Hello beloved readers,

Have you heard about the 1926 self-help pamphlet that promises to teach you how to make your dreams come true? Published anonymously, “It Works” took the world by storm, never went out of print, and has sold over 1.5 million dollars. Read about it here.

If you know another human seeking ways to live a more conscious life but doesn’t know where or how to start, please share this newsletter with them so they know they have options and are not alone.

xx, Amanda

Despite the nearly 30K subscribers, How to Live is struggling to fund itself and needs your support to succeed.

If every person actually reading this (who can afford to) gives at least $3 a month ($36 / year) I can continue to build this vital community and reach my goal of filling the yawning gap in the mental health space that lacks one FREE, searchable, central place for people to find answers, options, tools, insights, wisdom, and psychological knowledge that offers them new ways to move forward.

And for those of you who are regular donors, THANK YOU. You are making a difference.

THIS WEEK’S REC IS…YOU ARE NOT ALONE MURALS.

Rec Qualifications: If something enhances my life, or I think it might enhance yours.

A QUICK SHOUT-OUT before we start. I like to send people to the newsletters that I read and learn from. I won’t do this every week, but I’d love to send you to The Psychology of Business written by Brandon A. Griffin. Pieces are short and informative, like this one on Balancing Work-Life Balance. I’m a sucker for understanding the psychology of, well, everything! And that includes business.

If you subscribe, he asks for your Twitter handle to shout you out online. This is a genius move, and I am stealing it. See, I learned something JUST FROM HIS WELCOME LETTER! Subscribe here.

What Happens When the One-Size-Fits-All Life Doesn’t Fit?

Last weekend, I met up with someone I hadn’t seen since I was 13.

We had a lovely time catching up. He reminded me of the last time we saw each other, which I didn’t remember. Apparently, when we were 13, we ran into each other on the street. He said I was with a much older man who, my friend remembers, “looked like a black gay fashion icon.” That sounds about right.

The fashion icon and I took my friend to the Scrapbar on MacDougal Street where we drank beer and sang along to the jukebox.

After laughing about that, and other memories from our youth, he filled me in on his life.

He was honest in a way I find rare. He was open about how difficult raising children was for him, and how marriage was incredibly taxing. Yet, despite all their unconventional methods to stay together, when they thought they wouldn’t last, somehow he and his wife had made their life work.

Then he asked me the question that everyone asks me, but because I was not expecting it from someone who had just been so open about the hardships of conventional life, it caught me off-guard.

“So, tell me. Why didn’t you ever get married?”

For the first time, instead of explaining, or feeling the need to justify my life, I asked him a question:

“Why did you get married?”

“I don’t know, it’s just what people do,” he said.

The thing about me is that I’ve never succeeded at doing “What people do.”

I’ve tried, but I’ve failed at living life according to those conventional heterosexual markers, and common rites of passage. Many people follow the course of doing “what people do” without ever questioning whether this ready-made formula is the life they actually want, assuming it is the path of least resistance. But when you live according to society’s prescribed notions of what a proper life looks like, is it really easier?

The one-size-fits-all model of life doesn’t fit a lot of people. I’m one of those people.

It’s hard to live in a world as a never-married, child-free woman. This world rewards couples and families and mistreats people like me. When I have a boyfriend, I’m invited to dinner parties, barbecues, cocktail parties, and other sorts of couple-y affairs. When I’m single, I’m suddenly … not. This is something I’ve talked about with other single people, wondering if perhaps it was just me—maybe I’m more likable when I’m partnered? But, nope, this happens to them also. It’s truly bizarre.

I’m happier alone than when I’m trying to make a relationship work with someone who isn’t right for me. I’m not built for that kind of discomfort. It’s healthier for me to be alone than fake it til I make it and settle for someone, just to fit in.

A day after that meeting with my old friend, I was walking to another friend’s house, feeling ashamed that I have to answer for the life that I have, as though I have somehow broken a promise and defied people for not living the life I was supposed to live.

It’s easy to fall prey to self-mockery. We are socialized to do this, and while I was not a good student in school, I’ve been an excellent student at absorbing the fact that by society’s standards, I am not living a “real life.”

I was annoyed with myself for succumbing to a feeling I thought I’d moved past. I remembered learning about the “sad” 18th- and 19th-century “spinsters” who were decades younger than me and who were ostracized by their communities for being unmarried and child-free. When we look back now, it’s so clear that they were actually bucking the norms, rebelling against convention and conformity. Whether or not it was intentional, they were revolutionaries—pitied then, and celebrated now.

And that’s when it hit me.

When others look back on this time and see middle-aged women who are single and child-free, we might also be seen as revolutionaries. Perhaps in the future, after I’m long gone, women like me will be celebrated, looked up to, and heralded.

So why not just think of myself from that perspective, instead of the way society has not so subtly conditioned me to think about myself?

When I got to my friend’s house, I was so excited about my revolutionary revelation that I told her my epiphany the second I sat down.

Her face lit up, and she said, “Fuck, yes. I want to be a revolutionary.”

And so we are.

And if you are in a similar situation, then so are you.

What’s your take on all this? Let me know in the comments.

Amanda

📬️ Email me if you have questions, comments, or topic ideas! [email protected]

💋 Don't keep How to Live a secret: This newsletter is written for everyone interested in psychology and the art of living.

👉 Share the email with friends.