‘Singleness can very much be a cross, a source of struggles and suffering offered up to God as you journey towards him. It’s also an opportunity, however short or long-lived, to serve God and others in a unique way,” Emily Stimpson writes in The Catholic Girl’s Survival Guide for the Single Years: The Nuts and Bolts of Staying Sane and Happy While Waiting for Mr. Right. She talks candidly with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez.
KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: There are 96 million unmarried Americans — 43 percent of adults over age 18; 24 percent are divorced, and 61 percent have never walked down the aisle. What’s that about?
EMILY STIMPSON: How long do we have? This answer could take a while. If I’m just giving you the thumbnail version, I’d say that it’s the fruit of a sick and wounded culture. Contraception, cohabitation, and pornography — not to mention the idea that love is a feeling, not a choice — all have a lot to do with the number of unmarried people in America today. So have our parents’ failed marriages and dating habits that have conditioned us to relational patterns that are anything but “for as long as we both shall live.” Consumerism, which can make us think finding the perfect mate is like shopping for that perfect outfit (and convince us to hold off on making a decision because something better might be out there) bears some responsibility, as does a vision of happiness that has more to do with dollar signs than babies. Really, put it all together and it’s amazing that as much as 57 percent of Americans are married.
LOPEZ: A book called Embracing Your Single Vocation made you cry. But isn’t that what your book is advocating?
STIMPSON: Not in the sense that book meant it! The author of that book, God bless his well intentioned heart, had this theory that if you weren’t married by a certain point in life, your 30th birthday, you should just accept the fact that you were never going to get married and try to be happy about that. My book presumes just the opposite, that most young women reading it will get married one day, only that day will come a little (or a lot) later than it did for their mothers and grandmothers. Some of us won’t marry, of course, but most of us will. (At least that’s what the statistics say.) Accordingly, the Survival Guide’s goal isn’t to encourage readers to be happy about being single forever and ever — I hope they won’t be single forever and ever — but to offer some advice that can make the single life more bearable; suggestions that can help women not only to be sane and happy but also to become the woman God is calling them to be. Whether we ever marry or not, those ideas come in pretty handy, so handing them on is what my book is about.
LOPEZ: Which idea discussed in your book is our culture most in need of?
STIMPSON: Well, on one level, I think single women need some help navigating the challenges, both practical and spiritual, that come with being single in the post-college years. When it comes to issues such as vocation, femininity, dating, chastity, work, and finances, we’re facing challenges our mothers and grandmothers rarely faced. On a deeper level, our culture needs women who can be witnesses — witnesses to the dignity and vocation of femininity, witnesses to the beauty of chastity, and witnesses to what it means to trust God in the face of suffering. Ultimately, the book is call to young single women to be those witnesses. And hopefully, it’s a help for them in answering that call.
LOPEZ: “Learn to submit”? We have to be a nation of Michele Bachmanns?
STIMPSON: I’m not sure what goes on in Michele Bachmann’s house, but the type of submission I’m talking about in the book is not the kind that requires you to submit to your controlling ex-boyfriend. That’s a bad idea. I’m talking about submitting to God, to his will, and to his plan. And also to his truth. Too many of us have set ourselves up as our own pope, picking and choosing what we want to believe based only on what’s easy or convenient. But that doesn’t get you very far, at least not if happiness and holiness are what you’re after. Authentic freedom, loving as we’re called to love, comes from surrendering ourselves to God. It comes from dying to ourselves and letting our hearts and minds be conformed to Christ’s. That’s a type of submission we all need to practice — men and women.
LOPEZ: Do you really refer to yourself as a spinster? That can’t be helpful in the whole “surviving” mission?
STIMPSON: Hmm . . . do I? I didn’t think I did that. I’m really not very spinsterish — I have too many pretty clothes and don’t own nearly enough cats. (I don’t own any cats at all actually. Can’t stand the things.) I do knit, though. I suppose that’s a strike against me. Anyhow, if I did say that, it was a joke. And jokes do help in the whole surviving mission. Too much seriousness too often is not good for the soul.
LOPEZ: Didn’t The 40-Year-Old Virgin prove the way you’re living can’t possibly be healthy?
