YouTube videos on “Single Life” topics are my guilty pleasure.
I live for the comments section.
Seeing people say:
“ I am single, never been married, celibate (their words not mine), child-free, travel junkie, independent, and super happy”
makes me feel like I am part of a loving community, yet still fills me with a little bit of envy.
Because I can’t be all that.
I am too messed up.
Here is what my comment might look like on a Sunday at 2 am:
“Single, struggling with anxiety, binge eating a brownie with ice creams, horny, romantically — challenged, on a tight budget, and yes, trying to not look super grumpy”
If a happy single is a cult, I would be thrown out on Day one.
The Glamorisation Of Single Life
Like everyone looks incredibly pretty or handsome on Instagram, there is an illusion of a glamorous single life out there in social media which is filtered, false, and extremely generic — The #AmazingSingleLife.
Here are the supposed reasons it looks dreamy:
- Financial independence.
- Ability to focus fully on career ( I respectfully disagree, I know many married folks killing it in their jobs and it comes down to time management, getting support, etc.)
- Freedom to still wait for the one (please feel free to start with Medium for our roller coaster experiences with dating apps)
- No children ( oh I love them, also here are my 2 doggos giving company for my late-night editing)
But what is easily forgotten here is the privilege, culture, educational background, financial state, and mainly the mental state of the person in question that made them choose a single life.
Or here is a shocker — for some of us, it was not even a choice!
Being a 31-year-old woman in India and meeting my younger single friends is fun.
I am their exhibit A because even at this age I can be unmarried and live to tell the tale.
I am asked for advice on how to stay happy despite being single (I despise that despite) so much so that it looks like a lucrative side-hustle.
But the more I talk, the more I realise we have completely misunderstood what being single entails.
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Here are the various why-we-are-single reasons I wish people knew about:
#1 Single Because The One Is M.I.A
The partner of our dreams is still at large.
Some are single because (like me) aren’t conventionally good-looking, out to purchase our walking sticks because according to our society after 30 we are “too old”.
Navigating through the culture of dowry, our parent’s (lack of) property, our not-so-desirable brown skin, and that extra burger love handle give us no advantage in the (arrange) marriage market.
The fact that we have been taught to study well until college, get a great job, marry and only then LOVE the guy or girl (our parents, neighbours) have chosen has made most of us romantically challenged.
And having grown up watching films with misogynistic undertones, impossible standards of beauty & love is not helping us.
No wonder our dating lives are f***d up.
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#2 Single Because Who Pays The Bills
The bitter aspect a lot of us don’t talk about is financial commitments.
We work hard to help level the impulsive financial decisions we and our families made.
A lot of us are breadwinners in our family.
Not taking away the efforts our married friends put in to bring up their families but I do know folks who chose to support their parents and put their relationships on pause till they reach a better position in life.
Again, it’s a cultural mindset.
Being single without familial commitment, with no in-laws to answer to, and with no school fees to save up for, does give us more chances to support our parents than being in a married setup.
A world tour, a solo trip is always in our minds, who knows we might take our parents for that Europe tour next year.
Or we might go our first solo trip in our 50s.
And no matter our age, happiness is our choice and travelling is magical nevertheless.
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#3 Single Because We Are Healing
I know a lot of singles in this mindset.
We would rather go through our mental health struggles and healing journeys all by ourselves (supported by therapists) rather than take a partner and their family along with us.
Having to explain our mental health situation to a society that is just waking up to previously tabooed topics is extremely exhausting.
I have no shame in admitting that while I can be a supportive friend, a decent dog mom, and a fantastic aunt, I don’t have the mental stamina yet to live in an in-law setup and utterly lack the energy bandwidth to do justice to the responsibilities that come with it.
Single life has given opportunities to know ourselves, heal, and rebuild our mind, body and spirits.
And we are taking it.
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#4 Single Because We Just Met Our Inner Child
My childhood started at 30.
This is a statement I tell all my best friends.
A lot of us have gone through a lot of trauma in our teens and 20s.
We took up mothering our parents, taking major life decisions that we are not ready now to start a family and go through this process all over again.
Single life is our chance to embrace that inner child who was denied a childhood.
It’s enjoying the perks of being free, splurging, registering for art classes we couldn’t go to due to tuitions in our teens, and throwing ourselves into causes we couldn’t do because our families wouldn’t agree.
Does that mean all married folks did not have dysfunctional families growing up? not at all.
But there is no denying that we all respond to trauma very differently and for some of us this is how we do it!
If age is just a number, we are restarting the counting — this time in an attempt to reconnect with our lost selves.
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Final Thoughts
There are BTS for every “single -life is incredible” out there.
That’s why forcing to be single & happy always is unnecessary.
As singles, we are accepting,
- That insecurity of not living up to expectations,
- That sad smile of scrolling through happy couple pictures,
- That excitement of deciding the best outfit for a dinner date,
- That waiting in a queue at the vet for our pet’s vaccinations,
- That opening our journal to begin our thought diary, taking medications,
- That cheering for our bestie’s wedding,
- That saving up an Ibiza Visionboard on Pinterest,
- That fear of waking up in the middle of the night hoping there were no emergency phone calls from our families,
Every bit of it.
We are single, building our hopes again, struggling, healing and reconnecting.
Thank you for reading!
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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