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9

Zeitgeist | Imaginary Bitches (A Review)

Aug 28, 2009 - Written by Deborah Hymes  |  Filed under: Dating, Friendship, Movies, Pop Culture, Relationships, Single Life, Video

ib-poster Choosing to remain single in a coupled world is sometimes a lonely gig, never more so than when all of your close friends are smugly cocooned in their couple-bubbles. It can make you feel like the last single person on Earth.

As once-single friends morph into couples, it often becomes irritatingly apparent that they no longer understand the challenges or  perspectives of singledom. You sometimes feel like hitting them over the head, yet you still love them and yearn for common ground to maintain your friendships. This painful conflict is played out to hilarious effect in the engaging Web series Imaginary Bitches.

Eden is the last single girl in her circle of friends, refusing to compromise her standards simply to have a boyfriend. After an amazing date with a guy she really likes, Eden calls each of her friends to share her exciting news, but they’re only interested in talking about their relationships. Increasingly dispirited with each aborted call, Eden discovers, to her astonishment, that she has conjured an imaginary friend named Catherine—a friend who’s avidly interested in discussing all the details of Eden’s date.

But Catherine proves to be less a “friend” than a total bitch, with something nasty to say about Eden and all of her real girlfriends. That’s right, Eden herself is not exempt from Catherine’s bitchiness. Furthermore, Catherine is soon joined by a second imaginary bitch named Heather. The imaginary bitches quickly establish their presence in all of Eden’s relationships, leaving her to deal with the fallout even as they help her sort out her friendships and her love life.

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5

Dear QuirkyAlone: How do I make new friends?

Aug 24, 2009 - Written by Onely  |  Filed under: Friendship, Personal Growth, Single Life

“Dear Quirkyalone: Advice for QuirkyLiving” is a weekly guest column by the authors of the brilliant blog Onely. It appears every Monday. When you’re making up your own road map for (quirky)living, you need thoughtful advice. We’re here for you. Quirkyalone and Onely welcome your questions; send them on to onely AT onely.org.

Dear Quirkyalone,

Many of my friends are having children, and this is putting pressure on our friendships.  Not only do they have next-to-no time to catch up, but all our conversation centres on their children. So it’s time to find new friends –but this is proving really really difficult.  Can you talk about the phenomenon of having very few friends and where and how to make new friends (either single or childfree friends)? Thanks.

–Singal (in Australia)

Dear Singal,

I think many readers will identify with your problem. But before I answer your question, let me offer some annoying unsolicited advice: don’t give up on your friends right away. Friendship is about weathering life changes together. It’s normal for people–especially Quirkyalones or Quirkytogethers–to develop different goals and interests through life (would you want to be friends with them if they didn’t?). Consider yourself lucky that your friends are not taking up B.A.S.E. jumping (or something more terrifying, like scrapbooking). Some relationships can survive such shifts in interests, and others can’t.  In any friendship, one person will sometimes tax the other’s patience–think of vacation slideshows. But when a friend really hurts or neglects you, try to decide what would be least stressful: abandoning the friendship, or taking action to fix it–whether through a frank talk with your friend, a simple apology, a monetary stimulus, interpretive dance, whatever. Use this handy formula:

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18

Why Do People Stay In Bad Relationships?

Aug 17, 2009 - Written by Onely  |  Filed under: Relationships

“Dear Quirkyalone: Advice for QuirkyLiving” is a weekly guest column by the authors of the brilliant blog Onely. It appears every Monday. When you’re making up your own road map for (quirky)living, you need thoughtful advice. We’re here for you. We welcome your questions; send them on to onely AT onely.org.

Dear Quirkyalone,

When a woman is in a relationship with a guy who everyone else can see is treating her badly, what goes on in the woman’s mind that prevents her from seeing these very same things? How does she qualify staying with this guy and why? What’s behind the excuses she makes for him?– Bobby

Hi Bobby,

This is an excellent question indeed. While I can’t claim to be able to speak for the woman in question, I can offer a few theories (which, as a side note, could be applied to either men or women, as well as lesbians and gay men):

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15

Zeitgeist | Defending Marriage . . . and Singledom

Aug 13, 2009 - Written by Deborah Hymes  |  Filed under: Pop Culture, Quirkytogether, Relationships, Single Life

happiness-buttons-worldmeganYou’d think it was the first time anyone’s ever gotten a divorce.

