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From: hxe@rayssd.UUCP (Heather Emanuel)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: Re: Living alone
Message-ID: <1064@rayssd.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 16-Sep-85 13:10:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: rayssd.1064
Posted: Mon Sep 16 13:10:08 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 18-Sep-85 03:30:45 EDT
References: <1296@hound.UUCP> <5290001@acf4.UUCP>
Sender: hxe@rayssd.UUCP (Heather Emanuel @ Raytheon Co., Portsmouth RI)
Organization: Raytheon Co., Portsmouth RI
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[Bill Ingogly]:
> > You choose loaded words, Andy. Why "self-indulgent" and "intolerant?"
> > What does a lack of another person under my roof have to do with my
> > ability to relate to other people and care for them?
> > .......

[Andy]:
> My original posting generated more mail than I ever would have
> imagined possible. I never said that the mere fact of living alone
> automatically made you intolerant and self-indulgent, I merely
> suggested that it was a possibility. As for choosing life-styles, I
> am living alone right now, and I like it. But to get back to the
> original query that started the whole mess, my long-range goal is to
> enter into a permanent sharing of my life with someone else....
> 
> ...Why is everyone so defensive about my suggestion that living alone
> *might* make you a little less tolerant????

I'm surprised that I haven't seen one posting supporting Andy's
claim that living alone makes you less tolerant and more self
indulgent.  (Of course, I just got back from vacation and I'm
catching up on hundreds of articles and maybe I haven't gotten that
far yet.)  Amongst all my friends and acquaintances this is a
Univeral Truth, and it's not necessarily negative.  Maybe it's just
the words Andy used that set people off.

Of *course* living alone with no one to answer to but yourself puts
you in the habit of expecting things to be done "your way" - how
*else* would they be done, your cat's way?  (In my case, yes...)
And of course you get used to being able to do what you want when
you want.  Who's going to tell you not to?  I think it's these things
that led Andy to the words "intolerant" and "self indulgent."

No one's saying that you're incapable of putting up with anyone else
or that you'll always do what you want first, but habits are habits.
I've often said that, in some ways, the girls I knew who got married
right out of their parents' homes had an easier time adjusting
because they never knew anything else.  [Note: I don't agree with
getting married right out of your parents' home and this is not what
we're discussing anyway, so please don't flame me.]

To qualify this statement, let me say that I have lived with
roommates, alone, and with SOs, and I like living alone probably
best.  I have found that my major fault in living with my XSO was
due to the fact that I had lived alone for three years previously
and I wasn't in the habit of compromising at home.  No, I wasn't
intolerable, I just had to think about things that should have been
instinctual, and "sharing" some things was hard to do.  I eventually
got back in the habit of living with someone else and then we broke
up for different reasons.  So now I'm back to sharing an apartment
with a roommate, both to keep in the habit of living with someone
and to share expenses.  (Actually, he's the ideal roommate - he
works nights and is asleep when I get up in the morning; I work days
and am asleep when he gets home at night; we communicate via notes
and occasional telephone calls at work and we see each other maybe
once a week.)

Well, anyway, Andy, *I* agree with you!

-- 
--Heather Emanuel {allegra, decvax!brunix, linus, raybed2} rayssd!hxe
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"Ain't life a brook...
 Sometimes I feel just like a polished stone"  -Ferron