Going Solo

We fell in love once, and it didn’t work. We fell in love twice, and it didn’t work. Once that happened, you had experience. And once you had experience, the whole myth of romantic love as salvation came to an end.”

Edward Gibbon: “‘Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius; and the uniformity of a work denotes the hand of a single artist.’”

It’s in Genesis, when God, concerned about the potential power of a unified human community, “confounds” the language shared among residents in the Tower of Babel, leaving them unable to communicate or understand each other. It’s in Plato’s Symposium, when Aristophanes explains that Zeus, who also feared the power of a united human species, split us in half. Before then, the story goes, every person had four arms, four legs, and a two-sided face, with integrated male and female qualities. Now each of us is an incomplete individual, condemned to feel alone unless we find the companion who makes us whole.

SINKS [single income, no kids]

DINKS—dual income, no kids

Ava had been in a relationship with Jason, who had been trying to persuade her to marry him, yet she broke things off when his health began to fail—not to be heartless, but because she didn’t want to become his caretaker as things spiraled downward.

Kathleen McGarry, a UCLA economist quoted in the New York Times story “They Don’t Want to Live with You, Either,” put it, “When they have more income and they have a choice of how to live, they choose to live alone. They buy their independence.”7

The modern marriage, he writes, “becomes more and more a relationship initiated for, and kept going for as long as, it delivers emotional satisfaction to be derived from close contact with another.”29

Hefner surrounded himself with “bunnies,” first in a Chicago apartment and eventually in the famous Los Angeles mansion, and he took on several lovers at a time. His policy was always straightforward: Women could visit, spend a night or many more. But they shouldn’t get too comfortable, seek emotional commitment, or expect him to settle down. His bed may have been open, but in the end it was his alone.

According to monastic teachings, separating from society is the most powerful way to get closer to the divine.