I’ve mentioned something like this before in such threads, but who are these people who are (or were) hassling your ex’s brother about being single. I’ve been single my whole life and my family has never made a peep about it. I sometimes wonder if my social skills are so atrocious that they’ve all decided I don’t have a hope in hell of finding someone.
Really? That’s kind of fucked up since the reason for adultry can be multidimensional.
I’m pretty sure that it doesn’t matter who did what to whom here, in Ontario, Canada. A separation and divorce is a legal issue, not a moral issue.
Or maybe you don’t socialize with jerks or have pushy family members. Have you ever considered that?
Adultery can affect alimony in Georgia, where my sister lives.
I think it’s mainly 3 issues that cause this:
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A lot of people like to project their views onto others, so if they want a relationship, surely everyone else does too, and “those who claim they aren’t, are just faking it,”
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Some people unfortunately do like to play a pretend-game where they will insist that they aren’t looking for a relationship, but deep down they really are - kind of analogous to teenagers who loudly proclaim that they are quitting their Facebook account to get drama attention when really they won’t;
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I think there is a certain “What, you’re too good for us/too good for this sort of thing?” irritation some people inexplicably feel when someone proclaims that they aren’t interested in a relationship and want to be single for life. The reason society can tolerate a lot of fetishes and kinks is because it’s still about sex or relationships; albeit different kinds. But if someone proclaims that they are asexual or want to be single for life, society gets miffed because the perceived message is “I’m so good that I don’t need something that almost all of you need.”
“When you’re in a relationship, you want to kill your partner. When you’re single your want to kill yourself. I say better HER than ME!”
-Chris Rock
Heh. Like someone saying they don’t own a TV. 
That’s certainly a terrible relationship. However, when you are in any relationship, there is still another person you have to make considerations for. Especially if you are living together. Some people don’t want to do that…at all. They want to go do what they want to do, whenever they want to do it.
Let’s think of all the annoying things I deal with in my day:
- Trying to get an obstinate toddler dressed and fed so the nanny can take him to school.
- Working out which of us has to miss an after work activity to rush home to relieve the nanny.
- Dealing with 2 hyped up children under 4 who seem to go crazy from 5pm to 8pm.
- The various negotiations I have to have with the kids to keep them from destroying the place.
- Dealing with a crying baby when I want to go to bed
- Trying to squeeze in some time to actually socialize with other people.
- The general constant untidiness of the apartment
- The arbitrary demands on my time by a toddler
- Inability to watch any show that is not Peppa Pig, Bubble Guppies or Paw Patrol
- The inability to leave the apartment without organizing a small caravan of kids.
- Being kind of stuck in a job that, while I don’t hate, isn’t going anywhere, but I stay because it’s not stressful (by strategy consulting firm standards) and I have a lot of flexibility
I could go on and on, but these are just annoying issues of logistics. They don’t even speak to whether I even like my partner (I do…most of the time). It is not beyond my imagination to picture someone who simply has no interest in any of that stuff, and thus chooses to stay single (or has it defaulted on them when their partner brings up the subject).
I’m 45 an single. Never been as much as on a date. I’ve always been too afraid to ask a woman out and none have asked me out, so here I am.
I think there’s a way to talk about it without being a jerk or pushy. In my 52 years of life I can remember only my mother mentioning the subject once. If my family wrote me off that long ago, what chance did I have; where was I supposed to learn these “social skills” everyone keeps talking about?
This is it for me. Maybe it’s confirmation bias, but I feel like I’ve talked to an awful lot of single people who proclaim that they love being single and couldn’t imagine having to make accommodations for a partner, but if I keep talking to that single person for a few weeks, pretty soon that person breaks down and says something to the effect of “I’m lonely and I want someone!!”
I expect a lot of it is timing. The older you get without being married, you find that everyone who can maintain a stable marriage is married already, and maintaining a stable marriage. Thus you have to try and find someone among the divorced people, who have already failed at maintaining a stable relationship, or those who have lost a spouse thru death, and those are pretty rare until you get really old.
Sure, there are exceptions, but 60% of second marriages break up, and for third and fourth it is even higher.
If you are happy being single, good for you. Being happily married makes people happy, statistically speaking, but that is both a cause and an effect.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m not really sure what this list has to do with being in a relationship…? Looks like it’s 100% about having kids, and small ones at that. I think a lot of people can have a boyfriend/girlfriend without “Dealing with a crying baby” right?
