You know what's frustrating? How singlehood is demonized.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Okay, I am a huge lurker on the Dope, and not much of a poster, but upon reflection, I feel like the vast majority of my posts/threads are about relationship things. I would just like to add as a disclaimer that although I post mostly about such things, I actually am interested in more than just dating, and I read all sorts of threads on here. Just so y’all don’t think I’m a one trick pony . . . :slight_smile:

So anyways, that being said, I feel very irritated why, for some reason, “society” (take that to mean what you will), seems to put being a relationship on a pedastal, and assumes that everyone single is just searching for that special someone, and will be incomplete until they get there. I mean, how often do we hear about the downsides of having a significant other? When, if ever, are singleness and couplehood put on equal footing? Why does no one consider them equal? Why does pratically every Hollywood film, if not about love, have to somehow involve a love story? Why are relationships such an all-consuming grail for Americans, at least according to our pop culture?

I was whining to my married friend recently about how lucky she was to have a stable relationship. She looked me straight in the eye and said, “Gestalt, relationships are a lot of work, and a lot of sacrifice. Yeah, I love my husband, but I’ve had to give up a lot for him, and honestly, there are times where I wonder if it’s worth it. You should embrace the freedom that comes with singlehood when you have it.” And when I last posted a thread (about my breakup), a couple of posters responded by saying that singlehood was about as much fun as relationshiphood, and they enjoyed both.

So why does everyone else somehow make me feel like I need a boyfriend? I feel like so many Americans have bought into this idea, and they perpetuate the cycle of self-loathing that so many single people feel, including me. I mean, when I think about it, the things a boyfriend gives me are 1) someone to cuddle/be physical with, 2) someone to talk to, 3) someone to share my insecurities with and 4) someone to comfort me. Okay, so number 2 & 3 can be provided by good friends, as well as partly 4, although I sort of think needing 4 can be unhealthy, and something that in general someone should find within themselves (that is something else I dislike–how people refuse to admit that relationships can make you emotionally and otherwise needy and slowly sap away at your independence and individualism), so really, objectively, an SO isn’t all that necessary. So why do I feel so crappy about being single?

Okay, I’m done, thanks for letting me vent, Dopers. I’ve been holding this in for a while :slight_smile: .

Gestalt

2

You must not be listening to the right stand-up comedians.

3

Because we feel that being alone is somehow wrong or disgusting. It’s a stupid idea but there you have it.

I value my relationship enormously but a relationship IS an enormous amount of work. No doubt about it!

4

I’m single and I love it! I can’t imagine having someone around 24/7. The only thing I even slightly worry about is getting old, dying and my dogs having to eat my bloated, decomposing corpse because there’s no one around to find me. I guess I’ll just have to curry a friendly relationship with my postman.

5

Nobody ‘makes’ you feel anything. You feel how you feel based on what you choose to think about situations.

I would hazard a guess that self-loathing is usually not about someone being without a relationship and more about people thinking they are not thin enough or beautiful enough. They may then extrapolate that to ‘which is why I have no partner’ but five minutes’ looking around you at the crowds walking by will show you many couples that are neither and are happy nonetheless.

Well, perhaps. OTOH, there’s the whole thing about having intellectual, emotional, and spiritual connection with someone which, if/when you find it, is tremendous.

Again relationships don’t ‘make’ you anything. If you turn needy when in a relationship, it’s an aspect of yourself that is revealing itself.

I suggest that if you feel unworthy and actually suffer from self-loathing, then you need to spend a goodly amount of time learning to appreciate your own self. You may have been looking to relationships to provide you with the self-esteem you lack; that doesn’t happen. Your attitude about you needs to come from within, and should not be dependent on what others think of you. It should come from your knowledge of yourself as a worthy human being.

6

Don’t blame society. Blame a billion years of evolution that favored people who had mates. The drive to couple up and have babies is pretty damn strong.

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In my experience whenever someone says they ‘feel’ something from society, it’s actually something they feel from within themselves.

Almost always the approval or acknowledgment they are seeking needs to come from within. And once that happens they don’t ‘feel’ societie’s judgement anymore.

