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Of course, you don't need to do this - if you'll face a few facts. The first one is that-to put it baldly-an extra woman is a problem. Even those as alluring as Peggy Joyce (whose periods of being extra women are brief, but may be frequent). Extra women mean extra expense, extra dinner-partners, extra bridge opponents, and, all too often, extra sympathy.
This may come to you as a shock. Perhaps you have always thought that you were the belle of the neighborhood. Or perhaps you knew you weren't, but thought you had a few staunch friends and relatives. And probably you have--:-but even they will sometimes wonder what to do about you.
The idea is to do it yourself-and to do it .first. But to do it well, you'll need at least two things: a mental picture of yourself as a gay and independent person, and spunk enough to get the picture across to the other person.
We know, for example, one business woman who forty years ago would have been described as a maiden lady and who, during the vacations, week-ends, and evenings incidental to twenty years in an office, has managed to shoot in Scotland, bathe at Juan-les-Pins, cross, the Andes, see the races at Saratoga, go to most of the best plays in New York, and keep her figure. "I'm naturally lazy," she says, "but I get around some, because I'm not going to be a Maiden Aunt. I'm not going to have my married brothers and sisters, and my nieces and nephews, feel about me as I felt about my father's unmarried sister. When I was young, we couldn't so much as go for a buggy ride without wondering if we oughtn't to stop and get Aunt Mary-she went out so seldom. Well, I intend to go out just as often as anyone in my family, if not a little bit oftener. And what's more, I intend to go just a little bit farther."
We don't know just how far she does go, but we have never heard her referred to as a Maiden Lady.
There is an element of defiance in this attitude, but when you start to live alone, defiance is not a bad quality to have handy. There will be moments when you'll need it, especially if you've been somebody's petted darling in the past. But you will soon find that independence, more truthfully than virtue, is its own reward. It gives you a grand feeling. Standing on your own feet is extraordinarily exhilarating, and being able to do very well (when it's necessary) without your friends, relatives, and beaux, not to mention your enemies, makes you feel surprisingly benign towards all of them. All of this being true, we come back to the need of a plan and the technique to carry it out-which we hope to give in the following pages.
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