Originally published September 2022.
I’ve been working in the singlehood reframing space for over four years, and one thing that’s consistently given me a rash is the fact that a happy, valid, content singlehood can’t just…be. For some reason it seems very difficult for singles to simply exist as happy human beings without the world also demanding a show of it. I’m talking about the pressures or sometimes literal requests singles receive to demonstrate that we’re “living our best lives.” It’s never enough to just do it, you have to show people you’re doing it too, or it doesn’t count.
This might be my iconoclastic nature talking, but I refuse to live my life obligated to social media and/or the opinions of others. I’ve yet to receive a check in the mail from either so I consider living my life in service of them to be a genuine waste of my time. When we feel compelled to show the world just how “fabulous” our singlehood is, through acts and demonstrations that abide by a couple-centric society’s definitions of fabulous, we are compensating for something that does not require compensation.
If we’re operating in a world, and most certainly a mindset, that still sees couplehood as the “correct” way to be while singlehood is incorrect and lacking, hell yes we’ll feel pressure to demonstrate that, “Nuh-uh, my life is great too, see?!”
Your single life is great, and it doesn’t have to be packed to the rafters in order to be great. You define great, the opinions of others can never do that for you. At least not in a way that’s lasting. When we feel compelled to prove how fun, full, and fantastic our single lives are, all we’re doing is taking one pressure, “find someone,” and replacing it with another, proving we’re not sad.
Single people never have to prove their happiness, we’re allowed to just be happy, and that’s enough. (In this day and age that’s actually quite a lot.) I believe we get to just live, to simply exist, can you imagine? I don’t think we need to prove our happiness or our worth in order to be loved and accepted and I also believe that one day the world will agree with me. Until then, I’ll keep writing if you’ll keep reading.
Here’s some truth: Imposed or implied obligations around singlehood get in our fucking way, and I brought examples. The false narrative that we need to “choose singlehood” or “marry ourselves” just so other people will believe us when we say we don’t need to date anymore — I hate that. How about other people just believe me without me having to alter my desires to fit what they are capable of understanding? Another: Believing that we’re not allowed to enjoy our singlehood, lest it anger the relationship gods and they never send us a partner. That’s superstition, nothing more. Further still and most relevant here, the compulsion to make a public show of a happy singlehood because we’re afraid that if we don’t, other people won’t believe that we’re happy, and they’ll imagine us as sad, pathetic lonely people on the couch. It makes me feel absolutely unhinged that we’re living the most free and uncompromising versions of our lives right now and yet we still feel like we have to box ourselves into outdated, self worth-diminishing sets of rules like these. They’re harder to get rid of than crabgrass, good god.
We come by the urge to participate in these narratives honestly, of course — we’ve all been groomed toward this since we were kids. The whole “pics or it didn’t happen thing” didn’t do us any favors, either. We are fully capable of knowing exactly how good it can feel to live as a single person because we’re living that life every day, making choices about how it’s going to look and what it’s going to contain, all that good stuff. But when we put the opinions of others first, we render ourselves incapable of loving our happy singlehood unless other people believe it’s lovable, too. That kind of thinking prioritizes the opinions of others over the life we are actually experiencing. Does that sound okay to you? It sounds like bullshittery to me.
I think there are three main ways the world asks singles to either justify our place in the world or prove our worth: (1) defending our happiness, (2) displaying a razzle dazzle social life, and (3) winning through professional accomplishments. I’ll discuss them all.
Defending Our Happiness
It’s the disbelief for me. The doubting glances, the… “sure, okay” comments — the opinion that we’re “lying to ourselves” when we say we’re happily single. As if someone outside of our brain knows our real thoughts more than we, the possessors of said brain, do. Whether we prefer singlehood or remain open to and excited about future partnerships, expressing any sort of contentment let alone positivity around our own singlehood often comes with a side dish of not being believed. Human beings don’t enjoy not being believed, especially when we’re telling the fucking truth.
It’s as if the default setting when it comes to single people is that we’re lying — particularly when we’re talking about something that specifically pertains to our singlehood. I don’t give friends television recommendations and get back a…“yeah no but really how do you feel?” This penchant for falsehoods only ever seems to apply when we’re talking about our single lives. Isn’t that neat?
Anyone who doubts you, who needs proof of your singlehood happiness, I’d like to know where they got that entitlement, where it is written that you must satisfy anyone other than yourself when it comes to the life you live. Satisfying yourself in a couple-centric world is enough of an accomplishment without also feeling compelled to convince other people (who have never given a moment’s thought to the notion of singlehood validity) that you did it.
If something is true for you, it is true — period. The aching pull to make other people believe you is centering what other people think, and showing you that, most likely for learned reasons, you can’t feel good about your life unless other people feel good about it too. But other people’s opinions don’t have a tangible impact on your life, only yours do. When we prioritize what other people think and let that be in change of how we feel, in my opinion, we’re living less overall, because so much of our lives are lived in service of what other people think.
