Originally published February 2023.
“Go talk to him!”
“But he’s so nice!”
“Give him a chance!”
“You’re being too picky.”
“I mean, I wouldn’t date him, but you should.”
I know you hate it. I hate it too. There’s a reason why. In my opinion there is also a reason why we can’t precisely describe what we hate when we’re being spoken down to like lower beings who should not only settle, but say thank you for the opportunity. It doesn’t feel good for a reason: comments like this approach you failure-first.
When people say these things to us, we’re being ambushed by shame in the moment, and you never need to feel bad for not thinking of the perfect response until two days later in the shower. We don’t know how to respond to this because it shouldn’t be happening to human beings in the first place. There is also a reason why I bother to call these comments out on Beyonce’s internet. I want this shit to stop happening, and I think our self worth as single people, reflected out into the world, is how we do it.
This is a hidden narrative, and it requires us to get upset with people we love, which I know causes discomfort. I think our brains tend to hide certain narratives from us to keep us safe and loved, when it can. If we can keep things cozy by telling ourselves they don’t “mean it in a bad way,” “they just want us to be happy,” or worse — that we’re actually in the wrong for being single and should take this “advice,” we’re likely to do it, because keeping peace feels better than kicking beehives. There’s a kind of cruel comfort in nodding and smiling your way through single shaming, in making a joke, shrugging it off, or in simply acquiescing to whatever it is someone who thinks they’re better than you tells you to do in the moment. Anything to make it stop. I’ve been there, and you didn’t do anything wrong by behaving exactly as human beings do.
The never-discussed narrative your friends and family are still auto-renewing their membership to is the idea that your worth and value are completely tethered to romantic relationships. Your lack of a romantic relationship is feeding them information (albeit bullshit information) about your worth and your place in the world. It’s a really simple breakdown: If you’re partnered, you have more value than singles / if you’re single, you have less value than couples, and less standing in society. Certainly less standing at the holiday dinner table. Then bring time into the mix: the longer you’re single the more value you lose, the more reckless our loved ones’ behavior gets because they think they’re completely correct in their actions based on what they believe about your worth. In their minds, you’re depreciating. Like a Subaru.
That narrative gives them confidence. It erases the barrier of decency and respect between them and you, and even convinces them that they’re doing you a favor. This depreciation narrative has dropped your stock so low that nothing, in their minds, is offensive to you. Why would it be? You’re single, and that’s a low, lonely, embarrassing state of existence. Of course you want their advice, even if it stings. Anyone who is single is clearly in need — of advice, help, a good strong push in the right direction — because if she’s single, she doesn’t know better, and needs someone smarter (ie in a relationship) to show her how to get her life back on track. Even if that means settling, because if she’s still single there must be a reason — and that reason lowers her value, too. So she should take what she can get, and someone’s got to be the one to help her out here by reminding her of that. You’ve heard of “tough love,” right?
This is why people who are supposed to love you feel so comfortable saying things to you that sting. They assume there’s no amount of sting that’s worse than being single. Your worth, your value, my beloveds, that doesn’t exist for them the way their own value exists for themselves. All because you’re single.
Isn’t it amazing though that other people’s opinions of you don’t have a fucking thing to do with reality?
They don’t decide. They don’t decide what you’re worth, they don’t decide what you deserve, and they sure as shit don’t decide who you pursue or allow yourself to be pursued by because they think that’s the best you can hope for even though they got someone they actually want. You aren’t worth less than someone else just because they got married sooner in time than you. That’s why they’re better? Speed? Come the fuck on. Would you ever tell your divorced friend that they should settle for whatever they can get and let that superiority come from a place of you yourself never having been divorced? Would you ever take an action based on your own imagined betterness? Do you have it in you to treat a loved one like damaged goods? Hell no! So why would you let yourself be treated like a forgotten moldy lemon?
“I wouldn’t date him, but you should.”
Let me translate this sweaty bag of trash for you: I’m above you. I’m better than you. I have someone already, and that elevates my status in life. I need that elevated status to be put into practice, because I earned it, right? I was always taught that being in a relationship is good, and being single is bad. Because I’m in a relationship, I get to use this elevated status — it’s mine. If I don’t use it, if I don’t reiterate to myself that I’m better than single people, everything I was taught about the priority of partnered people is a lie. I don’t want the biggest decision I’ve ever made to be any less important than I was always taught it was — because that would bring my value down since I still attach my self worth to my relationship. So I’m going to say shit to to you that reminds us both of your low status, because that makes me continue to feel safe.
They’d never own this, of course. No one likes to be told they’re wrong. No one likes to be told that the thing they think makes them better and more secure than other people isn’t actually real. A rough learning curve awaits for those who’ve counted on their superiority. No doubt it’ll be littered with shards of glass and plenty of gum to step in. But you know what…I think single people have had a hard enough time dealing with degradation for one lifetime. Coupled people can go ahead and take a shift.
