[Estimated reading time: 22 minutes]

People...I haven’t been single since I was in my teens. I know. It’s gross. I’m deeply embarrassed. Except, weirdly, society doesn’t really penalise me for being in a fifteen year relationship. A lot of people see it as a sign of my maturity, reliability, and dependability (none of which are things I actually possess). If I said I’d been single for 15 years those assumptions would be totally different. And they probably wouldn’t be flattering.

But the question is, why does our relationship status make such a difference to the way society views us.

Love in the time of COVID

I spend a lot of time talking to people about their mental health, their dating life, their sex life and so on. But recently I noticed a trend emerging among some of my friends. Those who are single and living alone seemed to be experiencing a lot more hardship than feels necessary during a global pandemic. They started telling me about the number of people who had told them how “lucky” they were to be living alone during this, how fortunate they were to not have children or a spouse. They told me about the weeks on end without physical human touch, or another person to talk to face-to-face. In certain parts of the country, exceptions were made for people with a romantic partner they don’t live with, to be able to visit each other. But no such exception was extended to singles for them to visit a nominated family member or friend.

Not for the first time, it reminded me of how differently the world treats single people. I recalled every horror story I’d heard about the singles tables at weddings, about all the friends who were sick to death of being asked when they were going to ‘meet someone and settle down’ or the friends who had to navigate the ‘why have you been single for so long’ every time they went on a date.

It reminded me of the story my own mother told me about how once she was widowed the invites to dinner parties stopped coming in, even when those same people were still offering emotional support regularly. And she wasn’t alone. It seems that most single people who have watched their friends partner up, mysteriously find themselves on the outer circle of dinner invites. And yet, when asked about it, most partnered people will say that it’s simply about seating difficulties.

All of this started me wondering if, like most prejudices we don’t personally experience, it was worse than I actually realised. And it turns out, it definitely is…

The relationship escalator

If you’ve ever found yourself playing the dating game, chances are you’ve experienced the silent pressure of the ‘relationship escalator’. It’s the idea that in every romantic relationship there are a series of steps that both parties understand they’re working towards. From the first kiss to having sex, to making it ‘Facebook official’ to saying ‘I love you’ all the way through to marriage, kids and home ownership.

For many people, dating is a pointless endeavour if you’re not stepping on the escalator with someone - why date them if you don’t think you’ll end up married to them?

The relationship escalator is the reason we have entire TV show episodes dedicated to people trying to figure out when is the right time to say “I love you” or whether it’s too early for a partner to meet the parents. Because the relationship escalator tells us there is ANY right time to say or do these things. As though there’s some kind of universal rule book that says “You shalt not declare your love for another until you have embedded a sleepover toothbrush in their bathroom.”

The relationship escalator is the system that says every romantic relationship either ends with a break-up or death.

Relationship hierarchy

Single people get asked if they’re in a relationship and why they haven’t found someone yet.

People in relationships get asked when they’re going to move in together.

People in de-facto relationships get asked when they’re getting married and people who are married get asked when they’re having kids.

Because the assumption is that all of us want the same things from life and love - marriage, children, together forever.

There are two big problems with this.

The first is that we’re never shown other options. In western culture, all of our media goes out of its way to depict one man and one woman who date, fall in love, move in, get married and have kids and are then happy forever. We teach children, especially girls, that their future is about having a home, a spouse, and children. How many toys and products are there that teach little girls to be brides and mothers, before they ever understand where babies come from? Even our ‘sex’ education focuses almost exclusively on procreation, with demands that it now include information about fertility and how waiting to have children could mean missing out altogether.

So when we get to the age where we start dating, we might fuck around a little bit, but we understand that eventually we have to “settle down” with one partner for the rest of our lives. For most of us, the idea of just not finding a partner and instead spending our life doing our own thing never even comes up as a possibility. Because we never see anyone else doing that. Or if we do, they’re written off as eccentric or worse.

You know how certain types of people complain about how ‘everyone is trans or non-binary now, it’s just the fashionable thing to be’. The reason they feel like that is because there are more people coming out as trans or NB. And the reason that’s happening is because suddenly we’re actually talking about gender identity in public forums. Which means that every kid who otherwise would have grown up thinking “there are only two genders and you’re stuck with the one you were assigned at birth” is suddenly aware that there are identities out there that might be a better fit for who they are. There aren’t more trans/NB people - there are more people who have a name for who they are and how they feel.

It’s like if you got told that there are only two careers in the world. A painter or a mathematician. And all through school you’re only taught how to paint or how to do maths. But secretly, when no one is looking, you really enjoying designing model bridges, or writing stories, or inventing electronics. You know they’re just silly little distractions and that you’ll ‘grow out of them’, but part of you dreams of a world where you could do it for the rest of your life. And maybe one day, in your 50s, you hear that some kid in another country has come out on the local news with a bridge that they designed and everyone is like “That’s fucking gross. Letting kids build bridges. It’s not right.” But in your head you’re like “Wow…I wasn’t the only one.”

