Daily Inspiration Quote by Barbara Feldon

Feldon’s line walks a tightrope that only someone steeped in mid-century romance mythology could balance so deftly. She opens with a protective genuflection to “mated bliss,” the culturally sanctioned dream: partnership as adulthood’s gold medal. That first clause is a social shield, a way to speak her heresy without getting tried for it. Then she pivots to the real argument: living alone isn’t a consolation prize, it’s a parallel good - “as good in its own way.” The phrase is doing quiet revolutionary work, insisting that intimacy isn’t the only route to a full life.

The subtext is permission. Feldon isn’t just describing a personal preference; she’s diagnosing a collective hang-up: we can’t even admit the satisfaction of solitude without appending apologies. “We haven’t quite given ourselves permission” suggests the barrier isn’t loneliness but legitimacy - the fear of being seen as selfish, broken, or merely waiting. It’s a critique of how society deputizes couples as the default unit of meaning and treats singleness as a temporary administrative error.

Context matters: an actress who came of age in an era that marketed marriage as destiny (especially for women) is pointing to the psychic cost of that marketing. The sentence’s careful balance - not anti-love, not anti-marriage - is precisely why it lands. She’s not rejecting connection; she’s expanding the menu of acceptable lives, and calling out how hard it still is to say, plainly, that aloneness can be chosen rather than endured.