It’s about self acceptance and it’s lack is why so many persons choose to stay in a bad relationship rather than face the world alone.

Also, I think we all just need to accept that a certain amount of what we put off as societal pressure, is, in fact just ‘grass is always greener on the other side of the fence’ syndrome. If you remain single you will wonder what you’re missing, if you marry you will wonder what you may have missed or who you might have become if you hadn’t partnered up. Have children and wonder what life might have held if you hadn’t. Choose not to have children and wonder if you’ve missed out. Really, it’s just wondering about the road you didn’t choose. I think it’s just a function of our overthinking ways. Know this though, whatever path you choose in life, there will be times when you will wonder if the grass isn’t just a little greener…such is life.

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I came in to post this exactly, but you beat me to it.

Gestalt , when you feel crappy about being single, think of this. Isn’t better to not have someone and wish you did than to have someone you wish you didn’t?

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Every time this type of thread comes up I usually say the following: There are a lot of nights I come home and I wish there were someone to be with. There are just as many nights I come home and I’m glad to be alone. The ratio is about 50-50. In fact, I suspect it leans more heavily towards the glad to be alone. Yes, I miss all the good things like sex and having someone to hold when I’m sad. But your friend is right, relationships are hard work.

10

Some of you seem to be questioning the demonization of singlehood.

This is a few ways it can work:

Friends of mine got married a few years ago. Everyone in our group of friends was invited to the wedding along with their partners - except for the one member of our group who was single. She was not invited. Coincidence? or did the bride just want nice even numbers at the table? The friend (who has been single all her life) says this is reasonably common - she is often not invited to “couples” events. (And often, when she is invited, she is not invited to bring a date, even tho people with established partners are. She has spent a number of weddings utterly alone among couply strangers.)

That same bride, every time she sees me, asks me if I have a boyfriend (the “yet” is implied). I say “no” and look quite pleased; she looks surprised and has nothing else to say. This conversation has played out numerous times. Clearly this woman is uncomfortable with women who are single.

When I told my landlady that my husband moved out, she said “Don’t worry, you’ll get another husband.”

I once worked with a group of women (and one guy) who spent about 80% of the time talking about their boyfriend/fiancee/husband (and pestering the guy about when he was going to propose to his girlfriend). I didn’t feel like talking about my boyfriend (or lack thereof) so I could not participate in the conversations and they all thought I was a bit weird.

Why does Facebook define you primarily by your relationship and what you are looking for? I know you don’t have to answer those questions if you don’t want to, but I found it startling and a little unwelcoming to have those questions being the first ones asked of me.

Finally: frequently, unwanted suitors can only be deterred with the phrase “I have a boyfriend/husband.” Why is “No, I’m not interested” not sufficient? and why is “I’m already spoken for” sufficient?

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Quiddity , I would absolutely agree with you, I can definitely fall into the “low self-esteem” class, and I know that, honestly, if I had greater self-appreciation and confidence, I could more easily ignore societal messages. However, I still maintain that there are in fact many societal messages pushing the, “dating is better” idea. Maybe it’s just my age bracket (college student), but I feel like there is a lot of pressure to have an SO in my community. And I think it’s fairly prevalent in the United States in general as well. Again, how many Hollywood movies dealing with romance, or even in general, end with the protagonist happily single? Yes, to some degree, depending on how rational and grounded you are, you can put all these things in context. But I don’t think our culture is neutral on this topic. The stigmitization of singles certainly less than, say, the stigmitization of murderers, and probably also slightly less than the stimigitization of depression, but I definitely feel like it’s there.

Gestalt

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I just moved to Germany - not are you socially demonized when single but financially as well. If you’re single without kids you fall into the highest tax category. Dealing with coworkers asking about significant others (or lack there of) is one thing but to see each month the chunk of money being withheld is quite the other…

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I think part of it is a societal assumption that not being in a relationship is evidence of your deficiencies. I was single for a good long time and I can’t begin to convey how much feedback I got from well-intentioned others (whether I asked for it or not) about what was wrong with me. I’ve been in a committed partnership since 1997 and funny, nobody ever mentions my flaws that were previously marshalled as explanations for why I was single. You’d think I’d still be “too needy” or “intense,” but no, apparently all of that magically disappeared when I hooked up.

