Blog Posts by Spinsterlicious

I think it's important --from time to time-- to do something outside your normal routine, out-of-the-ordinary, something a little adventurous. Here's a story about one of my favorite adventures and a lesson I learned from it.

Excerpted from The Spinsterlicious Life: 20 Life Lessons for Living Happily Single and Childfree. Copyright 2011. All rights reserved.

Lesson 2: Indulge yourself! Romance. Sex. Adventure.

I like being a woman, and I like being with a man: being courted, flirting, holding hands, laughing over silly double entendres. Something may or may not come of it, and that's okay. I like indulging that part of myself. Having sex is important, too. It doesn't always have to be love; it's fine that sometimes it's closer to "I think I kinda love you right now". Under the right conditions, sex is really good for you, good for your body, good for your soul.

And God bless Dr. Mehmet Oz who actively promotes sex for its medical benefits (which gives us

Why don't I have kids? Because I never really wanted 'em. They're not for everybody, something I tried to explain to a woman I met recently. She looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language that she didn't understand. And I guess I kind of was, because she has four kids and couldn't seem to shut up about them. And, actually, she was more than just "a woman", she was a client so I felt it important that I be clear but oh so polite. I would like her to hire me again…even though she probably thinks of me as 'that strange woman with no kids'.

So on my walk home from the meeting, I started to think about what difference it makes in my life that I have given birth to no one. A few things occurred to me but first, I need to caution that most of my friends have children and I love their children. I have to say this because people with kids are so dang touchy about anything you say that sounds like 'your kids aren't fabulous all of the time.'

Anyway, here's what not

There's an old expression that "youth is wasted on the young." I heard it all my life and never quite got it. I just thought those who said it --who were always older than I was-- were just annoyed that they were older than whoever it was they were thinking of when they made the comment. Now I know better. That expression has nothing to do with being annoyed at someone younger than you are, it's all about having learned that we don't really really know what life is all about until we've lived awhile. In other words, "if we knew then what we know now" we might have done some things a little differently, made some different decisions, chose a different path, told somebody to "eff off" and then walked away and meant it.

Another adage that I've lived enough to learn that it's true is "you teach people how to treat you." I love this one because it's dead on...and just common sense. People will only repeatedly do to you what you let them get away with.

I love these kinds

The Spinsterlicious Life: 20 Life Lessons for Living Happily Single and Childfree-- is now available. To give you a little taste of what it's like, here's the first chapter, The Introduction:

Book cover

So here's the deal.

I am a bit of a serial dater, so over the years many friends have encouraged me to chronicle some of my adventures in dating --even though most of my relationships have been normal and uneventful. Since those don't make interesting stories, I don't really talk about them. The best stories come from the more unconventional relationships and I have quite a few of those because I like playing there.

My adventures in dating didn't jumpstart my writing about my life, rather it was an encounter I had with a woman I hadn't seen in a few years. We bumped into each other at a party and before I could answer "How are you doing?", she asked "Are you married, yet?" A lot of people ask me that and I always feel I have to have a quip ready: one that seems

Many years ago I worked with a woman who was a Spinster. She seemed to have quite an interesting life, with lots of romances and the jewelry to prove it. I wouldn't have done it quite the way she did because in most cases she was an "important" man's mistress and that's not my thing. Still, she had lots of great stories and it seemed to work for her.

Or at least I thought it did. One day while listening to one of her many stories, she gave me a bit of advice that I found startling. She told me that I should "just find someone...anyone, and marry him". It didn't really matter if I loved him or even stayed with him for very long. In fact, staying was beside the point. In her view, being divorced gives a woman a higher status in society than never having been married.

In her immortal words: It's better to be a has-been than a never-was! I love this line. Read more…

http://www.thespinsterliciouslife.com/2012/03/high-status-of-being-divorcee.html

Actually, this story I'm about to tell is probably not about the best relationship advice I've ever gotten, but it is certainly about my favorite relationship advice. It still makes me smile.

Several years ago, a guy I was dating decided to break up with me two days before a big party he was throwing. I had been looking forward to this party for weeks because it would be big and fancy and fun. The outfit I had picked out was perfect. It was part of a series of important charitable events being held for this specific cause and would be "the place to be" that night...if you could get in.

So when he called to tell me he had run into his old girlfriend who wanted to come to the party...as his guest...and he had agreed, well I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. This was messed up on too many levels: (1) he chose her over me, (2) we were breaking up, (3) we were breaking up before this party I was looking so forward to, (4) I would feel embarrassed.

And one of

I'm often complimented on my appearance. I love that-especially because praise for my style seems so odd to me. Because I really don't love fashion. My sister is a fashionista. She loves fashion shows in real life and on TV; she loves fashion magazines, fashion models, fashiony people walking down the street, and I think she thinks Anna Wintour might be God.

I, on the other hand, have no use for any of those things. I like to look good, but I pretty much wear the same clothes over and over. I 'm a Basics kinda gal. My close friends know this about me and forgive me. People who don't know me that well have no way of knowing that I've worn the same outfit (or a version of it) three times in the same week.

I've gotten through this winter with five basic pieces that are serving me well. Actually only two of them are winter-y. The others are good all the time. So here they are, in order from least to most interesting (to me, anyway):

• White Brooks Brothers no-iron button-down dress

Helen Gurley Brown turned 90 this past February 18. I discovered her when I was a teenager and became an instant fan. She was a woman ahead of her time; I hadn't heard another woman with her message. I was certainly familiar with (and appreciative of) feminists who were trying to empower us, but Helen was coming at it from a whole 'nother angle: it's okay for a woman to be single, and really ok for her to have and enjoy sex, to have fun, to have a full life. I didn't know anybody else who was saying this quite that way.

I bought her book, Sex and the Single Girl, and read it at night after I went to bed so my mother wouldn't catch me with it. Helen was 40 when she wrote the book so she wasn't some young, flighty girl being wistfully naive. This woman had lived. She went on to showcase her perspective as editor of Cosmopolitan magazine for 32 years.

Katie Roiphe wrote an article in Slate magazine acknowledging HGB's birthday and celebrating her accomplishments.