Originally published in February 2021
They’re casually cruel, the degrading and devaluing ways people speak to single women. The shame we absorb from “How are you still single?” The lack we absorb from “Are you seeing anybody?” The fear we absorb from “You’re not getting any younger.” The anger we absorb from “Tell me your dating stories!” All while receiving invitations to other people’s validating celebrations in the mail more often than credit card applications and bills. There is casual cruelty in the way single people are spoken to, spoken about, and viewed in society. How Not To Die Alone is the latest in a long line of books reiterating how single is one of the most shameful, lack-soaked things you can be.
The book is written by Logan Ury, Director of Relationship Science at Hinge, so if it feels a bit like a saxophone salesman writing a book on the benefits of owning a saxophone, go with that feeling, it’s on point. I bought and read this book after a podcast listener of mine sent me a message about how bad the book made her feel. While I’m adept at fielding negative incoming messages aimed at myself, if you hurt a member of my community, you have poked a dragon with a stick. So what follows here won’t be particularly flattering, but it will be my honest opinion. If she can write that, I can write this. She fired shots first.
Here’s the gist of the book with a tagline that reads “The Surprising Science That Will Help You Find Love”: Force yourself to date a lot, gather data in the form of human beings, decide which of the human beings you forced yourself to date was the best you’ve been exposed to, factor in your age and how long you’ve been dating, then marry the next one who hits the benchmark. Do this, or you’ll Die Alone.
Before I really get into the weeds, I do want to pay this author a compliment. I think it’s really important to point out that humans can disagree on some things and agree on others. I worry we’re losing that ability and it’s a vital skill. After reading the book, I really think her strength lies in relationship advice, as opposed to dating advice. While I found her dating advice juvenile, assumptive, and degrading, I thought her relationship advice was quite on point! So if you’re in an existing relationship, give this woman a follow, she has some smart takes on behavior within existing relationships. If you’re looking for a relationship though, run fast and far.
I’ve read the book, mostly so that you don’t have to, and below I’m going to explore a few things I find funny, and by funny I mean offensively wrong.Real quick: you can listen to podcast appearances this author has made in which she clearly tells us this book was marketed at both genders.Then I would like you to search your brain for a straight, single man you know who would purchase and read this book compared to how many straight, single women you know who would do the same.Give ita blue cover all you want.We don’t scare single people, we scaresingle women, while we turn around and make single men feel like they have all the time and options in the world.I’m really fucking tired of this lie people tell under the umbrella of keeping things neutral.Single life doesn’t feel neutral for single women.
Let’s get into it, I know we all have shit to do today:
1 — The Title
Let’s ignore, for one fucking minute, that a book called How To Not Die Alone coming out during a year in which…what is it now, 500,000 people have died of a global pandemic in our country alone is, among other things, revoltingly timed. This isn’t the title of a book that cares whether or not single people find love. This is the title of a book that knows it can take advantage of how scared single women are all the time—particularly single women over 30 who will find this book particularly recycle bin-worthy — in order to make a dollar.
Here’s the thing about the title: It’s good. It’s a financial marvel. It’s clear, strong, and it shouts out to exactly its target market from across the room or the internet. It’s so good that you don’t even have to read the book to absorb a profoundly negative and pressured message about the fact that you’re single. The pages could be blank, the message would still be clear. You’re alone, you’re wrong, and you have work to do. It doesn’t matter if the work makes you feel like shit, and never pays off. Get back to work, you pathetic single woman, or you’ll suffer the worst fate a publisher could think of. In the words of the author on NPR’s Life Kit: “If the title triggers you, good.”
2 — The Assumption Of Options
This author has never been single in her 30s and I didn’t need any information about her life’s timeline from this book’s pages in order to tell you that. I know it because this book assumes options. Lots of options. This book assumes you’re matching with people and meeting people as often as trains pull into the 14th street station. It commands you to go on second dates, as if they’re an abundant option even available to you in the first place. If you are a single person, particularly a single person over 30, you will laugh at the notion of such abundance and so many options in the dating space. And that was true before a pandemic. Also, if you’re under 30 and options are more plentiful, I still urge you to ignore a message that encourages you to run from your singlehood like it’s on fire.
When I turned 30, I noticed that my match volume on dating apps (I was still using them and would be for another 6.5 years before I woke the fuck up, unfortunately), dropped to almost zero. Confused, I lied about my age and dropped it back down to 29. The matches went back up. It is the only time I have ever or will ever lie about my age. I’m 38 years old and, among other traits, I’m too smart to fall for a book that has no idea what actually dating during the point at which you’re scared enough to buy a book called How To Not Die Alone actually looks like. I have no idea where this author thinks all our options are coming from. But according to the book…I’m the one living in a fantasy. I’m the “romanticizer.” I’ll explain.
3 — The Blatant Fucking Hypocrisy
Real quick: The author met her husband for the first time in college, they did not date at that point. In later years, she swiped left on him on Tinder. Later still, they worked at the same place, Google. Then he became her tutor, and after spending recurring time together, they became friends, and eventually romantic partners. She didn’t see her now husband in a romantic light until she had a session with a dating coach who urged her to shed the superficiality of dating requirements in favor of how she wanted to feel in a relationship. She then realized that her tutor and colleague at Google made her feel that way. Another way to describe this process is growing the fuck up. She never had to search for the person who made her feel the way she wanted to feel in a relationship. Life had made sure he was already there. They are now married with frozen embryos. (She also tells single women to freeze their eggs, using her frozen embryos as encouragement, as if she’s on our team. This ignores the fact that frozen embryos are more likely to lead to a living baby than frozen eggs, and it also ignores the fact that she did it while living in a two-income household.)
