A popular catch-phrase in defending singlehood is “single and loving it!” While I don’t disagree with the sentiment, I’m not comforted by it, because I get the impression it’s being said through forced enthusiasm in some sort of desperate attempt to justify not having found someone. Why do I get that impression? Because society brainwashes us into believing that being single is living some sort of an incomplete life.
Getting married, having children, buying a house, getting a 401K, and a comfortable retirement are all standard expectations in our world today. It can be reasonably assumed these expectations and standards are in place because they supposedly provide for the most secure lives—and security is happiness, right?
Unfortunately, there are maleficent byproducts of these guideposts: Divorce rates at 50 percent, disjointed families, teen drug use, bankruptcy, corporate layoffs, and a fledgling social security system. The “expected” often-traveled roads have more potholes—and they don’t always appear on the map.
Single folks are not so alone as they’re made out to be. Almost half (43 percent) of Americans age fifteen and older are single… and 54 percent of them are women.
Pushy relatives, the government, the church, and the media all seem to be telling us that we should be partnered with someone, as if there’s some sort of sin in being SINgle.
The government gives tax breaks to married couples and religion tells us the only proper sex is married sex.
Most everyone in their thirties has heard some of the following phrases: “Don’t you want kids? You’re not getting any younger.” “So, when’s a woman gonna make an honest man out of ya? Huh? What are you so afraid of?” “What was wrong with your ex? Nobody’s perfect, ya know.”
Nearly every romantic comedy in history has a happy ending where the protagonist is “rewarded” with a relationship. Even the womanizing cad in these movies deep down really wants to be hitched to the right girl who will come along and put him in his proper place—which is attached to her.
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