Originally published June 2023.
The only thing I really want to say to single women is “enough with the dating advice, just live your life,” but let’s introduce a bit more depth, hmm? Support for single women is something of a speciality of mine, but as with any area of expertise, I find myself repeating the most important bits. It then becomes your choice to heed advice, or not.
1 — Start A Savings Account
Lady, if you learn nothing else. I don’t care if its beginning balance is $50. Start a savings account — today. Saving accounts and consistent savings habits are endlessly valuable to single women, and I don’t just mean from a financial perspective. When part of your personal culture is smart savings practices, you give yourself not only the actual ability to handle shit hitting the fan, but you also relieve yourself of the stress and worry of not being able to. A savings account is good for your health.
You’re not going to build a savings account by skipping lattes and avocado toast like Boomers who’ve never lived our reality will suggest in passing like they’re giving you sage advice when they’re really just being dismissive of what the world has become. The way to build a savings account is by cutting your money off at the source. Designate a percentage of your incoming paychecks for your savings account, and have them automatically routed there. I save one-third of every paycheck I receive (I am freelance, so this also accounts for the money I need to save to pay my taxes, which are never taken out of my paychecks). Initially, I found this process painful, but you know what makes everything feel better? Seeing your money grow. And then grow more. You know what doesn’t hurt a bit? The moment you open your first investment account (I use an app called Betterment, I love it) and start routing money from your savings over to it and your money grows EVEN MORE without you having to do a damned thing. Having a rough day? Check your investment app balance. It’ll perk you right up.
If you lose your job, you can still pay your rent. If your car breaks down, you can get it repaired. If there’s an emergency across the country, you can buy a plane ticket. And if you’re burned out, you can rest — because that counts as a valid savings expenditure, too. My savings account allowed me to leave the startup world and become the independently employed person I was always meant to be, but never thought I could be because…oh no, health insurance! Did you know you can buy that shit? It’s expensive as hell, but my freedom is worth every penny.
Your savings account is there for the practical purposes of handling your business, but it’s also there for the often-overlooked benefits of giving you peace of mind, independence, and confidence. Save your money, so you can spend it when you need to, without having to depend on anyone else — start now.
2 — Delete Your Dating Apps
Dating apps do not give a shit about you. Dating apps give a shit about your credit card information. Please understand this. They don’t want you to find love, and why would they? They make more money if you never do. Dating apps are a for-profit industry whose goal is the exact opposite of its user base. The LAST THING a dating app wants you to do is meet someone, because when you meet someone, you stop giving it money.
Dating apps LOVE that dating sucks. It’s literally the thing that gives them job security. Why would they ever want to make their product better when they can do the least amount of work possible and still make this much money? We’re talking billions, Google it. Snap the fuck out of your digital dating dependency and reclaim your actual life. Delete these fucking things, they’re abusive. You can check your Hinge or Bumble messages right now and confirm that.
A cruel side effect of dating apps is that they narrow our brains so much that entire generations are coming to believe that “this is how everyone meets now.” Only it’s not. Not by a mile. The number of different ways people can meet is unquantifiable. Do you know two couples with the exact same “how we met” story? I don’t. Relationships aren’t assembled on a factory line. They’re allowed to be a lot more bespoke than that. Stop thinking dating apps are a path to partnership when, after however many chances (and years) you’ve given them, they haven’t been. Would you let a human being make promises and not keep them for that long? Then why are you allowing a dating app to do it? Stop letting something that’s taking advantage of you (and knows it) claim so much of your money, time, and headspace. Enough.
3 — Stop Centering What Other People Think
Our lack of a romantic relationship is seen by society as less valuable in terms of social currency, so we feel less-than, if not outright ashamed. We’re seen as unwanted, unwantable, and unfinished without a partner. But if we stopped believing that the sad, pathetic, failure sentiments toward single women were the only sentiments we were allowed to have about ourselves, I think we’d be having a much better time. When we center what society thinks, we miss the opportunity to find out what we think of singlehood for ourselves.
Entertain the idea of singlehood being a good thing? Are you crazy?! I just want a boyfriend!
This is a shame mentality. It’s driven by a lifetime of messages telling us that once you hit adulthood (and even before), if you don’t have a romantic relationship, you’re a lower life class than those who do. We become manic beings, searching and swiping into oblivion, because no dating “horror story” is ever as bad as the same of not being validated by society. Nothing is worse than being single, right?
I get the whole bed. I never have to compromise on where we go for dinner. I never have to compromise about anything at all. I don’t have to awkwardly fold myself into someone else’s family. I spend and save my money as I choose. My housework is sized for one person and I never have to ask anyone else to do their goddamned share, ever. I am free. The freest I have ever been. Are relationships amazing? Absolutely. But they’re not amazing enough to cause this much societal shame about singlehood, which doesn’t actually suck.
4 — Literally Just Live
The only dating advice I will ever give is live your life. Do the things you like to do, be the person you are proud to be. I believe that in living our authentic lives, we will come into contact with people we are compatible with. No one likes this advice, because they think it will take longer than using a dating app, but I ask you…have you met someone yet? No? How long have you been using your strategy? Maybe give mine a try. At the very least, you’ll be happier every day, and there’s nothing “least” about that, in my opinion. What sort of life could you live if dating wasn’t dragging it down? Who says the only way you can stop dating is if you “find someone?”
I don’t believe we can force our way to the love of our lives, and I don’t believe that the current dating culture serves those who are currently single. I don’t think dating is working, I think dating is disappointing, frustrating, exhausting, and abusing the people participating in it. There is nothing about being miserably single that communicates to the relationship gods (which don’t exist) that you want a partner. It is possible to be happily single and desire a relationship at the exact same time, and there’s nothing about living a singlehood that isn’t desperate for a relationship that prevents you from finding one. You are not “giving up” by shifting your focus from dating to living. You are acknowledging that your one human life on Earth deserves more than dating is giving it.
What is meant for us will not miss us. I think we can relax more than we’ve ever been given permission to. This lack of permission stems from generation after generation viewing single women as failures, while viewing single men as playboys. Since the two (heterosexually speaking) go together, that has never made any fucking sense to me. Claim it, claim your free, possibility-filled life and stop letting what the world thinks of single women drive so many of your behaviors.
You don’t need a relationship, you want one. And it’s okay to want something and not have it yet. That doesn’t mean you won’t have it ever. In the meantime, stop wasting your singlehood by trying to end it at any literal and figurative cost. See it for all that it is, have you ever even bothered to view singlehood for its value? Or have you been exclusively focused on the shitty parts? The worst time to realize how great being single can be is the day you get married. You have singlehood now, live it now. Enjoy singlehood now, and enjoy your relationships later.
Our single time is valuable, precious, free, and fun. The world doesn’t see it that way, but I do — and I live it that way, too. When you stop centering what other people think about your singlehood, delete your dating apps so you stop infusing your day with negativity, and save your money so that you can do whatever the fuck you want, this life is pretty sweet. It would be a terrible thing to miss.