‘This is the BEST news EVER!!!,’ read one text from a friend, ‘OMGGG, I’m soooooo happy for you,’ said another. Others followed, feverishly fishing for details, the exclamation marks growing in excitement each time. My achievement? Not buying a house, not landing my dream job, but meeting a man.
I wasn’t surprised by their reaction, but I was slightly disappointed. While so much has been done to move us away from the idea that single women are ‘spinsters,’ or ‘left on the shelf,’ there are still people who subconsciously - or even consciously - view women in that way. And it was clear to me, in sharing the news of my new boyfriend, that what I had long suspected to be true - that I was seen as lesser for not having a partner - wasn’t just in my mind.
I’d been single for two years when I met my boyfriend, but from my mid twenties to my early thirties I’d spent a lot of time alone - much of it through choice. It confounded people who couldn’t understand why I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, just settle down. There were a myriad of reasons but ultimately they amounted to one key thing: I wasn’t ready.
I wanted to know myself, I wanted to know I could be ok alone, I wanted to feel the freedom of independence to know why, and to whom, I would be willing to let some of it go. I wanted to travel solo, and resist the urge to take the first person who offered themselves to me just because other people thought I should. Going into the last year there was certainly a desire to meet someone worthy of my time, energy and effort, but of the few things I regret in my life, truly getting to know myself has never been one of them.
Over the years though I’ve felt a huge amount of pressure to conform, or to justify that choice. And on more than one occasion I sat across from friends who would, in the same breath, tell me their partner’s were cheating or controlling, before asking if I thought I’d get married soon (no, I’m not joking). People are suspicious of single women in a way which, if I’m honest, feels like a major own goal for feminism. Because the problem is, when we continue to see a man as the ultimate prize, we do away with every good thing we do for women.
We can break glass ceilings, fight for fair pay, we can speak up, we can grow in our acceptance of our bodies and re-write the way we view ourselves. But when we celebrate a woman finding a man in the same way we might celebrate her flying to the moon and curing cancer on the way, we must know we’ve gone wrong somewhere.
This is not to say that I’m not happy to have met my boyfriend, he brings an immeasurable amount of joy to my life in many ways. It’s also not to say that being in a relationship with someone can’t bring a certain contentment to your life in completely different ways to how being single can. It just feels reductive to define my success and happiness by his existence. And, more so, it’s uncomfortable to feel that of all the things I’ve achieved in my life, ‘bagging a man,’ remains something that some people put above everything else.
Exactly 25 years on from the film’s release, I find myself crying, laughing and wincing along with her.
Anecdotally, I know I’m not alone. Another friend who had spent a long period of time single once confided, ‘When I met my partner, it quickly became obvious I was viewed differently now. While I was single in my thirties I’d felt there had been a drift with certain married friends who clearly thought our lives were moving in different directions - despite my best efforts to maintain contact and hang out - but suddenly I was welcomed back into the fold with open arms.’
Another reason I don’t feel like finding a boyfriend should be celebrated as a world class achievement is that partnerships already have the monopoly on celebration; from engagements, to weddings and babies. We celebrate relationships often without thought - in fact, if you think about it, we’re more likely to cheer a couple down the aisle irrespective of their compatibility than we are to celebrate the other big wins in people’s lives.
But there are many milestones that are also important; achieving success at work, taking the leap to go freelance, moving to a new place, buying a home, taking time out to travel, learning a new skill you’ve been thinking about for years, doing therapy, beating addiction. And we need to be talking to our friends about what they want to achieve and why.
This sounds simple enough, but when I was single I lost track of the number of times I was asked about my relationship status above and beyond other things that were more important to me at the time, from work, to my sobriety journey. And, at times, I felt like no matter how much success I’d achieved in other areas of my life, unless I reached the relationship holy grail I still had work to do.
The freshest dating behaviours you’ll be navigating into 2023 and beyond.
This is not just damaging to single people. Lots of people’s relationships aren’t worth aspiring to, I know people in controlling dynamics, who have been cheated on extensively or whose partners undermine their every move - when we view relationships as the pinnacle of success we’re doing everyone a disservice because it keeps people in these relationships by making them scared of the judgment if they leave or can’t make it work.
Plus, it does little to recognise that times are changing - for many people, women in particular, being single isn’t just a sad inconvenience anymore. In fact, research has shown there are now more single people than ever before and that women in particular are choosing to remain single. Indeed, the office of National Statistics has previously reported that women not living in a couple, who have never been married, are rising at every age under 70. And if that’s what makes someone happy, that should not just be normalised, it should be celebrated in and of itself.
