Tell Me About It: Being single doesn't mean self-absorption

Question:

A friend and I (both married for 10-plus years, with children) have a theory that will sound awful at first but I do really want your opinion.

We find, as we get older, that our friends who are single are very self-involved. As we take into consideration our husbands, our children, we inevitably end up being more aware of others in general. With our single friends, it's the opposite. They seem to focus on only what is going on in their individual lives, with little to no awareness of how they come off to other people.

Doesn't it make sense that because a person in a relationship/with children is constantly aware of others, they just tend to have a better perspective than just their own selfish one?

Answer: Nope. People who are self-absorbed are going to be self-absorbed. When they have spouses and children, that usually means they expand their Ring of Me to include spouse and kids. So, yes, they do care about and think about other people, technically - it's just that those other people are limited to their spawn and thus (in their eyes) to extensions of them. And, accordingly, they blather on about them.

People who aren't self-absorbed, on the other hand, will consider the well-being of others in addition to and sometimes to the exclusion of their own. The ones with spouses and kids often manifest this through generosity and inclusiveness in their approach to extended families, friends, schools, neighborhoods.

The ones without spouses and kids, meanwhile, are often the ones families count on to travel farthest to family events, to nurse ailing parents, to work late when everyone else has to bail, to throw themselves into volunteer work in ways that people with more demanding ties simply can't, to be the best uncles and aunties (or Big Brothers and Big Sisters) around.

In fact, I have two friends in mind, single, sans kids, who are deeply involved in youth leadership at their churches. Your observation offends me on their behalf.

Now, one area where you might be onto something (and a sliver of a something it is) involves the people who dwell on a pre-awareness fence, who have it in them to see beyond their navels - but their experience hasn't awakened them yet to this. Having one's own family, having needs besides one's own, can bring about that awakening.

But so can, say, the death of someone close, or travel to a devastated part of the world, or even just a friendship that opens you up: All of these are available to people who haven't married or raised kids.