This Month's Hot Topic
Still Single In Your 30's
In My Tribe
October 14, 2001
By ETHAN WATTERS
It may be true that 'never marrieds' are saving themselves
for something better. They may also be saving the
institution of marriage while they're at it.
You may be like me: between the ages of 25 and 39, single,
a college-educated city dweller. If so, you may have also
had the unpleasant experience of discovering that you have
been identified (by the U.S. Census Bureau, no less) as one
of the fastest-growing groups in America -- the ''never
marrieds.'' In less than 30 years, the number of
never-marrieds has more than doubled, apparently pushing
back the median age of marriage to the oldest it has been
in our country's history -- about 25 years for women and 27
for men.
As if the connotation of ''never married'' weren't negative
enough, the vilification of our group has been swift and
shrill. These statistics prove a ''titanic loss of family
values,'' according to The Washington Times. An article in
Time magazine asked whether ''picky'' women were ''denying
themselves and society the benefits of marriage'' and in
the process kicking off ''an outbreak of 'Sex and the City'
promiscuity.'' In a study on marriage conducted at Rutgers
University, researchers say the ''social glue'' of the
family is at stake, adding ominously that ''crime
rates . . .
are highly correlated with a large percentage of
unmarried young males.''
Although I never planned it, I can tell you how I became a
never-married. Thirteen years ago, I moved to San Francisco
for what I assumed was a brief transition period between
college and marriage. The problem was, I wasn't just
looking for an appropriate spouse. To use the language of
the Rutgers researchers, I was ''soul-mate searching.''
Like 94 percent of never-marrieds from 20 to 29, I, too,
agree with the statement ''When you marry, you want your
spouse to be your soul mate first and foremost.'' This
umber-romantic view is something new. In a 1965 survey,
fully three out of four college women said they'd marry a
man they didn't love if he fit their criteria in every
other way. I discovered along with my friends that finding
that soul mate wasn't easy. Girlfriends came and went, as
did jobs and apartments. The constant in my life -- by
default, not by plan -- became a loose group of friends.
After a few years, that group's membership and routines
began to solidify. We met weekly for dinner at a
neighborhood restaurant. We traveled together, moved one
another's furniture, painted one another's apartments,
cheered one another on at sporting events and open-mike
nights. One day I discovered that the transition period I
thought I was living wasn't a transition period at all.
Something real and important had grown there. I belonged to
an urban tribe.
I use the word ''tribe'' quite literally here: this is a
tight group, with unspoken roles and hierarchies, whose
members think of each other as ''us'' and the rest of the
world as ''them.'' This bond is clearest in times of
trouble. After earthquakes (or the recent terrorist
strikes), my instinct to huddle with and protect my group
is no different from what I'd feel for my family.
Once I identified this in my own life, I began to see
tribes everywhere I looked: a house of ex-sorority women in
Philadelphia, a team of ultimate-frisbee players in Boston
and groups of musicians in Austin, Tex. Cities, I've come
to believe, aren't emotional wastelands where fragile
individuals with arrested development mope around
self-indulgently searching for true love. There are rich
landscapes filled with urban tribes.
So what does it mean that we've quietly added the tribe
years as a developmental stage to adulthood? Because our
friends in the tribe hold us responsible for our actions, I
doubt it will mean a wild swing toward promiscuity or
crime. Tribal behavior does not prove a loss of ''family
values.'' It is a fresh expression of them.
It is true, though, that marriage and the tribe are at
odds. As many ex-girlfriends will ruefully tell you,
loyalty to the tribe can wreak havoc on romantic
relationships. Not surprisingly, marriage usually signals
the beginning of the end of tribal membership. From inside
the group, marriage can seem like a risky gambit. When
members of our tribe choose to get married, the rest of us
talk about them with grave concern, as if they've joined a
religion that requires them to live in a guarded compound.
But we also know that the urban tribe can't exist forever.
Those of us who have entered our mid-30's find ourselves
feeling vaguely as if we're living in the latter episodes
of ''Seinfeld'' or ''Friends,'' as if the plot lines of our
lives have begun to wear thin.
So, although tribe membership may delay marriage, that is
where most of us are still heading. And it turns out there
may be some good news when we get there. Divorce rates have
leveled off. Tim Heaton, a sociologist at Brigham Young
University, says he believes he knows why. In a paper to be
published next year, he argues that it is because people
are getting married later.
Could it be that we who have been biding our time in happy
tribes are now actually grown up enough to understand what
we need in a mate? What a fantastic twist -- we ''never
marrieds'' may end up revitalizing the very institution
we've supposedly been undermining.
And there's another dynamic worth considering. Those of us
who find it so hard to leave our tribes will not choose
marriage blithely, as if it is the inevitable next step in
our lives, the way middle-class high-school kids choose
college. When we go to the altar, we will be sacrificing
something precious. In that sacrifice, we may begin to
learn to treat our marriages with the reverence they need
to survive.
Ethan Watters is a writer living in San
Francisco.