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I came in to second what th single posters have said as I too am single.

I was married 6 years ago for a whole 362 days. (We filed and moved into seperate abodes on the 362nd day.)

When I was married I was very frustrated at my lack of freedom, especially to go hang out with friends and to do what I wanted on the weekends. She always had our weekends planned and that was something we constantly argued about.

Now for just the past 2 years I have lived alone, instead of with roomates, and I have all the freedom I desired back when I was married. And now-a-days what I most enjoy is staying home on weeknights reading a book, watching movies or playing video games. Which is all I ever did while I was married when all I ever wanted to do was to go out with friends.

My family is always asking me when am I going to get a girlfriend and move in together so that I am not alone all the time. And I tell them I enjoy being alone. I am not lonely I am just alone. I hang out with friends and I have dinner with the “Fam” once a week so I get in all the social interactions I desire.

I just enjoy making my own schedule and doing whatever the hell I damn well please whenever the hell I damn well feel like doing it. :slight_smile:

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Do not confuse “need” with “want.” I don’t need my boyfriend’s emotional support any more than I needed to handle everything on my own before I met him.

I’m 35 years old, and have spent all but maybe 2-3 collective years of that time as a single woman. Before I met my current boyfriend I’d been single for many years, and I’ve seen demonizations on both sides of the street: people – not just couples – who think that singlehood can’t possibly be a choice (it was for me, for at least a few of those many years), and people who think that any woman who doesn’t want to be single must “need” someone. That failure to acknowledge the difference between “need” and “want” drives me up a wall.

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I agree, but I don’t feel bad about being single and you shouldn’t either. The ‘masses are asses’ as the saying goes, so don’t let society as a whole make you feel bad about yourself.

At age 24, I’ve been single for 4+ years and I have no regrets. Sure, I have sex or go out with girls occasionally, but I don’t feel the need to enter relationship. I don’t try to deceive anyone about it either. I have too many other hobbies and priorities that prevent me from giving a woman the attention she needs. That may change later, but I’m in no hurry. If the shoe fits, I’ll wear it…or something like that.

If you enter into a new relationship, then do it because you desire that relationship and not because society exhalts couples or whatever.

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Gestalt, I think your post is your cite. If the majority of your posts are about relationship things, then it’s because relationships occupy a significant chunk of your mental real estate. That says to me that you’re ambivalent as all get-out about singlehood. So if society makes the assumption that you’re really just looking for that special someone – well, they’re not 100% wrong, are they?

And parenthetically, is it really true that society is still pushing the boyfriend model? There was an article in the Boston Globe a couple of months ago (unfortunately, I can’t link to it) that profiled two Boston University students who were considered “weird” by their peers because they had boyfriends, as opposed to a series of casual hookups.

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I suppose it doesn’t help that underneath our clothes our entire bodies are covered in scales…

Uh, tell me, is it one in four marriages that ends in divorce now or one in three?
/Bridget Jones’s Diary

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Well, it’s definitely not just the OP that feels that way. I just saw a book:

Singled Out: How Singles are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After

so clearly at least some other people feel that way. I haven’t read it though, so maybe there’s a happy ending to it. I love happy endings.

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First people bug you to be a couple - complete second class citizen if you aren’t coupled.

The moment you are coupled people bug you to get married - why be coupled if you aren’t married.

Once married people bug you to breed - life isn’t complete without kids.

Once you are married with kids, all you ever hear is people bitch about how ill behaved kids are, how parents think they are the center of the universe, and how much burden a spouse is, and why did you marry that guy anyway - we all knew he was a jerk, and can’t you keep your kids under control, you shouldn’t have had kids until you could afford them, and you need to lose weight, and why in the world did you buy a house it THAT neighborhood

To explainations, misery loves company, or people just like to bitch about your life. I’m leaning towards the second…