Originally published in November 2021.
This can’t ALL be our job. Single people bear enough brunt, so as a holiday season gift to us all I’ve created something that puts the effort of reframing onto those in couples, for once. A member of my Patreon recently asked if I could record an episode of my podcast that’s designed to be shared with friends and family, so that they can understand why it’s no longer cool to ask us, at the holiday table, “So, are you seeeeeeeing anybodyyyyyy?” Yell at people? Tell them how to treat singles better? Don’t threaten me with a good time! I happily obliged.
This week’s episode of my podcast, A Single Serving Podcast, is not actually intended for my audience—it’s intended for anyone who loves a member of my audience. This week, I’m taking our loved ones through seven VERY common singlehood scenarios and showing them how they hurt us, what we can all do instead, and how they can start thinking about singlehood in a way that lends it just as much respect as that given to couples. Because that’s precisely what we deserve.
I talk a lot about how singlehood doesn’t deserve what it gets, how singlehood and couplehood are actually identical in value and validity, because they both involve human beings, but I know that it might take a bit of a firm talking-to for those outside of singlehood to really understand why I say these things. My language is direct, but it is said with love, and it’s said in the hopes that this holiday season, which will hopefully feel less distant and scary than the last one we had if you’ll recall, is one where everyone feels equally welcome and loved. Because singles don’t, always.
When single people are the subject of invasive questions, when we’re treated as not quite real yet without a spouse, or when our privacy is seen as less sacred than those in couples, we don’t want to be around the people who are making us feel this way. When the accomplishments of our lives are seen as less worthy of celebration because we don’t have “someone to share them with,” that’s incredibly insulting. As if someone additional who didn’t do this thing we did has to be around in order for a thing we did to matter. And then you get confused and angry about why we don’t want to come home for Christmas. We can do so much better than this, we can love and treat each other so much better than this, so that’s why I made a podcast episode that tells partnered people how to treat single people and then I put it on the internet.
Am I a little blunt? A little firm? SURE! But remember this: Y’all have been directly insulting us for years, blurting out every highly personal question about our private lives that springs to mind and tossing dating advice at us like Mardi Gras beads. We’ve been taking incoming from the coupled world forever, this is just me whacking one back over the net.
If you have a family member or you’re hosting someone for the holidays who is single, perhaps single later in life than the world tells us is okay, please give this episode a listen, for them. Please take 46 minutes and educate yourself on how to be one person in their lives who doesn’t view them as less-than. It’s the holiday season, give them that gift.
Listen to the most recent episode of A Single Serving Podcast, titled “A Wedding Ring Is Not A Diploma,” here.
