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From: omo@mcnc.UUCP (Julie Omohundro)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: Living Alone: Abnormal?
Message-ID: <766@mcnc.mcnc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 28-Aug-85 23:06:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: mcnc.766
Posted: Wed Aug 28 23:06:33 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Aug-85 07:21:26 EDT
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Organization: Microelectronics Center of NC; RTP, NC
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Andy Cohill:
> >I have a better word: irresponsibility. For more closeness you get
> >less irresponsibility. It gets confused with "freedom" very
> >frequently. 

Elizabeth Purtell: 
> 	Boy, I'm glad that I read this on a day when I happened to be in
> fantastic mood, Andy, otherwise this probably would have made me angry.

Well, I was in a pretty decent mood, but it ticked me off considerably.
Also the part about how living alone makes you self-indulgent and
intolerant.  It doesn't seem to me that *you* are being at all tolerant
of other people's chosen lifestyles.  If they don't choose to commit
themselves to whatever goal *you* think is important in life, they
are irresponsible.  As for self-indulgence, if you mean allowing 
yourself to have what you want with no Puritan guilt complexes about
it, I sure fit that bill.  How about you?  Do you want to commit to
marriage?  Then wouldn't you be self-indulgent to do so?  Or do you
really think it would be more fun or something to stay footloose
and fancyfree?  Then why not?  I think my most important responsibility
is to discover who I am and what I want and believe in, and then
live accordingly.  And that takes a tremendous amount of commmitment.
It's a whole lot easier just to jump on society's bandwagon.  A whole
lot easier.

I'm sorry I even responded to this posting, so let me say something
unrelated and therefore possibly worthwhile.  I have noticed that,
in the discussion on living alone, a lot of people jued forward
to say that they thought living alone was not abnormal, including
a lot of people who lived alone (or had).  But almost all of
you still expressed a desire/hope/wish to live with someone else
again some day.  (Elizabeth being an exception, I believe?)  I also
live alone and plan to do so forever and ever amen.  (Call me
irresponsible |-))  I'm perfectly happy that way, but I was
surprised at how few live-aloners had that as a long-term game
plan.