O'rourke's alienation from the married woman comes in part because she's filling in the imaginative blank of that woman's union with a fantasy of fulfillment. If loneliness is a want of intimacy, then being single lends itself to loneliness because the loving partnerships we imagine in comparison are always, in our minds, intimate; they are not distant or empty of abusive or dysfunctional. We don't fantasize about being in bad marriages, or about being in what were once good marriages that have since gone stale or sexless or hard, creating their own profound emotional pain.
About This Quote
About Rebecca Traister
Rebecca Traister was a contemporary American journalist and author. Rebecca Traister is an American journalist who has covered U.S. politics with a focus on issues affecting women. Read more on Wikipedia →
Themes
- Marriage — Partnership, commitment, and the journey of shared life