The Art of Being Unavailable

I think women should cultivate a little more mystery.

Not the manufactured kind designed to make someone pursue you. I mean the genuine mystery of having a life that doesn't require an audience, an explanation, or a running commentary.

An afternoon nobody knows how you spent.

A pleasure you have no intention of turning into content.

A private fascination. An extravagant little ritual. A book you are reading simply because it delights you.

We have become so accustomed to being accessible, accountable, and observable that privacy can feel almost transgressive.

There is an expectation, particularly for women, that our time should be reasonably easy to claim. Someone should be able to reach us, ask us a question, request a favor, interrupt whatever we're doing, and receive a reasonably pleasant response.

Even our leisure tends to require an explanation. We are taking a break because we've worked hard. We're resting because we're exhausted. We're spending time alone because we're recovering from something.

Apparently, simply enjoying our own company is not a sufficiently compelling reason to be unavailable.

I would like to see more women become gloriously difficult to interrupt.

Women who disappear into gardens, museums, bathtubs, libraries, and long lunches.

Women who develop peculiar interests and pursue them with absolutely no concern for whether those interests are practical, profitable, or impressive.

Women who know things nobody expects them to know. Who have favorite obscure painters, strong opinions about perfume, an unreasonable collection of antique dishes, or an abiding fascination with something wonderfully strange.

Women who go somewhere beautiful without photographing every inch of it.

Who have conversations they never repeat.

Who spend an entire Sunday afternoon doing something that makes no contribution whatsoever to their household, their professional reputation, their personal development, or anyone else's comfort.

I think there is an extraordinary amount of freedom in having an interior life that belongs entirely to you.

So much of modern life invites us to narrate ourselves constantly. We announce our intentions, explain our choices, document our experiences, and offer little reports about who we are becoming.

Social media has made this easier, of course, but the expectation existed long before anyone carried a camera in their pocket.

Women have always been expected to account for themselves.

Where were you? Who were you with? What were you doing? Why didn't you answer?

At some point, we can begin to confuse being known with being available for inspection.

They are not the same thing.

You can love people deeply and still have parts of your life they don't participate in. You can be generous without making yourself endlessly accessible. You can be intimate with someone without surrendering every private thought, pleasure, or fascination.

In fact, I suspect a little healthy privacy makes us more interesting company.

We return from our private adventures with something of our own to bring to the table. A new thought, a peculiar discovery, a story, a perspective we didn't borrow from someone else.

There is something wonderfully sensual about a woman who enjoys her own life.

Not because she is trying to be desirable, but because pleasure has become part of how she inhabits the world.

She doesn't need someone to accompany her to the restaurant she's been curious about. She doesn't need to justify spending three hours reading in the garden. She doesn't feel compelled to answer every message simply because the little rectangle in her hand has announced that someone wants her attention.

She has things to do.

Some of them are deliciously unimportant.

I am not suggesting we become careless with the people we love or disappear from our obligations without consideration. There is a difference between cultivating a private life and making other people responsible for our absence.

But I do think we could reconsider how much of ourselves we make available by default.

How much access we grant simply because someone asks for it.

How often we abandon our own enjoyment at the first indication that somebody would prefer our attention elsewhere.

And how much pleasure we have postponed because we were waiting for someone to join us, approve of the expense, or agree that the occasion warranted it.

A beautiful life ought to contain a few things that are yours alone.

A secret garden, even if it's just three pots of herbs on a balcony. A Sunday ritual. An intellectual obsession. A favorite place where nobody thinks to look for you.

Something you do for the sheer, unreasonable delight of doing it.



There is something delicious about belonging to yourself.

Especially on a Sunday.