I believe in psychics, but you’re not one. Most people have no ability to predict the future any more than a Magic 8 Ball, but despite that, single women, certainly myself included, are constantly told that if we do X, then we’ll meet someone.
Love yourself first, then you’ll meet someone. Learn to be more outgoing, then you’ll meet someone. Take better care of yourself, then you’ll meet someone. Get your shit together, then you’ll meet someone. Stop looking, then you’ll meet someone.
The well-meaning, somehow-wise-because-she-happens-to-not-be-single friend can somehow look at us and pinpoint the thing we need to do to not be single anymore, like an oracle. “You just need to fix [insert thing here], then you’ll meet someone. I know, I’m not single anymore.” Really Stacy? Since you met your husband shitfaced on dollar margarita night while you were miserable at your job and living off takeout pad thai, I’m not buying it.
Maybe well-meaning friends (and sometimes strangers, in my case) haven’t met their partners because of some purposeful or wise action they took that somehow makes them all-knowing in this area. Maybe they were just living their lives like always and something wonderful happened. Maybe they just got fucking lucky.
There’s always going to be that “one thing” she’s not doing, or not doing right, or doing and shouldn’t be, that someone can use to make themselves the smart one, the one who knows how to “fix” her. But no one can fix her, because she isn’t broken. And, I wonder, once she does that thing, what’s the next carrot that will be held on a string in front of her? How long are we going to make single women feel like they’re wrong, and that it’s their own fault they’re wrong?
I don’t like the asinine advice given to single women because, without evidence of any kind, it puts blame on us. It tells us we’re doing something wrong and that’s why we’re in a situation we can’t seem to change no matter how hard we try. What else could it be, really? Non-single people did it, why can’t single people figure this riddle out? It certainly couldn’t be a swipe-for-sex, non-committal culture where adult friend groups are painfully insulated and resistant to bringing in new people now, could it? I better sip this tea before it gets cold.
Don’t lie to single women because you think you know more than they do. Don’t lie to single women because you think it’ll make them feel better. Don’t think we are a population that needs to be made to feel better using the hollow promise of meeting a man. Maybe try to make us feel better by letting us know we have a friend.
If you want to be supportive of a single woman, just be in her life, and make her a part of yours. Go to dinner, go on trips, exchange a gift at the holidays. Be in her life knowing that she is everything she needs to be just as she is, and that she isn’t missing something, something you can predict how or when she’ll find. Be her friend. Not her fortune teller.