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    Single & Happy: The Party of Ones
    Single & Happy: The Party of Ones
    Single & Happy: The Party of Ones
    Ebook87 pages1 hour

    Single & Happy: The Party of Ones

    By Joshunda Sanders

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    About this ebook

    Single & Happy: The Party of Ones is a manifesto and online dating memoir meant to inspire those who might be considered Single at Heart to celebrate themselves before they try to jump into a relationship. For years, unmarried black women have been targeted for judgment and scrutiny by Steve Harvey, the New York Times and dozens of media outlets suggesting that the number of unmarried black women must mean there is something wrong with us. Since there was such a vested interest in her marital status, J. Victoria Sanders tried to follow some of the advice offered in Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man, The Rules and He's Just Not That Into You. For two years, she tried online dating only to strike out again and again before finally realizing that she should stop subjecting herself to World of Warcraft addicts and learn how to love and celebrate herself first.
    Single & Happy is an exploration of what it means to be alone and content and the usefulness of solitude and friendship for the modern single woman. It's a necessary balance to the unnatural focus media outlets have focused on single black women as symbols of the undesirability and perils of female success and achievement.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJoshunda Sanders
    Release dateJan 2, 2013
    ISBN9780988696907
    Single & Happy: The Party of Ones

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      Book preview

      Single & Happy - Joshunda Sanders

      Single & Happy: The Party of Ones

      By J. Victoria Sanders

      Single & Happy: The Party of Ones

      By J. Victoria Sanders

      Copyright 2013 Joshunda Victoria Sanders

      Smashwords Edition

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thanks for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Disclaimer: Why is a single black woman writer writing this book?

      The historical context of (some) black families and marriage, a brief overview

      The dating game & All the Books: The beginning of being single and miserable

      Is it impossible to be single and happy?

      The Great Dating Adventures, Part 1

      Learning to Date Myself and Acknowledging the challenges of single life in the

      21st Century

      The importance of being a friend…to yourself

      Remember that everyone was single at some point and may be again

      Enjoy the journey

      Acknowledgments

      Disclaimer: Why is a single black woman writer writing this book?

      At 34, I had finished three full and seven half marathons. I’d been teaching journalism at the University of Texas as a lecturer for four semesters. I’d dreamed of being a writer for over twenty years, and persevered for long enough that I worked full-time as a newspaper reporter in some of America’s most scenic cities: San Francisco, Seattle and Houston (well, OK, now I live in Austin, which is much prettier than Houston).

      I owned a home – a huge feat for a girl who had frequented New York City homeless shelters as a child -- a beautiful dog the size of a mini-pony; a reliable car some jerk dented with one of those metal carts at Home Depot and a spectacular bill of health from doctors. After years of therapy for having financial issues, control issues, addiction issues and general issues, by the time I reached my mid-thirties, when my therapist said I was the most mentally healthy person she knew, I finally believed her. I had a rich network of friends that respected my work and writing and emailed me dispatches from Mexico, Barcelona and Egypt.

      We are each defined by the people in our lives; they are mirrors for us. I am probably unnaturally devoted to my friends because so many of them have acted as surrogates for family over the years. I am also a single American.

      Why are you still single?

      That question has always grated my nerves, but it’s only gotten worse as the years have gone by. It is what I like to call a backhanded compliment. A guy I met recently called it a slap kiss. It’s meant to flatter you as in, "Why are you still single when crazy-as-a-fun house Becky got engaged six months ago?"

      Before I conducted any research or noticed that this question reflected a cultural and social problem and before I knew there were over 100 million other single Americans who probably shared my pain, I simply answered this question with the truth: I don’t know.

      But the question implied that there was something wrong with not knowing and not caring that I didn’t have an answer. The ones that came to mind seemed to lead to more questions: I love relationships. I have good credit. I can cook. I am easy on the eyes of some beholders.

      Sometimes the answer was different. I don’t want to be in a relationship. Relationships are hard, unpaid labor. It’s like having homework every day. It’s the mirror thing – the best relationships and even the awful ones force you to look at yourself and all your stuff.

      The truth, more often, was more nuanced than any one answer. Dating, as I will write about here, is like everything else in the world that the Internet supposedly screwed up – incredibly rich with potential and instruction, but totally, incredibly time-consuming and randomly ludicrous.

      I could not believe no one had written a first-person account of dating as a single woman in the 21st Century and how to cope with all the shenanigans that come with the package, because no matter how brilliant, sexy, big-boobed, erudite or compliant with societal norms a woman is or is not, it is really rough out there for single people. The insinuation that singles should be coupled or something is wrong with them doesn't make it any easier.

      Not just a little bit rough, honey. It is incredibly hard to find like-minded people with true commitments to self-awareness and goals that are scheduled beyond a calendar date in the next couple of weeks. There are books on weight-loss, getting your money right, being more devoted to God, and, of course, how to get a man. What I really needed for a good decade, though, was a book on how to be single and happy.

      The book I wanted to read and kept waiting for was one that would inspire other single people slogging through the ridiculous maze that comes with being alone in a culture that devalues single people.  I wanted to create a blog for others who are uncomfortable with the dominant cultural narrative in the United States that continues to make money telling singles that we are incomplete, not enough, not worthy and somehow sexually immoral if we are content to live, travel, dine and go to the movies by ourselves.

      I’m not interested in being the anti-Steve Harvey, the new Oprah or any kind of New Age guru, relationship expert or life coach. I am just one nerd in a big world who does the best that I can to make sense of an influx of information, social cues and the crap that comes up in daily life. The narrative that casts single people are the avatars of loneliness, as Michael Cobb wrote in his 2012 book, Single: Arguments for the Uncoupled, just happened to get stuck in my craw as I was making a lot of transitions in my life. As other journalists will tell you, sometimes you can’t just let a story go.

      My motto is to take what is useful and leave the rest. I hope that the information here will be applicable to singles across gender identities, sexualities, ethnicities and economic backgrounds. My intention is to celebrate and document the moment we are all in. While I realize I bring my own biases to this predicament as someone who was self-reliant and a loner since I was very young, I wholeheartedly believe there is something valuable here for most dating adults.

      And we are a huge tribe. In 2010, almost half of all American adults, 100 million, were single – the

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