When we don’t discuss different relationship options, or asexuality/aromanticism, we’re increasing the social pressure to conform to a narrative that might not fit for everyone. You can’t pick blue if you’re told your only choices are black and white. When we don’t educate people about the full spectrum of choices available to them we can’t expected them to make informed decisions about what they actually want.

The other major problem with this system is the hierarchy it creates of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’.

The relationship escalator tells us that everyone wants the same thing from life and love. Once we internalise that we start to develop certain attitudes towards those who haven’t hit the ‘milestones’ in a timely manner. The person in their 30s without a partner. The person in a long term relationship who isn’t married. The married couple who still have no children. We learn to look at them and wonder ‘what’s wrong with them’ instead of just accepting that they’ve either made different choices or will do things in their own time.

Most single people have had experiences where they’ve been looked at with pity or concern for not being in a romantic relationship. Every single person has been told at some point “You’ll find someone soon” or “The right person will come along.” Because it’s not possible for a person to enjoy being single.

It’s why some people with children feel confident telling childfree people that they’ll “change their mind” about not wanting children. Because it’s unfathomable that some people might not want kids at all. We’re all on the same escalator.

It’s why if a de-facto partnership of 12 years broke up, it would be seen as less serious than a couple divorcing after 4 years of marriage. Because the one that was higher up the escalator has clearly suffered a greater loss than the one that never quite made it to marriage in the first place.

Relationship hierarchy is the importance we place on these different “milestones” in love, under the assumption that all of us want exactly the same thing. And when you say it like that, it seems kind of absurd to think that we really believe 7 billion people on this planet all want the same thing. And yet, that’s how we treat people who we feel aren’t meeting their milestones.

Singledom stigma

Relationship hierarchy isn’t limited to our personal lives though. Because when has judging other people ever stayed in its lane?

We can see it play out in the workplace. For example, people with kids are usually given first dibs on annual leave and holidays. Some people might argue that this is for the benefit of the kids, cos who wants to rob a child of their parent during the Christmas break, right? Cool, but that argument is literally saying that the lives of every person who has to work during the holidays matters less. It instantly puts every parent/guardian on a level above everyone who isn’t. Almost like a…hierarchy?

Similarly, single people are often seen as having less going on in their life, and are therefore more available for additional hours and working back late. Because we all know single people live notoriously boring and uneventful lives filled with too many cats. I mean, a parent who leaves right on 5 to get home to their child is a good parent. A single person who leaves on time just isn’t committed to this organisation.

I feel like the best possible summary of this was the reaction of the Governor of Pennsylvania, when Janet Napolitano was nominated for the position of Secretary of Homeland Security.

"Janet’s perfect for the job. Because for that job, you have to have no life. Janet has no family. Perfect. She can devote, literally, 19, 20 hours a day to it."

But wait, it gets better! And by better I mean so much worse. You see it’s not just the workload that’s affected, it also salary. Comparing the salaries of married men vs single men demonstrates a 40% difference in wage, in favour of the married man. Because married men have all those additional marriage taxes to pay? Oh wait, no it’s actually financially way harder to survive as a single person than if you’re sharing resources with a significant other.

A couple can share the expense of furniture, appliances, fuel, health insurance, groceries and occasionally get to have sex as well! A single person might have a room mate or someone to split living expenses with, but that’s not going to help with saving for joint assets, such as property or vehicles.

This discrepancy is even acknowledged by the official Poverty Threshold in the U.S - for instance the poverty line for a single individual in South Carolina, per is $11,770 p.a, but for a dual income house it’s only $15,930 p.a.

According to Bella DePaulo Ph.D. (who is basically the undisputed expert on singles and psychology), there is an obvious and pronounced bias in the way we perceive single people. She and her colleagues created pairs of short biographical sketches. The people in the sketches (targets) were identical in every way, (name, age, home town, interests, jobs, etc) except that half of them were single and the other half were married. She then asked study participants to rate the targets.

Remember that the pairs of targets were described identically, except for their marital status, yet the single people were still judged harshly. They were viewed as less happy, less secure, more immature, more fearful of rejection, lonelier, more self-centered, and more envious.

Other researchers from different countries using the same methodology found the same thing. Single people are viewed way more negatively than married or coupled people.

For example, in a set of studies conducted by Tobias Greitemeyer in Germany, single people were judged as

“...less satisfied with their lives, lower in self-esteem, less attractive, less socially skilled, less satisfied with their relationship status, more interested in changing their relationship status, lonelier, more neurotic, less agreeable, and less conscientious.”

Less attractive? Wow, that just seems unnecessary.

A study in Israel looked at perceptions of people who were single by choice vs those who were single by circumstance.