STIMPSON: That’s what the culture certainly says. The message most women (and men) hear repeatedly from the media is that happiness can be measured in the quality and quantity of one’s sexual encounters and that, if you’re not having sex, you’ll end up frigid, bitter, and alone. The problem, however, is that what we see on TV doesn’t match up with reality. When we look around our world, the most wounded women and men most of us know aren’t the ones who understand and live the Church’s teachings on sexuality. The ones doing that tend to be whole, warm, and joyful. Rather, the ones with the most wounds seem to be the ones who’ve bought into the culture’s ideas about sexuality. They’re the ones who aren’t healthy.
LOPEZ: What’s so special about Theology of the Body?
STIMPSON: Simply put, it helps us understand who we are. It gives us a language in which to talk about the Church’s ancient teachings on the human person, and about a sexuality that is rooted in human experience. That makes those teachings accessible to the postmodern mind in ways scholastic manuals don’t. Plus, it illuminates the beauty of the Church’s teachings in a way that other expressions of those teachings haven’t quite managed to do as effectively. When it comes to single women in particular, it gives us a positive reason — not just a negative one — to live the Church’s teachings on sexuality. It helps us see the beauty of what we’re called to in marriage, and not settle for anything less.
LOPEZ: Why is 24 good post-break-up viewing?
STIMPSON: First, big explosions are cathartic. Second, no one’s relationship on that show ever works out. That can be quite cheering after you’ve had your heart broken.
LOPEZ: Was it hard to be so honest about your life? I was at Notre Dame this past weekend and one of the gals asked me how you figure out how much to reveal to the world when you’re writing. How did you?
STIMPSON: I know I should say something witty and funny here but the truth is, yes, writing this book was phenomenally hard. I was continually struggling with how personal I should get. On the one hand, I wanted women to know I identified with them, but weeping and bleeding all over the page isn’t exactly my style. Plus, I didn’t want any of the men I’ve dated to worry that they were being used as fodder for my book. I found the balance (I hope) by not letting the book be about me. I share feelings and struggles, but not a lot of stories. It’s not a memoir of my single life. It’s more of a straightforward exposition and application of the Church’s teachings as they apply to the struggles single women face . . . with a little bit of personal color thrown in.
LOPEZ: Why would men find your book boring? Wouldn’t it help them understand girls?
STIMPSON: Well, when I wrote the book, I was sure men would have no interest in it. It is so very girly. I mean it’s pink and covered in tulips! But as nearly every single guy I know (and a lot of married men as well) is currently in the process of reading it, I’m thinking maybe I was wrong. Some of the chapters, such as the ones on dating, chastity, and vocations, apparently do speak to them. Others are giving them insight into the feminine mind. Hopefully, I’m not giving away too many trade secrets.
LOPEZ: Isn’t “Girl” demeaning, by the way?
STIMPSON: I don’t think so. Frankly, I find it flattering when someone calls me a girl. Makes me think all that sunscreen I’m slathering on is doing the trick.
LOPEZ: Why does “dressing well” matter? Vanity isn’t holy, is it?
STIMPSON: Vanity isn’t holy, but beauty is. God is beauty. He is its source and its author. To dress well and take good care of ourselves is another way of living the theology of the body. It’s to let the loveliness we’re striving for on the inside be reflected on the outside. It’s also to honor God, who made us beautiful and delights in beauty. Plus, like those ill-fated relationships on 24, a pretty dress can be quite consoling. All in good measure, of course.
LOPEZ: You admit being child and husbandless is “a constant source of heartache and heartbreak” and yet that “I’m increasingly surprised by how good my lot in a husband-free life is, how little cause I have for complaint, and how ridiculously generous God is with the blessings he dishes out. He is loveliness itself, and the deeper I dive into his life, the more bearable thus whole single thing is.” Do you ever worry that the latter is complacency? Delusion? Surrender?
STIMPSON: Nope. Just reality. Being single when you want to be married is hard, very, very hard. I know that. I feel that. I feel it acutely. But I also know that God, for his own crazy reasons, loves me loads and both wants and expects me be joyful. Luckily, he doesn’t expect me to do that all on my own. He always provides the means for joy even in the midst of terrible struggles. The means at any given moment may not be the means I keep telling him I want, but they are more than sufficient. I think that’s true for everyone. We just have to be open to those means, look for them, and receive them when they come.
