If singles did not exist, we would deprive ourselves of sentimental bluettes to get through this period so full of expectations, obligatory smiles and garlands of promises flashing in the night. The film Love Actually, this Christmas classic, is its luminous star. The title comes from a sentence by Hugh Grant in the credits: “ love actually is all around » — love in fact is everywhere. He didn’t say, “In one person you can’t find on Tinder.” »
Like a contented old maid, I have just finished the second season of Christmas in good company, a Norwegian series faithful to the genre. The kind that searches and eventually finds (this is not a spoiler, this is the nature of a romantic comedy).
The Italian version is called I hate Christmas. The Quebec version could go with a “I calisse Christmas” if I judge by the number of singles who have decided to no longer look for Love and to assume their celibacy without having the balls. Not like a handicap or a missing part while waiting for the defect memo to be sent to the company or Santa Claus, no, like a completely comfortable (and enviable) state, the opposite of a break or a temporary parenthesis.
Above all, we must not spread the word about it, the entire civilization would be threatened.
Conscious celibacy is an avenue favored by some, as is monomarriage or sologamy to which the newspaper The world devoted a funny report recently, seeing in it a form of radical romanticism (or total narcissism, it depends). It’s because we boldly go there for a classic ceremony, the chapel, the bride on her father’s arm, the doves and the whole show as if there were two of us! For better and for worse.
Fallow or voluntary wilding
The motto of the site “My shitty love life”, launched by comedian and author Anne-Marie Dupras, sums up the idyll well: “In a relationship with celibacy until love separates us. »
I brought together Anne-Marie Dupras and Pattie O’Green, an art historian, horticulturist-arborist forester-witch, also author of Heavenly Manifesto. Spiritual Adventures in Caped Boots to chat about conscious celibacy before the anticipated holiday nightmare.
Anne-Marie’s Facebook page is followed by more than 100,000 people, generally single. The young fifty-something has become a true coach of love even if she herself found her happiness ten years ago on the arm of her “fabulous”: “I say to the world: fallow love. Because toxic relationships mark you forever. Trying on people isn’t like trying on shoes, it’s a mess…”
Pattie, 43, a follower of conscious celibacy several times during her romantic journey, speaks about it wisely: “The impulse towards celibacy must be as conscious as the impulse towards the other. It is a return to oneself, in joy, the opposite of bitterness. » Besides, Pattie would rename “celibacy”… grace. Grace in a form of fullness that takes up all the space in the Queen bed.
And the little sentences that try to demolish this grace, like: “It’s not with an attitude like that that you’re going to meet anyone!” ”, make them laugh. ” It’s a gaslighting social of our intuition, thinks Pattie. They try to reason with us. But the reason, I don’t care! This is not a transitory state; there is no: it will end one day. »
Is a space free? Let’s take care of it! Is a woman free? Let’s take care of it! Before it becomes wild, untamable, dangerous for humans, for the smooth running of things.
Anne-Marie adds: “If you don’t listen to your little voice, it won’t speak to you again. » In a private group of single women in which she participates, Anne-Marie sees many quinquas sexas abandoning the straight couple project: “Me, if I wasn’t with my chum, I would be with a girl. I don’t feel like educating an adult. The girls end up mothering within the couple. And I don’t want to be summed up by: how fuckable I am. »
The arrogance of the couple
In her manifesto of female empowerment, Pattie addresses this chosen celibacy and underlines the arrogance of the couple, a comfortable posture in society “as a mode of defense, a way of being in the world”, born from a “discomfort in the face of ‘informs’. And unfortunately, few couples — sometimes united by the fear of loneliness — really appeal to us. In fact, it would be quite the opposite that happens.
Anne-Marie continues: “The single person who assumes responsibility calls into question the foundations of our society: “You fuckes my life plan, you look good!” Imagine if we said to people: “I take it you’re still in a relationship? !” And then cliché phrases like: “It’s when you don’t look that you find”… Try explaining that to the unemployment office! »
Pattie agrees: “There is still something revolutionary about this concept. The couple is not a token of love; it lacks expansion. Love is everywhere. » (Hugh Grant, where are you?)
And love is especially not in the reductive and extinguishing sentence: “Have you met someone? » Take notes for the party from the 24th…
The two women note how capitalist biases have insinuated themselves into the romantic sphere, a single woman being seen as “waste”, a beautiful woman who would benefit no one as “something to be profitable, something that could satisfy a human, I mean, even more importantly: a man. Everything is reduced to its usefulness, its function or its monetary value,” writes Pattie in her manifesto.
Anne-Marie once served as a courtesy blonde to a man who wanted to strut alongside a trophy wife for the inauguration of a business, for a generous fee. “I played the dumb blonde. I had a lot of fun. »
Women would undoubtedly be richer if they knew their true value. When will the couple strike? As long as negotiating in the public square…