I’m probably mis-interpreting this but why are you talking about someone’s relationship status “for a few weeks”? Sounds like you are trying to coax an answer out of someone who gave you an answer already but you dismiss it until you get the answer you want?
It might be that the person is fine being alone, for real. But everyone would like someone to do this, that and the other with. I want someone to take my trash out and to pay half my mortgage but I don’t want to sleep with someone who snores or deal with someone else’s family or their schedule or whatever. So I’ll just deal with being single. And in the past 5+ years I’ve been single I’ve come to appreciate it over whatever downsides there are to being hooked up.
People are complicated. They may want to lose weight but don’t want to diet, they want more money but don’t want to stop spending, they want a better job but don’t want to risk losing what they have. You can take people at their word when they say they don’t want something. If they’re dramatic about it and make a big deal of it all the time maybe they’re lying. But if you “interrogate” someone long enough I’m sure you can find the “gotcha ya” in their reasoning. Doesn’t mean they’re lying, maybe it just means they’re willing to live with their truth despite possible upsides of the opposite.
I’m not coaxing it out of them. What I’m trying to say is that most people who talk to me about how much they like being single are people I talk to with some regularity. Maybe someone I go out to lunch with once in a while, or talk online with or something. And I’ve found that if, for example, I go out to lunch with someone and they talk about how they couldn’t imagine having a partner in their life, the next time I go out to lunch with them they often have a different attitude. That’s all I’m saying.
And yeah, people can change their minds, and I’m sure some people will argue that that’s what’s happening. But from my vantage point, it looks like what’s happening is that these friends are trying to be optimistic about their situation even though it’s not ideally the situation they’d like to be in.
I believe I often am single because I have a particular set of likes/dislikes. I like occasionally traveling and going to events with someone. I like sexy time with someone. But I don’t really enjoy hanging out around the house with someone, especially if they are demanding of my time and attention. At home I just like to chill and be alone. So it’s mostly my fault.
My marriage ended seven years ago. I haven’t had anything even resembling a relationship since. Everyone else has managed to have something, even if it’s just a fling, after they got divorced. But I’ve had nothing at all.
For several years, I didn’t date out of a need for self-protection. I figured that my relationship history was my fault, and I needed to fix whatever was wrong with me before I even considered getting involved with anyone. (And, unfortunately for me, I can’t have sex without bonding to the person I sleep with. So wanting to stay out of relationships also means celibacy. I can’t tell you how much I envy women who can separate emotional connection from physical involvement.)
I made a few brief forays into dating over the last few years, but they were always time wasting at best and depressing or hurtful at worst. So I’d try to date, give up for a while, and then try again. But I always felt conflicted about actually trying to find someone.
It’s only been recently–like, after July–that I’ve really wanted, wholeheartedly, to find an SO. I don’t seem to be having much luck with it, though. I can’t even get guys to show up for first dates about 70% of the time, and I get the feeling that I’d be a particularly difficult person to match with, anyway. I’m not sure how to change either of those things. So, once again, I’m taking a break from dating, for my own sanity.
I wish I’d known about some of my own issues earlier in life, so that I could have addressed them when I was in my late teens or early 20s, thus improving my chances. I also wish I’d known that I’d stop being attractive to men by the time I turned 35. And I really wish I’d known that weight gain would be so incredibly difficult to undo, despite my earlier history of slenderness. As it is, I’ve screwed up the timeline in ways I can never repair. I strongly suspect that I’m now stuck being single forever, whether I like it or not.
Why can’t you?
It’s just the way I’m wired. Oxytocin is powerful magic for me, for whatever reason.
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You seem pretty hellbent on forcing the results of your informal survey to fit your preconceived notions. I wonder what that’s about? Why is it so hard for you to believe some people have made the conscious choice to be single?
Let me say again: I am absolutely content to be single (for 8 years now, and likely forever. Married friends talk, and the stuff people share - even the ones in relatively happy marriages - cancels out any passing “wouldn’t it be nice…” thoughts I might have.
Like ZipperJJ said, my passing thoughts are mostly along the line of how it would be nice to have someone to do a chore I don’t want to do, or have a second income in case of lay offs. Practical issues. But I am never, ever lonely, and I think that is one of the common threads with the happily single. We have taken the time to work on our sh!t, and to know ourselves and our minds, unlike a lot of people who either relationship hop or have been in a marriage since time began.