Indipendenza: għażla sensih?

They defend their right to independence or complain that they are not meeting anyone. What really drives single women? What are the unspoken reasons for long loneliness? There can be a great distance and even conflict between declarations and deep motives. To what extent are “loners” free in their choice? Psychoanalysts share their thoughts on the paradoxes of female psychology.

Carolyn Eliacheff: Our statements often do not match our real desires because many desires are unconscious. And contrary to what many women vehemently defend, those I speak to admit that they would like to live with a partner and have children. Modern women, like men, by the way, talk in terms of couples and hope that one day someone will appear with whom they will find a common language.

Alain Waltier: I agree! People arrange a lonely life for lack of a better one. When a woman leaves a man, she does so because she sees no other solution. But she does not look forward to how she will live alone. She chooses to leave, and the result is loneliness.

K. E.: Yet some women who come to me with a desire to find a partner find in the process of therapy that they are more suited to living alone. Today it is easier for a woman to be alone because she enjoys complete control over the situation. The more independence a woman has, the more control and the harder it is for her to build a relationship with a partner, since this requires the ability to release power. You need to learn to lose something, not even knowing what you will gain in return. And for modern women, the source of joy is control, and not the mutual concessions necessary for living with someone. They had so little control over previous centuries!

AV: Certainly. But in fact, they are influenced by the support of individualism in society and the proclamation of autonomy as a fundamental value. Lonely people are a huge economic force. They sign up for fitness clubs, buy books, go sailing, go to the cinema. Therefore, society is interested in producing singles. But loneliness bears the unconscious, but clear imprint of too strong a connection with the family of the father and mother. And this unconscious connection sometimes does not leave us the freedom to get to know someone or stay close to him. To learn how to live with a partner, you need to go towards something new, that is, make an effort and break away from your family.

K. E.: Yes, it is worth thinking about how the mother’s attitude towards her daughter affects the behavior of the latter in the future. If a mother enters into what I call a platonic incest relationship with her daughter, that is, a relationship that excludes a third person (and the father becomes the first excluded third), then it will subsequently be difficult for the daughter to introduce anyone into her life — a man or a child. Such mothers do not pass on to their daughter either the opportunity to build a family or the ability to motherhood.

AV: I remember a patient who, as a child, was told by her mother, «You are your father’s real daughter!» As she realized during psychoanalysis, this was a reproach, because her birth forced her mother to stay with an unloved man. She also realized the role her mother’s words had played in her loneliness. All her friends found partners, and she was left alone. On the other hand, women are more likely to wonder what kind of adventure this is — modern relationships. When a woman leaves, partners have different futures. This is where sociology comes into play: society is more tolerant of men, and men start new relationships much faster.

K. E.: The unconscious also plays a role. I noticed that when the relationship lasted for many years and then the woman dies, the man starts a new relationship in the next six months. Relatives are outraged: they do not understand that in this way he pays tribute to the relationship that he had before and was pleasant enough for him to quickly have a desire to start new ones. A man is faithful to the idea of ​​a family, while a woman is faithful to the man with whom she lived.

AV: Women are still waiting for a handsome prince, while for men at all times a woman has been a medium of exchange. For him and for her, the physical and mental play a different role. A man searches for a kind of ideal woman by external signs, since male attraction is stimulated mainly by appearance. Doesn’t this mean that for men, women are generally interchangeable?

K. E.: 30 years ago, clients came to a therapist because they couldn’t find someone to live with. Today they come to try and save the relationship. Pairs are formed in the blink of an eye, and therefore it is logical that a significant part of them quickly break up. The real question is how to prolong the relationship. In her youth, the girl leaves her parents, begins to live alone, studies and, if desired, makes lovers. She then builds relationships, has a baby or two, possibly divorces, and is single for a few years. Then she remarries and builds a new family. She may then become a widow, and then she lives alone again. Such is the life of a woman now. Single women do not exist. Especially single men. To live a whole life alone, without a single attempt at a relationship, is something exceptional. And the newspaper headlines “30-year-old beauties, young, smart and single” refer to those who have not yet started a family, but are going to do it, albeit later than their mothers and grandmothers.

AV: Today there are also women who complain that there are no more men left. In fact, they always expect from a partner what he cannot give. They are waiting for love! And I’m not sure that’s what we find in the family. After so many years of practice, I still don’t know what love is, because we say «love winter sports», «love these boots» and «love a person» the same way! Family means connections. And in these connections there is no less aggression than tenderness. Every family goes through a state of cold war and must make a lot of efforts to conclude a truce. It is necessary to avoid projections, that is, attributing to the partner those feelings that you yourself unconsciously experience. Because it’s not far from projecting feelings to throwing real objects. Living together requires learning to sublimate both tenderness and aggression. When we are aware of our feelings and are able to admit that a partner makes us nervous, we will not turn it into a reason for divorce. Women with turbulent relationships and a painful divorce behind them go through suffering in advance, which can be resurrected, and say: «Never again.»

K. E.: It is possible to refuse projections only if we are able to remain alone to a certain extent in our relationships. Regardless of whether we live with someone or alone, it is necessary to be able to be alone. This is what some women cannot stand; for them, the family implies complete unity. “Feeling alone when you live with someone is nothing worse,” they say and choose complete loneliness. Often, they also get the impression that by starting a family, they lose much more than men. Unconsciously, every woman carries the past of all women, especially her mother, and at the same time she lives her life here and now. In fact, it is important for both men and women to be able to ask themselves what you want. These are the decisions we constantly have to make: to have a baby or not? Stay single or live with someone? Stay with your partner or leave him?

AV: We may be living in a time where breaking up is easier to imagine than building a relationship. To create a family, you need to be able to live alone and at the same time together. Society makes us think that the eternal lack of something inherent in the human race can disappear, that we can find complete satisfaction. How then to accept the idea that all life is built alone and at the same time meeting someone like yourself can be worth the effort, since this is a favorable circumstance to learn to live together with another person who has his own characteristics? Building relationships and building ourselves are one and the same thing: it is in close relationship with someone that something is created and honed within us.

K. E.: Provided that we find a worthy partner! Women, for whom the family would mean bondage, have received new opportunities and use them. Often these are gifted women who can afford to devote themselves entirely to achieving social success. They set the tone and allow others who are less gifted to rush into the breach, even if they do not find such advantages there. But in the end, do we choose to live alone or with someone? I think the real question for today’s men and women is to figure out what they can do for themselves in the situation they’re in.