Sandra Tsing Loh’s recent admission in The Atlantic that she’s divorcing her husband after 20 years (following her own extramarital affair) has ignited a firestorm of high-minded controversy debating the pros and cons of marriage. The story was picked up nationally, with nearly all the major news outlets chiming in online, on air and in print.

The particular point of contention is Ms. Loh’s theory that perhaps the reason we have a divorce culture is because we marry too often. Citing “all the abject and swallowed misery” she observes in modern marriage, she wonders, “Why do we still insist on marriage?”

Then she really gets down to it, ending her polemic with a

“final piece of advice: avoid marriage—or you too may suffer the emotional pain, the humiliation, and the logistical difficulty, not to mention the expense, of breaking up a long-term union at midlife for something as demonstrably fleeting as love.”

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    Deborah Hymes

    Website: http://writervixen.com
    Email: Contact Author
    Bio: I'm an occasional contributor to Zeitgeist: Quirkyalone Pop Culture. Zeitgeist explores how pop culture reflects us back to ourselves—in ways funny, interesting, frivolous and profound. I’m a committed quirkyalone and a pop culture addict who should probably be committed. Pop culture is my hometown, the street where I live, the air that I breathe. It’s where new ideas, fascinating people, trends, and innovation, meet the movies I love (new and classic), the TV I watch (from 30 Rock to Weeds), the Internet I haunt (from Perez Hilton to Salon), and the pile of magazines I read regularly (from The Atlantic to Wired to New York magazine). Professionally, I'm a storyteller, media maven and entrepreneur—the owner of WanderNot, Inc., a Bay Area creative communications company. I also write personal essays, feature articles and profiles, as well as the weekly blog Writer Vixen Explains It All. Quirkyalone Status: Currently happily single and happily open to quirkytogetherness.

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    Onely

    Website: http://onely.org
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    Bio: Onely is a blog that deconstructs stereotypes of singlehood. It's for singles who enjoy being single but remain open to a variety of romantic relationships, either for themselves or for others. Onely comprises two people: Lisa and Christina. Christina has an MA in English and an MFA in creative writing, but she still struggles with her participles and a tendency toward semicolon abuse. She has bravely persevered against these obstacles in her work as one-half of the Onely writing team. For most of her thirty-odd years she has been Quirkyalone, but she also has experience as a Quirkytogether, a Lonelyalone, and--most terrifying--a Lonelytogether. Currently she is contentedly single, balancing a left-brained day job that feeds her cat with right-brained writing projects that feed her soul. In Dear Quirkyalone, she hopes to share her lessons learned with other readers who want to understand and embrace Quirkyliving. The secret? Always listen to Lisa. Lisa has an MFA in creative writing and is about halfway through a doctoral program in Rhetoric and Composition. She loves writing about singles issues on Onely because it gives her a break from what she writes in “real life,” and she loves giving advice on QA because – as most academics do – she thinks she’s always right. Lisa owns a dog named Kitty, loves Judith Butler and Michel Foucault, and undertakes long road/camping trips as often as possible. She apologizes in advance for her language taking “academic” (not to be confused with “epic”) proportions, and advises readers first and foremost to always heed Christina’s advice.

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    Elline Lipkin

    Website: http://www.korepress.org/bios/lipkin.htm
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    Bio: Elline Lipkin grew up in Miami, FL, and attended Wesleyan University. She received her MFA from Columbia University in 1994 and her Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston in 2003. She has worked as an editor in both New York City and in Paris. Her book about Girls' Studies is forthcoming from Seal Press in the fall of 2009. Elline has written about online dating and the mating game for Salon.com. Elline is also a recently married quirkytogether, a fact that she considers "a miracle."