Don’t hold your happiness back until you have permission to be happy via the approval of others. You’re allowed to give yourself permission to be happy right now. I know that’s easier to type than it is to live, but let me remind us all of a truth that’s hard to swallow and keep down: We’ve spent enough of our lives waiting for “somedays.” Single life can often feel like one big waiting game, holding out hope of a partnership and waking up years later to discover how long you’ve been thinking it’s just around the corner. I don’t say this to shame us, I say this to give us permission to stop waiting for a future state, and start fully living our present one. Do you really want to keep delaying your happiness until someone else gives it permission to be true?
Centering the opinions of others and caring about what other people think is an entirely human tendency. Other people’s opinions and approvals connote safety, and safety in community is a very human need. Of course we’re going to care about what other people think, somewhere in the back of our minds our safety depends on it. But in knowing this, in knowing that you’re not flawed or at fault for caring about the opinions of others, I hope it becomes easier to practice letting them go, and to replace your need for their approval with approval of yourself, aka self worth.
Your happiness is true–or nonexistent–regardless of whether or not other people believe it.
You are in charge of your happiness, and even when you refuse to prove it to someone else…it’s still there. Try something for me: The next time you communicate to a friend, family member, or colleague that you’re happy in your singlehood, content in it, not stressed, etc., and they don’t believe you, just say, “Okay.” And literally nothing else.
Move on, change the subject, go about your day and your life. Practice releasing yourself from the pressure to make other people believe you, and prioritize the fact that you already believe yourself. Find out what it’s like to let it go. Let someone else sit with their own lack of trust and confusion, because sorting out those things isn’t your responsibility. Prioritizing your wellbeing is.
Second: A Razzle Dazzle Life
Has anyone else felt pressured to have a bustling social calendar for fear of being a sad single alone on the couch? At this point we’re all fairly aware that existing singlehood narratives are really shitty. They’re lame, embarrassing, shameful, and many of them, especially the way they are presented in media and society, arent narratives we want to be associated with. The traditional escape method from these narratives has always been “find someone,” and we all know how effortless that particular endeavor has proven to be.
For the record, nights on my couch with my cat have been some of my favorite nights, so enjoyable in fact that anyone describing these situations as negatives is showing me their (rather embarrassing) ignorance. It’s so telling to me that the people still buying into ancient singlehood narratives are the people who have never lived them. They have literally zero frame of reference for how free and uncompromising our lives can be and yet they still feel confident speaking of us in a sour tone as though there couldn’t be anything worse than being single and home alone on a Saturday night.
Even when we know their narratives are bullshit, they can still sting. We don’t want to be thought of as sad or pathetic, of course we don’t! It’s deeply uncomfortable to know that we’re viewed through a pathetic lens, especially when that lens is not accurately depicting our single experience. So to combat this, our compulsion is to demonstrate a vibrant, bustling single life full of plans and excitement and travel and wild stories — you know this urge too well, you remember watching it on television.
Its a narrative in my opinion perpetuated by cultural art like Sex and the City, etc — which at the time felt like a new narrative because it was showing single women enjoying themselves and going through very “real” scenarios with their friends in a way that felt like a window into a world previously hidden. But we forget that things like television shows and books and movies are telling stories, and with television shows, they have to tell a new story every week. The pace of media and art doesn’t align with the pace of our reality, but we feel compelled to prove how much fun we’re having nonetheless — we perpetually weave a tale to avoid shame. These fictional stories sunk into the cultural narrative even though living that kind of reality would be unrealistic and exhausting. Remember that television shows lie, it’s literally their job.
In reality, the items on our calendars actually have very little at all to do with how we feel inside, and this is true whether you’re single or partnered. It doesn’t matter how active a social life is, it is still just as possible to be sad, or happy, while single.
If you find yourself in a position where you feel compelled to prove the validity of your singlehood happiness by having a bursting social calendar, ask yourself what’s actually motivating that compulsion, and what a full social calendar actually has to do with the validity of your singlehood.
Singles are not given a lot of encouragement to rest, take care of our emotional wellbeing, put in less effort, etc. We’re only ever told to do more, to try things differently, to try harder, the work is perpetually on our shoulders to solve the problem of our singlehood.
I am a massive fan of ease in a single person’s life, mostly because I know how good it feels but also because I’ve never seen any aspect of society give us permission to slow the fuck down and take care of ourselves — just the opposite. If I find ease, or peace in some stillness, I’m “never going to meet anyone in my living room.” Ease isn’t something singles are allowed to have until we “find someone” and I find that wildly unfair.
