The Single Life

Ste­fanie Marsh writes the obvi­ous truth that no one is allowed to say:

That’s the truth about being sin­gle; it can be hor­ren­dous, only I’m not allowed to admit it. For a few months I have been lead­ing what most anthro­pol­o­gists would describe as a highly unusual exis­tence in my one-person flat, and yet pre­vail­ing 21st-century thought – the pub­lish­ing indus­try, mar­ket­ing bods keen to get their grubby paws on what’s left of my dis­pos­able income – are try­ing to con­vince me that being sin­gle is the best thing in the world that can hap­pen to a per­son. It reminds me of what Phill Gramm, John McCain’s eco­nomic adviser, said last month about the reces­sion. It’s not a reces­sion; it’s a “men­tal reces­sion”. It’s all in your mind.

Like­wise, there’s a myth being per­pet­u­ated that being sin­gle is great! The lone­li­ness, the effort, that musty smell in your flat because you spend far too much time in it, the fact that chil­dren think you’re weird – that’s all in your mind. A fab­ri­ca­tion. You’re not bored, you just think you’re bored because being sin­gle is fab­u­lous! There are more than 3 mil­lion sin­gle peo­ple liv­ing in Britain today – everyone’s at it, why not join in the fun? You can drink cock­tails like they did in Sex and the City! You can play Nin­tendo into the dead of night! Absolutely nobody in the world gives a toss about you, but, never mind, you’ve won the lot­tery of life.

Of course, rela­tion­ships and mar­riage are not always per­fect, either. I’ve seen my fair share of bad rela­tion­ships, mul­ti­ple divorces, and unhappy mar­riages. But the fact remains that humans are designed, on many lev­els, not to be alone.

We have an instinctive, biological imper­a­tive to part­ner and have chil­dren – our bod­ies are designed for this pur­pose, and our hor­mones and brains con­stantly push peo­ple to ful­fill this desire. On a spir­i­tual level, God designed humans with a spir­i­tual void that can only be ful­filled in a lov­ing rela­tion­ship (a mar­riage is, in fact, mys­ti­cal). On eco­nomic and social lev­els, soci­eties need chil­dren because peo­ple are every country’s most pre­cious assets.

Every­one knows this, but many unat­tached women in their thir­ties and for­ties, like Marsh, have con­vinced them­selves that a sin­gle life is just as nat­ural as being in a rela­tion­ship. (Usu­ally they need to believe this because they secretly know that they made some wrong choices.) This is one of the rea­sons why the tele­vi­sion series “Sex and the City” was so pop­u­lar: it allowed sin­gle women to pre­tend that they could live just like Car­rie Bradshaw.