Stevie Nicks is this week’s Single Icon. She has been a musical groundbreaker for decades and her decision to choose music over children made that happen. It was a conscious decision.

Along with her co-lead singer Christine McVie, who made the same decision, Nicks noted how the men in the band could have children and careers a touring musicians. That choice was not really available to them.

In this article Nicks elaborates on how the disparity in expectations of motherhood stacked the deck against being able to choose both.

The first woman to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame twice, Nicks says she has no regrets. About an intimate relationship she says, "If it were to happen to me, I'd be thrilled. But when I'm 90 years old and sitting in a gloriously beautiful beach house somewhere on this planet with five or six Chinese Crested Yorkies, surrounded by all my goddaughters who will at that point be middle-aged, I'll be just as happy."

Goals!

The United States features a society in which many women are actually terrified of skipping marriage. Deeply embedded into the most basic of our cultural traditions is the idea that an unmarried woman has no reason to live.

This is so even though there is (and has been for centuries) clear proof that this simply is not true.

Consider Exhibit A: The Wealthy Merry Widow. Typically, for aristocratic women in England (who tended to be younger than their rich husbands), the best case scenario was marry that older man, have no children (or, at least, no sons), then inherit the marital estate when her husband died.

If she never married again, the widow would retain control over the marital assets during her lifetime. She could discretely take a lover. She certainly could devote her life to enjoying whatever pursuits caught her fancy.

As she was no longer a daughter under a father’s control nor a wife under a husband’s control, widowed aristocratic women could and did live long and well-satisfied unmarried lives.

This possibility for aristocratic women traveled to what is now the United States with the English colonists.

Then there were the spinsters. Spinsters were business women who also happened to be unmarried. Spinsters represented an existential threat to patriarchy by materially demonstrating a more than viable alternative to male-headed marriage for women.

As is typical with oppressive social systems, the powers that be took it upon themselves to ruin the reputations of spinsters so that no woman would want to be considered one. This is very telling.

You know what an oppressive systems fears by identifying what it endeavors to prohibit or destroy. Patriarchy is terrified of women’s independence.

Marriage was always a lopsided tradeoff for wives.

Still embedded deep in our wedding traditions is the reality that a woman’s wedding day is also the day her identity dies. Who she was at birth disappears.

All the hoopla that accompanies a cis-het wedding: the engagement ritual with the man at the lady’s mercy, humbling himself with a heart-felt plea for his lady’s “hand”, the engagement period in which the soon-to-be bride is bestowed with Queen Bee status, and the wedding ceremony itself with all the attendants, and the flowers, the incredible dress, and the spectacle of the bride gliding down an aisle through a crowd of people who stand to greet her as though she were royalty, is all intended to hide the reality that this is, in fact, a funeral.

While this is no longer as legally true as it used to be the traditions still have social potency and the Trad movement strives to enforce its consequences. Gone is Jane Individual. Born is Mrs. John Doe. She and her children will be called by his name.

There is another source of proof that marriage is death for women today. Whenever a wealthy man is faced with divorce without a prenup, a collective howl goes up about how he is going to loose his assets. The idea that the wife is also a 100% owner of the marital estate doesn’t occur to that collective. After all, dead people don’t own things.

What kinds of lies must be invented to convince a sentient being who no longer must depend on a man for survival to give up social freedom and choose social death?

Only the threat of another kind of social death would be sufficient. That death is called loneliness. And there you have it. The basis of the scam.

In the last issue of WallFlowerLife we talked about how banishment is the original and most profound punishment that humans use against each other. Banishment is the punishment, loneliness is the cause of death.

It makes perfect sense that Trad Men would employ that threat to convince women to come back to patriarchy’s clutches.

In this newsletter we tackle the very real phenomenon of loneliness. Yes, it is real. No, it is not a natural consequence of choosing to be unmarried. Lonely is not the opposite of married.

We are not anti-marriage. We are pro choice. Marriage should be a truly free choice entered into not to escape from a lie but because it truly is what each party desires.

The video below demonstrates why we say all of this in the first place. This is where we find ourselves in the 21st Century.

Take a listen then tell us in the comments, what do you think?

Live an elevated life on a single income. Explore strategies for beating the system.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to reach fifty and retire with financial freedom at the same time? Those are the exact goals of the FIRE movement (Financial Independence Retire Early).

For many FIRE members fifty is late! Some who follow the FIRE movement’s strategies reach financial independence in their thirties.

As with most movements, however, there can be drawbacks to applying the rigorous financial discipline that the FIRE system requires.

In the video below personal finance expert Ramit Sethi distinguishes the different types of FIRE, explains the reservations he has about the idea of FIRE, and shares ways to achieve FIRE while avoiding its more potentially toxic outcomes.

In coach training we learn the concept of locus of control. That is where you imagine your access to power comes from.

An external locus of control means you believe that everyone else has power over you. An internal locus of control recognizes the power within.

In addition to your locus of control is your locus of contentment. Loneliness happens when your locus of contentment exists outside of yourself.

The day I realized that I could be for myself, for my inner being, exactly what I was for everyone else, I never felt lonely again.

In fact, I am the best friend and lover I have every had. I am sufficient. I always know precisely what I need and I deliver what I need exactly how I want it.

Becoming that person has been the one most important changes I have made in my life. Being your own best friend is a skill. You can learn it. You can perfect it.

In the video below one of my favorite single people, Rajiv Surendra, talks about his journey to becoming his own best friend. I hope you leave the video inspired.

What inspires you to live un-partnered? We’d love to hear from you. Comment “What had happened was” below to get instructions for how to share your story.

You Can Say NO to the TSA! Fliers rights are back in the headlines. In a post on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s daughter, Evita Duffy-Alfonso, called out the TSA as an unconstitutional agency after she was (allegedly) pressured to walk through a body scanner she had refused to enter due to being pregnant. Read more and learn what rights you have to say no to certain TSA screening procedures.

Copenhagen’s “Ghetto Laws” Might Be Racist Says EU Court: In 2018 the government of Copenhagen passed a law allowing neighborhoods they deemed to be “parallel societies” (areas where more than 50% of the residents come from “non-Western" societies) to be demolished if they also had high levels of “unfavorable socio-economic conditions”.

More than 10 Percent of Congress Members are Leaving. Reasons range from retirement (accounting for 25 members), to running for a different office, to being Marjorie Taylor Green.

Miami Elects its First Woman Mayor, a Democrat. Further demonstrating the extent of the nation’s weariness with the MAGA mess, citizens of the most popular city in the MAGA founder’s home state elected Eileen Higgins, a woman and a Democrat. She defeated a MAGA-endorsed candidate in a run-off election to ascend to the city’s highest office.

Beaver with Big Branch Has Goals! A hardworking Beaver in Boise, Idaho, bravely commandeered a footpath to get its prized branch down to the riverside.

Celebrating everything wonderful about being self-partnered and satisfied.

Romance is Tyranny!