Archbishop's web site Denver Catholic Register Parishes Catholic Pastoral Center
July 4, 2001
Sitcoms don't accurately portray single life
Often lonely, singles need friends, families to provide community support
TV sitcoms really crack me up. Not, mind you, in the way they're trying to crack me up. Canned laugh tracks and adolescent potty humor have never really been my thing. What makes me laugh is the way modern situation comedies portray single adult life.
In TV Land, single people have perfect bodies, perfect hair and perfect clothes. They live in impossibly expensive apartments, always filled with a crew of lovable but eccentric cohorts (usually of varying racial and sexual orientation). They all, even the less attractive ones (think George Costanza and Drew Carey), date constantly.
My married friends are always asking me what exciting things are going on with me. They say they have to live vicariously through me, since I'm single and my life must be so much more interesting than theirs.
They must think I live in a sitcom.
Sitcom singles are never alone. There is, of course, a reason for that. People sitting alone make for bad television. How entertaining is it to watch someone reading a magazine on the couch, or singing to herself as she weeds her garden? Believe me, if they put the average single person's life on TV, it would make the Weather Channel look exciting.
Single people are alone a lot. I know there are certain benefits to that, as any mother who can't even make it to the bathroom alone will attest. But, for many singles, that excess of alone time can get to be a problem.
As we've been discussing for several weeks, God made human persons to live in community, the "communion of persons" as John Paul II calls it. Families have a built-in communion of persons. So do priests and religious who live in community.
Single people, by and large, have no such built-in community. And they need it. They long for it. I think that partly explains the success of TV sitcoms like "Friends." We all want to live in a world where loveable-but-eccentric cohorts are dropping in all the time, where we have friends who know and really care about us and about what's going on in our lives.
So what's the solution? How do single people go about building that community they so desperately need?
The first step, of course, is up to them. They need to break out of the little isolated world of self, and reach out to others. They need to make an effort to build and maintain strong friendships. They need to give of themselves. The Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes says that "if man is the only creature on earth that God has wanted for its own sake, man can fully discover his true self only in a sincere gift of himself" (GS 24). We find true happiness through giving ourselves in love to others. Singles don't have a built-in opportunity to do that. So we need to create the opportunities. The good news is we single people often have more disposable time and income to put toward reaching out to others.
But singles can't do it alone. The wider community, and particularly the Church, has an obligation to reach out to single adults, to include them in their world. Single adults tell me that they often don't feel "at home" in the average Catholic parish. Parish live is built around families. Men's Bible studies talk about fatherhood, women's talk about motherhood. Social events sell tickets by the couple. Even the parish population is determined by "number of families." There's nothing wrong, of course, with serving families. But single adults frequently tell me that, on some level, they don't feel like they even belong. Most don't bother registering, believing that since they're not a "family" they won't show up in the count anyway.
Speaking of families, I think they need to do more, as well, to reach out to the single adults around them. I think the prevailing attitude is that "families hang out with families, and singles hang out with singles." The problem is, as singles get older, it gets harder to find other singles to hang out with. I don't know why couples are sometimes so reticent to include their single friends in their social lives. It makes a huge difference to single people when they're included in the lives of families. I have been blessed in my life to have several families who have opened their homes to me and made me feel welcome. One of my best friends is a married mother of two, and when I lived near her, I was one of the family. Not in a "feel free to come over anytime" kind of way. No. She called me every single afternoon to see if I'd be joining them for dinner that night. For someone who usually ate dinner with Jerry, Elaine and Kramer, that was a welcome invitation.
The world has changed. A few generations ago, a vast majority of (non-clerical, non-religious life) people married at an early age, remained married, and roamed the world in pairs. Now, for whatever reason, the demographics are switching. More adults are remaining unmarried, or are abandoned by their spouses, or are for whatever reasons finding themselves single well into adulthood. They're created by God to live in community, but often have a hard time finding that community.
And it's up to us — all of us — to be a part of that community.
Mary Beth Bonacci is a Catholic speaker, syndicated columnist and author of two books. She can be reached via her web site at www.reallove.net.
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