“No matter how single people were described and what great things they had experienced and achieved, people were insistent that their happiness must have been overstated. Those who had chosen to be single received lower positive trait ratings than those who would have preferred to be married, even though the former group was living the life they had wanted. It’s as though the choice to be single is too great a societal affront...”

The quote above is from Paul Dolan. He’s head of the psychological and behavioural science department at the London School of Economics. In 2019 he gave a talk about some of the themes in his book (Happy Ever After), including his conclusion that single women might be healthier and happier than women in hetero relationships.

The internet, never one to disappoint, provided swift and vicious backlash,

“I was accused of spreading propaganda.
‘How far will the media push this ‘independent woman’ narrative?’ was one popular tweet.”

Ignoring the trolls though, his research was thorough and multifaceted. One of the areas he points to is the idea of ‘social connectedness’. Basically our level of social connection is linked to happy we are. And apparently singles are nailing that shit, whereas people in relationships…not so much.

“There is some pretty robust evidence, though, that single people are more likely to foster social connections that bring them fulfilment, whereas married people often find themselves with less consciously chosen social networks, such as a spouse’s family members. Single people are also more likely to volunteer and to participate in social events. By contrast, married and cohabiting individuals tend to become more socially isolated, even without the excuse of children.”

So, we see singles as pathetic, lonely mole-people, when in fact they’re actually well-connected, selfless and inclined to volunteer in their community. Hmmm, maybe the most damaging part of the relationship hierarchy structure is the fact that we’ve all internalised it so well that we don’t even realise how wrong we are? Well it turns out, most of us don’t notice that we treat people differently based on relationship status (let’s be honest, when was the last time you consciously thought about your bias against singles, or the unmarried). But that actually goes for people on the receiving end of the bias as well.

In that study from Israel, both married and single participants advocated equally for marriage, even though it’s the cause of the negative stereotyping the singles receive. That would be like, women voting for Trump or something…

According to recent estimates, only 4% of singles recognise that they’re stigmatised against. Because most of us, regardless of our relationship status, have so completely internalised the relationship hierarchy structure that we’re unable to see past it. Or, in other words, many single people see themselves as being pathetic loser for not locking down a partner, including those who don’t even actually want a partner. Because most of us are still more likely to second guess our own sanity than to think that the relationship escalator is the wrong model for our own lives.

Basically we’re no longer able to tell the difference between the relationship escalator narrative and what we actually, truly want from life and love.

Finding a way forward

So how do we address this inequality? If it’s so deeply rooted in our subconscious, what can we possibly do to try and change it?

As if Emma Watson hasn’t given us enough already, she may have inadvertently solved this dilemma for us. In an interview with vogue she described herself as ‘self-partnered’. What an interesting way of framing it. What if we take all the feelings we normally have about married people and apply them to singles? What if we mentally re-frame them as being married to themselves.

Every single person you know has a loving partner and is in a compassionate relationship - with themselves.

Basically, instead of putting pressure on people to find a partner, to pair up like we’re heading into the fucking ark, we accept that people who are single are dating themselves, prioritising their own well-being. Which is something that all of us, regardless of our relationship status, should be doing.

Look after the most important person in your life first - you. That’s the message we should be sending to singles, that’s the message we should be sending to everyone - you aren’t incomplete without a partner. You are a whole and valuable person as you are. And your self deserves all of your love, compassion, kindness and focus, rather than a hypothetical romantic partner that you haven’t even met yet.

If we were all raised with the value of putting our selves first, focusing on our own well-being and our own personal development, by the time we were actually ready to date (if we even wanted to), we’d actually be far more prepared for a relationship. Because we would know who we are, we’d be confident about the value we bring to the table, we would know that our self worth doesn’t depend on another person. For those of us who ended up partnered, our relationships would be that much more stable and enjoyable. Because both partners would be coming to the relationship with more self awareness and self-worth.

Normalising self-partnering

If we fucked off the relationship escalator in favour of mastur-dating, we could focus on our own happiness and what brings us joy, rather than wondering when we will meet the person that “makes us whole”.

We need to start doing things that we view as a ‘couples’ activity in a way that normalises a single person doing it. Take ourselves for romantic gondola rides. Take ourselves out for dinner and a movie. Take ourselves to bed for a good time. Not just people who are currently single, but those of us in relationships as well. Because normalisation doesn’t happen unless we all do it, and to be honest, people in relationships are usually the ones that need the space for self reflection. Because each of us are individuals, we are not half of a whole.

So the next time you find yourself talking to a single person, try and remember that their relationship status is entirely irrelevant to who they are as a person. Whether or not they’re dating someone should not affect how they are treated, by you or the world at large. Ask them about their work, their projects, their passions, their pets, their relationships with literally anyone and everyone in their life that they’re not having sex with! Don’t fucking tell them they’re ‘lucky’ to be doing isolation solo. And when this pandemic is over, invite them to your goddamn dinner parties - seating be damned.

That is all.

You may go now.

Changing how we see 'singles'