"I'm single, and not looking to change that"/ "It's okay to love being single"

Aug. 21, 2018 "I'm single, and not looking to change that": Today I found this life essay by Rachel Jansen in the Globe and Mail:

I can always sense the question coming. It’s preceded by a look of curiosity, a thoughtful tilt of the head: “How is it you’re single?”

The question used to make my body warm with flattery; it implied I was interesting enough, or conventionally attractive enough, or both, to deserve a romantic partner. It implied that I didn’t belong to that category: to the perpetually single, the lacking. The question meant I was an outlier in an equation the asker thought they’d understood, and I was grateful to be considered anomalous. But not so long ago, the question started to make me uneasy, even a little irritated. You tell me, I’d reply, and turn to another friend.

I’m 26 and have been single now for five years. And while I’ve had romantic interests during that time, a few electric beginnings, all eventually petered out for the standard reasons: differing values, long distances, an imbalance of interest. Of course I mourned those almost-relationships but, once I moved on, I wasn’t particularly bothered; I was completing my master’s degree and had enough friends that if I said “yes” to every invitation I would have been busy nearly every night of the week. 

Nights in were accompanied by cinnamon tea and trashy reality TV. I wasn’t exactly what you’d refer to as lacking. Except, as society would point out through the mouths of my well-intentioned friends, I didn’t have a partner.

The longer I stayed single, the more frequent the question (“How is it you’re still single?”) became, and the more hounding the asker. They were confused. They wanted to know why it hadn’t worked out for me yet. “Was I trying to find someone?” they’d ask. “Sometimes,” I’d reply, shrugging. Their pained looks at my indifference made me wonder whether I should pity myself, too.

The problems with a question such as “How are you still single?” are the assumptions that must be made in order for it to be considered a compliment, which I think is how people genuinely expect it to be taken. The question assumes two truths: 

1) that being in a relationship is preferable to being single; and 

2) that there are those who are more deserving to be in relationships than others and, by default, that those who are in relationships belong to a higher calibre of people. 

If this inference feels like a leap, consider what would happen if I turned the question back on my partnered friends: 

“How is it you’re in a relationship?” Such a question would be considered insulting, as though the person is too selfish or too boring or too unattractive to be in a partnership.

I began internalizing this line of thinking, flipping the question over at night to expose its more insidious edge. Why was I still single? If being in a relationship is the mark of a more compassionate, intriguing person, than what was wrong with me?

Everywhere I looked in the media, this idea, that being in a relationship was proof of an exceptional person, was reinforced; 

we cheer when the antagonist gets dumped, 

and anger when the protagonist remains alone despite his or her many virtues. 

If a celebrity, particularly a female celebrity, is single for a long stretch of time, the tabloids are quick to pity her (“unlucky in love,” “single again,” “desperate and alone”) or else hypothesize possible personality deficits as the cause. 

I decided that if romantic love is the ultimate measure of a person, I wanted the gleaming gold medal of long-term monogamy. I didn’t want to be the girl alone on the sidelines picking grass.

I started swiping right more than left on dating apps. I went to darkly lit bars and made small talk with strangers all the while wishing I was with my friends, or catching up on work or cuddled up watching the latest episode of The Bachelorette. 

I often came home drained, swearing that date would be my last, 

but then someone would ask the question, or some variation of it, 

again and a panic would flare up inside me 

and all I could focus on was that missing element in my life and how that void might be interpreted. 

Never mind that I was content with my life in almost every other arena, never mind I didn’t really want to date. Never mind that there was plenty of empirical evidence around me that proved the underlying assumption – those in relationships are somehow superior to those that are not – bogus; I knew plenty of selfish people in relationships, and plenty of fascinating people who were single. 

I was desperate to prove that I could be in a relationship, if I really wanted to be in one.

I went from being grateful for the things I had in my life, and I had plenty, to narrowing in on the one thing I did not. During a tearful diatribe of my singledom to my sister, also single, she bristled.

“What’s so wrong with being single?” she asked.

My mouth went slack. I was surprised not so much by the defensiveness of her tone as by the way I related to it; it was the same tone I’d used when friends probed about my own single status. 

Inadvertently, I was perpetuating the same stigma that sent me reeling in the first place.

I, too, had become a mouthpiece for society’s outdated and gendered expectations.

I was also stunned because I couldn’t come up with a decent answer to her question. I didn’t actually think there was much wrong with being single. I liked being single. Yes, there were nights when my bed felt too big, when I wished there was someone to listen to my rants about organized religion or speculate why it was Arie chose Lauren over Becca, but I suspected, and vaguely recalled, that I desired to be in a relationship as much as any person in a relationship wished they weren’t. 

The truth was, I was more afraid of what being single meant than I was of actually being single.

There are beautiful and virtuous reasons to want to date: 

companionship, support, love, 

but dating out of fear of judgment, I reasoned, was not one of them. 

