Table for One by Sumaa Tekur

Author:Sumaa Tekur [Sumaa Tekur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hay House
Published: 2023-03-27T00:00:00+00:00

Identifying Well-Intentioned Men

Among my single female friends who live alone, I have one friend who narrates her most interesting experiences with men. Rita lives in a small town in central France, teaches English at the local university, and lives alone, choosing to curate her life and relationships with great awareness.

Rita and I share our fascinating cross-cultural experiences as women living alone. The more I hear from Rita about her life in Europe, the more I have understood that we are all the same—country, continent, and culture notwithstanding.

One afternoon, I received messages from Rita. They were all pictures of a man’s torso clicked as a reflection of a bathroom mirror. His face was not seen but the body had me swooning with its six-pack abs, bulked-up biceps, and toned-up muscles. Rita and I exchanged a flurry of messages in which she told me that the man was her co-worker at the university. He had been showing interest in her for a few months and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Rita was not interested. She wanted to remain single and preferred good books and wine to both interesting and interested men.

When the male co-worker wouldn’t stop chasing her even after her firm no, she had to report him to the university’s human resources department. A whole other drama unfolded after this, in which he blamed the technology and she kept asking to be left alone.

‘It all came down to the common assumption that when a woman is single and is living alone, she is available and can be approached without restraint by an interested man,’ Rita said. The woman’s consent comes into the equation much later while the man’s right to approach her takes precedence.

Rita had other similar experiences that have made her less trusting of the male species overall. ‘I think I am going to die an old maid. I’m not complaining about being single. I love it. But when I see that most men are not well-intentioned, it makes me more suspicious of men than I’d like to be,’ she said.

Despite this attitude, Rita continues to be open to social experiences. Rita was propositioned by a married man, with whom she was family friends. She once had a seventy-year-old man, a scientist, describe the act of lovemaking in intricate detail that made her uncomfortable. ‘He was clearly using the shield of his identity as a scientist to be vulgar. I am never meeting him again,’ she said, livid at the man’s nerve.

Would women go through similar experiences if they were coupled and with family? Yes, we would still face such instances. The difference is in the degree to which the woman is approached. The world gets bolder when it approaches a single woman living alone than if she had the shield of protection from a man or a family. That’s the shield that traditionalists want women to continue to wear.

Men have approached me in various ways—as friends, as work mates, and in so many guises. Some of these friendships with men had to die when they saw me as a potential partner.

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