These pressures and compulsions pushed me, in prior iterations of my singlehood, to do so much — even when I didn’t want to — and the result was always the same. I was still single. I don’t want that for you, I want you to know pleasure on your own terms, and ease without guilt. I believe that’s allowed in our singlehood, and I don’t think that having these things precludes us from partnership. I think we’re allowed to rest when it comes to the pursuit of partnership, because pursuit isn’t a prerequisite for partnership. I think when we let go of the pressure to work toward finding a partner, we let ourselves rest everywhere else too, because when life isn’t about “finding someone,” there is less need to compensate for not having someone with tons of social activity.
The pressure to prove your full, vibrant social life to others so that they won’t think you’re sad is a clever, cruel way that the couplehood right/singlehood wrong narrative infiltrates our energy, and depletes it. Because even if you’re no longer actively dating, if couplehood is still the only “correct” way to be in your mind, you might feel compelled to compensate with other things like a bursting social calendar. There is nothing you need to compensate for simply because you’re single. Your rest is allowed, and necessary.
Third: Success
Has anyone else ever felt that if you don’t have “success” at relationships, you’d better have success in other places or people will think you’re double the failure?
Again, this is a compulsion to prove your worth or validity, and this time for extra fun it’s via an accomplishment that is viewed by society as “as important” as partnership. It’s the biggest thing we can think of that’s not a wedding, right? A new job, a great job, a promotion, a big salary, a prestigious title, etc. Whatever the “success,” it’s still compensating for something that does not need to be compensated for. There’s nothing about a successful career that completes you or makes you finally worthy, just like couplehood doesn’t actually do those things either.
We come into this world as valid beings with nothing to prove. Our place here on earth is inherent, we don’t have to earn it. But of course we’re not made to feel that way. From school age onward we’re graded and measured and of course we feel like we have to prove our worth to the world, we were literally taught to.
The truth is that you are not moving through life at a deficit that you need to apologize for. There’s nothing about you that is behind in life. There’s no gap or shortcoming you need to fill with a successful career to finally be worthy of praise and respect and acceptance. All of those things are already things you deserve. And when we know we deserve them, it becomes easier to not receive them.
I know that sounds weird, but we’re living in the current world and for some reason, praise and respect and acceptance are still poured onto couples where singles are largely viewed as less-than. It’s important to remember that most of those people pouring out that praise have never lived a life that looks like ours, so they’ve never even had a chance to see how wonderful and valid single life is. Praising couplehood only is little more than a fear of the unknown. If all you’ve ever been taught was to cherish partnership, marriage, and family over everything else, once you acquire those things and feel accomplished, praised, and accepted, why would you ever open your mind to the idea of any other life being as worthy as the one you’re being praised for? Anyone viewing singlehood as less-than has never had any reason (or opportunity!) to see or enjoy things from our perspective.
The world doesn’t get how valid, valuable, and worthy single life is, but that doesn’t impact what we deserve at all. We deserve just as much praise, respect and acceptance as anyone in a couple. I’m sorry we don’t receive it, but we deserve it all the same. So in an attempt to receive those things, we might try to use our career to get them, because careers are things that coupled people understand, too.
The kicker, wouldn’t you know it, is that even the most successful women on earth are still shamed and viewed as not quite as accomplished as coupled women. Pick up any magazine mentioning Jennifer Aniston, ever, and you’ll see what I mean.
I know it’s sometimes hard to feel like this is true, but life isn’t actually a competition. We don’t do things like partner up or pursue careers to “win” at life. Because who are you actually trying to beat?
We don’t have to pursue career success so that people will take us seriously. We get to pursue whatever sort of career path we want because we personally find it fulfilling. You don’t have to impress anyone’s expectations, ever. It might feel good in the moment, but it is never required of you. Anyone looking at you and thinking you’re not successful enough to be as single as you are–that’s who I’m judging, never you.
Our judgments reflect what we fear, or what we don’t know or understand. Let them be confused about you.
Live whatever life you want, with whatever career you want, because living for the approval of others is both exhausting and ultimately unfulfilling — because someones always going to want more. They’ll always find a flaw, they’ll always find something lacking, and doesn’t that say more about the kind of person they are? Never satisfied, never content, and expecting their own ideals of other people? The phrase “how dare they” comes to mind.
You never have to compensate for something that isn’t wrong. I’m sorry the world makes us feel differently, but we also have agency here. We get to choose how we feel, even in a world that wants us to feel the way it thinks we should. I don’t give a shit about should. I give a shit about singles, and our ability to live exactly the way we want, the way that feels good. We get to live our truth regardless of whether or not anyone else believes it. Their opinions don’t dictate your reality. Your reality is always true, and it’s waiting for you to enjoy it, regardless of whether or not anyone else is watching.
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If you liked this essay, you’ll probably also enjoy my book A Single Revolution: Don’t look for a match. Light one. Book links are affiliate links.