Slowly, I pulled back from the dating scene, promising myself I’d only go out with guys I was truly interested in. I relished my nights in and scrolling through dating apps suddenly became more fun when there wasn’t so much pressure.

I am not totally inoculated against the occasional swell of insecurity when a person asks the question, “How is it you’re single?” Now, at least, I have a better answer: Because I am.

Rachel Jansen lives in Vancouver.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/first-person/article-im-single-and-not-looking-to-change-that-why-should-i/

There are 12 comments:

2 hours ago

The question I always got in my late 20s and early 30s was “How come you’re not married . . . what’s wrong with you?”. 

 My friend gave me an excellent response to that question the next time somebody asked it . . . “Why? Does misery love company?”. 

 Not that all marriages are miserable because they are not, but it was a great line that worked well. There is nothing wrong with being single. I had been single more years than I had been in relationships when I met someone in my early 40s. Fourteen years on and ten years of co-habitation, we are happily retired, child free by choice, and spend close to half the year travelling. It’s all good!

4 hours ago

Roughly 8 billion people on this planet. Some like things one way, others don't. Being single isn't a crime so go crazy. Only the reference to The Bachelorette as entertaining is odd to me.

6 hours ago

There's

a dating app for staying single. It's called "off". I admire you Rachel. This may sound contradictory, but your attitude is....*attractive*.
It means that any sparkle that interplay has with you is natural and devoid of agenda, other than being open to reciprocity.

8 hours ago

As a single guy who makes good money, still has all his hair and stays in shape I can't imagine why I wouldn't want to be single. I'm 44...never married and no kids. I always have people to share my life with yet also the freedom to come and go as I please. 

Life-long monogamy is unnatural and statistics show us it's doomed to fail. Why people clamor to get themselves into a situation with a low probability of long term happiness and a high probability of failure and financial ruin makes no sense to me.

6 hours ago

You can only say it's "doomed to fail" if you ignore all the successful marriages. I would say that if both spouses are committed to making the marriage work, it's destined for success. For me, it's 37 years and counting. If I'd been happy when I was single, I'd not have asked my now-wife to marry me.

4 hours ago

Anecdotally you can certainly find successful marriages and it's great that you are in one. Statistically, on the other hand, over half fail and among the less than half that are technically "successful" you find a high level of dissatisfaction and people forced to stay together for the kids, finances, judgemental friends/family, etc.

Monogamy offers a less than ideal solution for most people, however it is still peddled like it's the holy grail.

11 hours ago

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Here's my experience. University was the perfect place to meet your perfect match. You probably left a boy who would have laid down in a puddle for you to walk on his back if you needed to. But those days are gone and so are puppy dog boys who if they had a tail would wag it for you.. Time and circumstances have taken you out of the best dating pool in the world.

Now you are probably figuring (deep down) that "it will happen" . Just need to meet the right guy, kiss a few frogs along the way, but it will happen. Yes it can happen, but here's the advice.......

You need to work at it. Nothing like this "just happens" .

 Not in this day and age and quite possibly never has. Let me put it into a context you will understand. It's like your education You needed to set goals, you needed to attend lectures when you'd rather just stay under the covers and watch trashy TV, and you needed to study. It didn't just happen. Finding the right person is exactly the same kind of process.

There is nothing wrong with being single, you're right. But reading between the lines I sense you're not being honest us or with yourself.

6 hours ago

[You need to work at it.] Huh? Serendipity has nothing to do with effort.

6 hours ago

Your comments are unfair.
I, too, could have met my significant other in university. But people in their early 20s are still inexperienced, immature, and uncertain of their future.

I had to move to three different cities within the first 2 years of graduating in order to find a job that was long-term, in a city I enjoyed living in. 

It took a few years of trying new activities and making new friends to determine what I truly enjoyed, as opposed to following the crowd and allowing others to think for me. I was not confident in university. I am now, and make a much better partner.

2 hours ago

I couldn't agree more

17 hours ago

Does Ms. Jansen want kids and marriage? If so, she shouldn't spend her nights watching TV.

If she has no interest in ever settling down, there's nothing wrong with that. However, she's 26. This is prime dating time for women (assuming she's hetero).

After age 30, dating tips in favor of men. Men prefer women a little younger than themselves.

 Also, men are a lot more flexible about marrying "down" than women are. Most educated women are inflexible about marrying a less educated man. (Do we blame this on the patriarchy or feminism? I've lost track.)

Competing for eligible bachelors at age 26 is much easier than at age 36.
There will be lots of time for watching TV after the kids leave home.

2 hours ago

She shouldn't wait because after age 30, all the good ones are taken. She will be left with the goof balls who are perpetually swiping left and right well into their 50s

Feb. 20, 2022: I found this in my old physical news articles:

I like the picture.

