Will living alone — without "social checks and balances" — make you too eccentric?

This is one of these NYT lifestyle articles with anecdotes about women who do things like leaving their bra on the kitchen table. Then there's the woman who wears "this pair of white flax bloomers that go down to my knee. They’re like pantaloons. They’re so weird." She never lets anyone see them. "No, no... That would be the height of intimacy..." And yet, she's telling us all about them. She also "grazes on nuts and seeds."

What emerges over time, for those who live alone, is an at-home self that is markedly different — in ways big and small — from the self they present to the world. 

Until they're interviewed by the NYT. Then they present that self to the world.

Oh, well... anyway... I enjoyed reading this article, because I had this attitude myself as a woman living alone, and it's an attitude that curls back on itself and makes you think you have these special freedoms that would hurt too much to sacrifice. Here I am, expressing myself on the subject in the summer of 2008:



In the summer of 2009, I would get married, after learning that I really can be myself and be free in the constant presence of another human being. I had no idea!