We are all, regardless of relationship status, equal in value as people. I can’t believe I still have to type that. If I impact the world in no other way I want to leave this rapidly warming rock having balanced the scales.
If I want to be fair (I don’t really, but…fine) I’ll acknowledge that sometimes the people we love genuinely do think they’re doing us a favor when they feed us shaming and settling narratives that they would never wish upon themselves. They have no maleficent motivation and intend no shame. They really do just want us to be happy, and they think partnership is the thing that will make us happy. (How they can think this while ignoring literally every other thing going on in our lives and their own I’ll never know.) But I don’t blame them for thinking this way, this is the narrative they were always fed, too! Maybe that’s one of the reasons it’s so hard to stop this narrative — people came by it honestly. Another way to say it: They just don’t know any better.
We are allowed to provide an education. We are not required to suffer because they lack information. There is nothing about being single that requires us to absorb, diffuse, and say thank you for offensive behavior of any kind.
Enough. Enough of people saying wildly offensive things to singles with zero consequences whatsoever because we don’t want to say anything back and hurt their feelings because they meant well. “Meant well” needs to die so that your self worth can live. Because in actuality, in the real human adult world, your relationship status has absolutely nothing to do with your value as a living breathing being. You don’t need to keep hiding that behind politeness. You’re allowed to live as a reminder to the world that their partnership isn’t a shield against shame. That shame isn’t real to begin with and there is nothing about your singlehood that requires your exposure to bad manners.
How much clout do we really think being in a romantic relationship — something literal billions of people do every day by the way—actually earns you? It baffles me how cozy and right people in couples feel while simultaneously telling singles to lower themselves, all for the crime of not having met our partners on the same timeline. When something that’s no one’s fault, you know…fate, is dressed up as something shameful that single women are bringing upon ourselves by not following baseless and insulting advice, there isn’t a fire lit under my ass, there’s an entire sun.
Another thing we ignore about relationships? Their fluidity. This shit changes all the time. Breakups happen, new partnerships form, and the whole thing starts all over again. I for one am done pretending that romantic relationships are made of bricks when I’ve seen these houses blow down from gusts of all sizes. The the certainty, the superiority, it isn’t there. It’s imagined. Am I trying to decrease the value of love? No. I am trying to balance human opinion of singlehood and couplehood because both are worth exactly the same amount of respect.
You set your worth. And I hope in reading my work that skill set (because it is one, babes) becomes easier for you than it has been previously. There is nothing about your single status that lowers your value, and there is nothing about entering into a partnership that raises it. So you might as well connect with your self worth now and form a relationship with it. Your self worth can stay with you regardless of whether or not anyone else does, and I for one take great comfort in that available consistency.
Anyone telling you that you should do something they wouldn’t do to solve a problem that’s no longer facing them is exhibiting asshole behavior whether they intend to or not. I’m done giving people passes on intent. I’d like to start changing the world now, thanks.
If you don’t want to wait days to think of the perfect defense or response the next time someone single shames you into something they think you should settle for, please feel free to select from the following option instead:
You’re not worth more than me.
You’re not better than me.
Relationships don’t make you better. They make you partnered. That’s it. Partnerships are really common, they’re not as special as you’re banking on every time you insult me by telling me to settle for something I don’t want. Relationships are also more fluid and less assumptively permanent than couples admit. But I don’t mind admitting it, if it gets you to see how, again, you’re not better than me.
If you wouldn’t want it for yourself don’t shove me toward it. That’s belittling. I don’t deserve to be belittled just because I don’t split rent. If anything I deserve to be celebrated for that accomplishment and if that’s hard to imagine, picture doubling your mortgage right now.
My singlehood isn’t something about me that’s lacking. It’s something about me that’s valuable. My single time will end and my couplehood time will start when it’s meant to, and not because I settled for something you wouldn’t touch with ten foot tongs.
What you’re showing me right now isn’t love, it’s shame. And instead of shaming you with some quippy comeback, I’m going to show you what I deserve through love. I love you enough to help you grow. Right now, you need to grow by seeing me for all of my value, not just the lack of value you happen to assign to my singlehood. I see my singlehood brimming with value. I am free, I am uncompromising, I am optimistic and full of joy. When I do find partnership, it will add to an already full and joyful life, rather than completing an incomplete life or being the only source of joy that life holds. I don’t want to burden my future relationships by making them the only source of my worth and happiness. That doesn’t seem fair to me. You aren’t being fair to me right now either. And I hope you love me as much as I love you — enough to stop. If not, our relationship can stop, because I don’t deserve this, I deserve love — from everyone I allow in my life.
That is self worth. Copy it, paste it, claim it. Enough.