Two points of hypocrisy. First, the author didn’t meet her husband online and indeed never would have if LIFE had not intervened. But apps are repeatedly used throughout the book as a route to finding a partner. And second, the author wants us to believe that just living our lives and believing we’ll meet a partner organically, you know…the way she did, is a romantic notion. She calls us “romanticizers” and degrades our hope by equating it with fantasy. She rejects the notion of fate, luck, chance, all of it, and attributes her “success” with her “methods.” College, left swipe, Google, tutor, friends, lovers. Methods. Mkay.
Fate/The Universe/God, whoever it actually is made damn sure that this person was a recurring presence in the author’s life. It went so far as to ensure repeated exposure to him until she got the goddamned message. She’s the living embodiment of “what is meant for you will not miss you” but she rejects our hope as fantasy all while being married to a man she met in the normal course of living her life. I’m not shitting on how she met her husband, I think it’s great how they came together. I’m simply saying that if she can, you can too. She isn’t married because of methods or math. She’s married because she fell in love with someone who was there and available to fall in love with.
4 — The Responsibility
The entire time I read this book, something was gnawing at me. And it wasn’t just the pithy, ill-timed, and quite frankly flippant jokes the author makes throughout. (Honestly, she didn’t need the jokes. I found her to be quite a clear and concise writer to be honest, I think she has good writing skills and I hope she uses them to better ends next time.) I finally put my finger on it: The book assumes dating is our job.
Throughout, dating is a default. It is the default responsibility, chore, requirement, etc. that belongs to single people. If you are single and want a relationship, you’d better be dating. Dating is the way to find a suitable partner. If you’re not dating dating dating dating dating, you’re going to Die Alone. Which is cruel code for: be single for even one more second longer, gross.
There is real danger in a book that literally uses the term “force yourself.” (Review my Instagram Story highlight for this pudding’s proof.) Even ignoring the dangers of exposure to microtrauma every time you open an app and have no idea what kinds of communications await you and the dangers involved in constantly meeting strangers in real life, this book ignores exhaustion. It ignores the mental toll dating takes. It ignores how dating is one area of life where effort never has to match reward, where apps get to take your money and never deliver you a partner—it ignores that modern dating has become a difficult, often punishing culture. It ignores that the mental health solutions to the difficulties of singlehood never have to go beyond “just find someone!” We never get real help for what’s happening to us, we only get more books telling us how to end our singlehood faster—and they make money regardless of whether or not their “methods” ever work.
If dating is difficult, unrewarding, self-esteem-diminishing, or simply something youdon’t want to do, please do not let books like this one convince you that dating is what has to happen before love can.Please remind yourself of all the ways couples you know have come together in life.Then ask yourself if any of them ever usedthe “method” described in this book that reduces your valid desires to fantasies and your worth as a single person to nothing.
5 — The Obvious Inaccuracy
The only way to not Die Alone is to die first.
6 — How To Settle
That’s the real title of this book. That’s the title that tells the truth. But it doesn’t sound nice, nobody buys How To Settle. So they called it How To Not Die Alone instead. If you want a book that tells you to forgo, not all standards exactly, but certainly the idea of organically falling in love, add this book to the library of titles that reiterates to you just how pathetic and desperate your own singlehood is or should be. If you want a book that takes human beings coming together in genuine partnership, love, and family and makes it a “method” or a “surprising science,” go for it. Or you could seek out messages that contribute to your validity and self esteem, rather than rob you of them.
Look, do I want to celebrate women writing books? Absolutely. But sisterly solidarity ends when the women finding success are doing it by taking advantage of the shame and fear of singlehood that society has bred into single women. That isn’t “girl power,” it’s one girl drawing power from another girl’s low self esteem, and that kind of shit doesn’t deserve my silence.
If you’re single, you deserve respect. You deserve to be spoken to like there isn’t something inherently wrong with you. You deserve more messages that lift you up, that help you see how it’s possible to love single life while remaining open to and desirous of a relationship at the same time. You deserve messages that see you, not messages that shame you. I’m sorry the book world saw this as a golden opportunity.
You also deserve love. I believe that you’ll have it. I cannot tell you when or how, and I never will. But while we’re on the subject of data, I’ve noticed…you know since birth, that most people who want to partner eventually do. I see couples all around me. I know them, I’m related to them, I follow them on fucking Instagram. Instead of allowing this to make me jealous, I allow it to reinforce what I know to be true: Love is possible. Partnership is possible. It doesn’t require perfection, or “fixing” myself, because none of the couples I know are comprised of perfect people.
Love is possible, I see proof of it all the time. One day I’ll have it, and while I don’t have any certainty on when “one day” will be, I do know that the validity, joy, and fullness I’ve given to my singlehood will ensure that I won’t spend every day until then desperately searching. If the idea that single people are allowed to simply live their lives, and have love occur as part of the act of existing at all is romantic, then I’m a romantic, too. I wonder what we’d call any writer who tries to belittle the romance, hope, and self worth that single people have within them? Many words come to mind, but scientist isn’t one of them. Neither is author.