Feb. 1, 2019 "It's okay to love being single": Today I found this article by Ishani Noth in the Edmonton Journal:

‘I just want you to be happy.” That’s the line I keep hearing, with increasing frequency as I—and my ovaries—age. And it’s one that directly follows questions about my relationship status, or rather, lack thereof.

I am single and I have been for a long time. Predictably, this has become a great source of concern from aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends, frenemies, acquaintances and occasionally, Uber drivers. 

After someone asks me how I’m doing and how work is going, the third question inevitably is about whether I’ve kicked my single status. It doesn’t matter that I really love my new apartment and cannot believe how lucky I am to get paid to watch Netflix and rant about The Bachelor; the third answer — which is always some variation of “No, I’m not seeing anyone”— elicits sympathy.

People equate being single with being sad. But to me, that just doesn’t add up.

“Sometimes (responses like that) come from a place where they don’t think you’re happy, but often, it will come before they even know whether you’re happy,” says Toronto-based life coach Caird Urquhart. According to Urquhart and Carrie Jenkins, a philosophy professor at University of British Columbia, part of the reason people think of the single life with sympathy is because it goes against society’s expectations of progression.

“There is a deeply ingrained cultural idea in North America that a romantic relationship is the ideal situation for everyone,” says Jenkins, author of What Love Is And What It Could Be. 

“Assumptions about what it takes to have a ‘good’ life have been closely tied to the idea of a ‘happy ever after,’ which — in everything from fairy tales to great literature to the latest rom-com — is constantly being represented as a matter of finding and settling down with ‘the one.’ It’s very hard to shift this kind of cultural baseline.”

Despite the fact nearly as many Canadians identify as single (14.3 million) as those that are married (14 million), when I tell people that I’m not currently dating anyone I get furrowed brows. 

We seem to look at landing a dude the same as landing that dream job or buying an apartment — something we’ve got to achieve or else we aren’t #winningatlife.

Supermodel Adriana Lima recently flipped the script, embracing her single status by “marrying ” herself. “I am committed to myself and my own happiness, ” Lima wrote. “I am married with me.”

Lima isn’t the only one taking a close look at what she truly prioritizes versus what society wants to prioritize for her. 

In a recent episode of Chelsea, comedian Chelsea Handler recalled the time a friend told her she was being too picky after she rejected a date because she didn’t like the man’s nose. Handler’s response? “Yeah, because I’m perfectly happy doing my own thing, I can be picky.”

Handler’s motto is one Urquhart wishes we’d adopt more. She says being single is about actively choosing how to fill your life. 

“Being single doesn’t make you a victim,” she says. “It’s a choice — and it’s not a second choice.”

That choice, however, is not always easy for the world to swallow. In 2016, Toronto’s Lilly Singh — better known as YouTube sensation Superwoman — outlined all the reasons she’s not in a relationship, and why she’s happy about it. The video, which received more than three million views, was not nearly as popular as her others and prompted a slew of sexist comments, including questions about her sexual identity.

While attitudes around the single life are changing, Jenkins says things aren’t changing enough — or quickly enough. She notes that books like Live Alone and Like It, which was written and published by Vogue editor Marjorie Hillis in 1936, could still be a bestseller today because the concept still goes against the norm.

Before you @ me to inform me how off-base my outlook is, let me be clear. This is my personal opinion and I am by no means trying to speak for all single women. Being single can definitely suck, particularly as it translates to serious loneliness. But if being single can be tough, so can some relationships.

I’m not saying that people in relationships are not happy, nor am I saying that all single women are content being single. There have definitely been times where being solo has stung a bit — whether it’s after yet another disappointing online dating experience or just everyday stuff, like when I want someone who will listen to me debrief about work.

I’m also not so adamantly single I would turn down a relationship if it felt right.

That said, people are quick to assume that I’m unhappy as a single woman and reticent to accept the opposite. Right now, I truly enjoy my life, and I wish I could tell people that in a way that doesn’t elicit pity. Instead, like Singh, I find myself often giving reasons for why I’m not in a relationship rather than, as Urquhart suggests, just stating it as a choice that I’ve made. In fact, the only time I think I’m missing something is when other people make me feel that way.

“In many ways, we still find ourselves trying to understand singleness as anything other than second-rate, or a failure condition,” says Jenkins. “That assumption is not just wrong in the sense of being inaccurate, it’s also morally wrong: for example, it can easily pressure people into starting, or not leaving unhealthy relationships. And of course it shames people who deserve no such treatment.”

Urquhart, who says she was single for most of her adult life, echoes this sentiment. “It’s about getting rid of this idea that being single makes you less than 100 per cent. 

It doesn’t, because when you’re single, the opportunities are anywhere you want them to be.”

So — radical idea here — maybe if you truly want single ladies to be happy, just let them be.

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