Do We Have a Responsibility to Worry About Someone Else’s Singleness?

Do We Have a Responsibility to Worry About Someone Else’s Singleness?

I think not, and here’s why.

In my day-to-day job, I attend a lot of conferences. There’s networking, nice chit chats with work colleagues across the industry, and a lot of intro conversations. Which all go something like this:

“Hi, What’s your name and where are you from?”

Usually followed closely with:

“Are you married. Dating? Oh, just Single then”

Followed by a frown, the dark cloud of disappointment casting shadow on their faces, and then a look resembling pity, all merged into one. They didn’t have to say the words, somehow, people can telepathically convey their thoughts in that moment. ‘How sad, a single woman in her thirties. What’s wrong with her? Why is she still single? Hurry up, don’t leave it too late especially if you want children. What about him, or that one, or the guy picking his nose over there?’

Singleness, makes people uncomfortable. That discomfort, seems to grow as I age. When you reveal you’re single, it seems to suggest opportunity for advice and/or assistance, and usually they go for both. They consider it their job, their responsibility, to be concerned for your single situation.

Where to Find a Partner: Are They Hiding Under a Rock?

Had I tried online dating?

Ah yes, but what about this dating app?

Oh, but you must meet someone soon, you are so lovely I can’t understand why you’re single at all!

I suppose it’s what you’re meant to do, isn’t it? Help a friend, collaborate on methods, dissect and analyse whether it’s them or the entire dating industry that’s to blame. Find a solution, and quick before it’s too late. Help them get rid of their singleness and find happiness, because there’s no way being single could be the aim.

I’m Not Innocent: I Once Thought Love Was the Mysterious Answer to Everything

I recall a male friend who at the time, had recently split up with his partner. Each time I saw him after the breakup I would integrate him with questions. I sought solutions my friends hadn’t asked for and presumed he wanted advice when he did not say as such. Over and over, I wondered how I could help him to find someone else, assuming they disliked being single, assuming that they were surviving their singledom as much as I had always survived mine. 

“Are you dating? You should be! You won’t find anyone unless you actively put yourself out there. Gosh you are such a nice bloke, you shouldn’t be single!”

Considering I myself had dated for six years post-divorce with no meaningful long-term relationship to show for it, it’s laughable how I took the position of dating guidance counsellor. And it also strikes me as disappointing, shameful in fact, when I look back. Because I never once asked him how he felt about being single. Not one time did I say, ‘Do you like being single? Are you okay with it? Right, I’ll shut my mouth then.’ I simply assumed they hated it, were doing something wrong, or needed a boost of motivation to keep ploughing away at the dating apps until something fell into their laps.

Realizing the Frustration: When Conversations About Being Single Become Tiresome

I only realised how frustrating these conversations after, after months and months of conferences and networking events, conversation after conversation suggesting that being single, is not the one. It became all too clear that we assume a single situation must be avoided. We think that spending too much time as a singleton, signifies something deeply wrong with a person. We worry that as they get older, the wind might change and they’ll be stuck single forever!

The idea that a person might choose to be single, as a valid, happy, stable choice of life, whether it be for a while or a lifetime. Or the idea that whether they chose it or not, they could be comfortable with being single and totally okay with it. As a society, we struggle to understand. Because we’ve been taught to worry, to encourage partnership, to be two halves of a whole or else wander around aimlessly, without our missing parts.

Yet rarely do we ask, why? And rarer still, whether we in fact have the responsibility, or even the right, to worry about someone else’s singleness.

Questioning My Urge to Push a Friend Into a Relationship

I began to question my own motives. Why had I felt it was my business to ‘help’? Where did that desire stem from? What was so uncomfortable about the idea of him remaining single?

The answers were the same for myself and for every person who’d reacted in a similar fashion to my own statements of being single.

There is a fear of it. The fear exists because it’s assumed being single is a sad and lonely existence. Which means there is worry. Worry that a person won’t find love and therefore will be dismally unhappy. And so we try to help in the only way we know how, with the thing that feels like the answer to it all, by encouraging them to seek other ways, means and possibilities to find a relationship.

Let’s stop feeding one another this tiresome narrative that in actuality, is completely false

I say this as much for myself as anyone else out there who has done the same; Let’s change the conversation, let’s do better. Let’s not assume that singleness is horrid and shit, or that a person must be in a relationship in order to be okay.

No-one is defined by their relationship statuses unless we treat that status as a defining feature. And the only way to start believing that, is to change the conversation.

After some deep thinking, when I next saw my friend I didn’t ask him if he was dating anyone or how his love life was going. Instead, I asked how he was doing. I asked about his job. What he’d been up to at the weekend and what trips had he planned for the year ahead. I asked him the questions I’d have preferred people to ask of me too. I deprioritised who he was dating, because single people are so much more than this.

It starts with single people stating confidently that they are single

Not unapologetically, nor awaiting the usual questioning to begin whilst shrouded in shame. A simple ignorable fact. “I am single. So anyway I’ve just started learning Spanish and I climbed Snowden last month …”

There is so much more to talk about than our relationship statuses, there is so much more in life that matters.

We have to stop encouraging the narrative that being single is a problem, we must stop romanticising relationships as the saviour to a person’s wellbeing and happiness. We have to stop treating single people as if they are broken or incomplete in some way without a partner. Because being single is not the issue, a single situation is not the worst, but the negative narrative around being single, that is the thing that has corrupted what it means to be single.

Relationships are not deciders of how much joy or pleasure we can experience in life

Relationships are joyful and pleasurable, but a single life is not devoid of theses aspects either.

Plus, there are so many people who are entirely f*cked up, broken in six million ways, and totally incomplete who are in relationships, therefore it is a myth that relationships will provide the missing pieces and solve all our woes.

Which means single doesn’t need a masterplan, or a self-renovation uplift and upgrade. Single people are not running out of time, either. There will not suddenly be a lack of people to date in a decades time if/when they choose too. They are just single. Nothing more, nothing less. And they haven’t asked anyone to worry about them.

We should steer the conversation before it gets to a pitying frown, commiserative pat on the back and a dating dissection session. Stop allowing people to talk to us single people like this. It’s harmful to a single self-image if conversations are allowed to take place that continually point to there being a problem with singles, because we’ll start to believe them, despite it not being true at all.

And then we’ll start to treat our single friends just as others treat us, and this mother-f*cking awful cycle will never, ever end.