariel points out, "We're bombarded all day long with ads telling us what we should want, it's hard to tell the difference after awhile."

By Sherri Rifkin

For me, it's not just those insidious diamond engagement ring ads that try to convince me of what I should want but also many people who have taken a different path than I have chosen-slash-taken, a.k.a. married people. Some of them (my accountant most recently) question why I haven't gotten married, as if it's something I could just decide to do, like taking cooking lessons. In their minds, something must be "wrong" in the world if a great woman like me isn't married.

Huh?

If I'm happy with my life (and I am more than I've ever been) why should they care whether I'm married, in a relationship, a mother...or not? Does it somehow validate what they've decided to do with their lives if I and all the other Beyoncé-loving "single ladies" choose to do the same thing? Or do they get some kind of commission if I join their club?

One of the most memorable and important pieces of advice I ever got was from a friend who is one of those march-to-the-beats-of-their-own-drummer types. She said that just because this or that person followed a more traditional path of marriage and children didn't mean that was the right path for me. In fact, she said, you can create your own path.

We all know that path-creation is possible and for the most part, many of us do it already, usually in other parts of our lives. But when she said that I (anyone, really) can invent my love life any way I wanted it, seemed like big--and really--good news to me.

At a certain point, I think it's really useful to shut out all of the external noise (the ad industry, romantic movies, your mother, your dating coach, your shrink) and turn up the internal volume...and listen closely. Because in the end, no one knows better what's right for you than you.

Do you believe that we can create our own romantic paths?