Giving up the ghost

Today I was at the gym trying to madly chase away the beer molecules that were trying to attach themselves to my hips, after a night of sharing pitchers with the roommates, when I can to an interesting conclusion.

Since it was Saturday I treated myself to one of those women's magazines and as I was flipping through the pages I suddenly realized that about a third of the articles had no relevance to my life. "How to have better sex," "how to be more intimate," "how to get him to open-up." Sure these articles are shallow and ridiculous but at the same time they made me realize just how relationship driven our culture is. Every song, every TV show and movie is about finding love or losing love. If you aren't doing one of those two things you are out of the loop. This has left me identifying with cable news channels, crime shows, the Discovery Channel and the History Channel. You know things aren't going so well in the love department when Nazi Germany seems to have more relevance in your life then say an episode of Friends.

So I guess what I'm getting at is that in our culture of independent women, why are we still so focused on men to make us feel complete? If we aren't dating we aren't living? I feel like that is the message the world is trying to send us. "Attention ladies, you think you have it all together BUT really unless you have a special someone to share it with you are missing the boat." Well I refuse to buy that BS anymore. I really am not trying to sound bitter or jaded...I just don't know why we all believe it? Is it true that life isn't near as wonderful without someone to love?