LOPEZ: You say the book is for women who think their vocation is marriage. But what if they are pushing 40 or more and realize that was all wrong?
STIMPSON: I don’t think it works that way, at least not these days. I’ve known women who’ve married well past 40, well past 60 even. Marriage really can happen at any age. The only expiration date on a vocation to marriage is death. Single women who truly desire marriage and believe they’re called to that vocation need to remember that. I don’t think we’re allowed to give up hoping and praying for marriage. We can stop expecting it, but not hoping for it. To stop hoping is to despair, and despair is strictly verboten by Christ. Even if it weren’t, it tends to lead to coldness, hardness, bitterness, and all sorts of other unattractive traits, which compromise that joyful witness we’re supposed to be giving.
LOPEZ: What do you do on Valentine’s Day when there is no first or second or other prospect for dinner in the picture?
STIMPSON: This year I’ll be in Michigan helping one of my best friends recover from a C-section and playing with her toddlers, which is a pretty darned fun way to spend the day if you ask me. We’ll make cookies, read books, snuggle, and do nothing that might jeopardize the state of our souls. If I weren’t in Michigan, I might invite my neighbors’ kids over for a Valentines Day Party. You can’t be depressed when you’re pouring out hot chocolate and serving scones to five-year-old girls in pink dresses. Another option would be to invite my single friends for dinner. Two years ago, I cooked a feast for my three closest single guy friends to thank them for helping me out in so many ways. I would encourage other unmarrieds to follow suit and spend the day making the people they care about feel loved. Send flowers to a friend who just broke up with her boyfriend. Make Valentine’s cards with your nieces and nephews. Pay a visit to the elderly widow next door. Or you can watch 24. That works, too.
LOPEZ: What do you wish everyone would appreciate about what the Catholic Church teaches and women?
STIMPSON: I wish people understood the tremendous freedom there is for women in the Church’s understanding of femininity. The culture is constantly telling us that if we want to be good enough or desirable enough then we have to look and act a certain way — that our worth is about our clothing size or the numbers in our bank account. But the Church doesn’t understand beauty or success like that. We’re beautiful when we’re the women God made us to be, and we’re successful when we’re doing the things he made us to do. Also, because he made no two people alike, there is no one model to which we have to measure up. That’s incredibly liberating.
LOPEZ: You insist that “there can be no exclusive, close friendships with married men” for the single gal? Isn’t there something wrong with one or the other people in such a relationship if it can be an occasion of sin?
STIMPSON: Life is a near-occasion of sin. Recognizing that means there’s something right with you, not wrong with you. And recognizing that some occasions are more dangerous than others — like having an intimate, exclusive relationship with someone else’s husband — means there’s something really right with you. You can be friends with guys, married and single. But not bosom buddies. That’s playing with fire.
LOPEZ: Do you have any advice for all the men you’ve loved before? The guys?
STIMPSON: Most of the guys I’ve loved have been my friends and are splendid men who’ve had to endure more of my advice than any man other than my husband rightly should. But for the rest of the single male population, I’d say discern your vocation, pursue it, and pursue it realistically. Don’t keep putting off committing because there might be something better out there. Don’t expect a voice from the sky to tell you if a girl is right for you. Don’t expect perfection. Don’t do the ambiguous, “Are we friends or something more?” Dance ad infinitum. And don’t ignore the wounds in your own heart. Deal with them. Go to counseling or spiritual direction or a trusted friend. There is some amazing woman out there waiting for you. Don’t make her wait too long.
LOPEZ: What do you wish every single gal who isn’t all that happy being single could know?
STIMPSON: That God has a plan for her, and that plan doesn’t start the day she says “I do.” Right now is part of that plan. Right now, God has something for her to do and learn. He has something he wants her to become, and someone (most likely many someones — friends, family, neighbors) he wants her to love. Joy comes with seeing that and saying yes to it, not in waiting for a “better” plan to come along.
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— Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online.
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