day 36
Why is it that at any family gathering, meeting with your godmother/ grandmother / a random person at a BBQ, or just anyone who is slightly older than you feels the need to ask if you’re in a relationship and coo affectionately, if you say that you’re not? “Aww, well you’ve got time! Plenty of fish in the sea! Are you on dating apps? My friend’s daughter met their LIFETIME partner on Hinge/ Bumble/ Feeld/ Tinder.” Mind you, this is an affliction pretty much only suffered if you’re a woman. Young single men – you’re young! Play the field, have fun, don’t be in a rush to settle down…. It’s infuriating. And SO old fashioned, but the dichotomy still exists.
The assumption if you’re single and a woman is that you’re broken, defective in some way. Batteries don’t work, return to sender. Plenty of my friends are serial monogamists, but just as many have had “situationships” or short lived relationships, or are just serial casual daters. Some intentionally, others who’ve just struggled to meet the right people. None of them are defined by their relationship status. And yet why is that the headline fact which society chooses to define us by? Thriving careers, creative outlets, secure in who we are, a fun fulfilling existence. But being single is like turning up to a party wearing a full body olive outfit when the party was themed “canapes” and instead of viewing it as just an event type, you took it as an outfit criteria. You’re constantly made to feel out of the loop.
The assumption if you’re single and a woman is that you’re broken, defective in some way. Batteries don’t work, return to sender.
The assumption is that as a woman (because women are put on this earth to procreate/ be the caregiver to their partner) our lives must be in some way fundamentally lacking, unfulfilling in their current state. As if until we meet someone we just wander around confused in our homes. Picking up and putting down the TV remote to watch Netflix but then realising we can’t because we don’t have an “and chill partner”, opening cupboards and then closing them to cook non-existent date meals, like robotrons being misfed instructions and short circuiting. It’s completely bizarre.
Anytime I’ve been in a relationship, I would often keep it from my parents because I hated to think that they’d now see me as complete, purely because I had somebody to kiss all the time. Nobody is half a person, or shouldn’t be anyway. And anytime I have been dating someone, they’ve been an amazing addition but not filling some void in me. It’s dangerous waters to get into if you’re expecting someone else to plug some need. I am entirely my own person and I hope that the next person I’m with will be able to stand next to and inspire me, not just fill a gap.
As if until we meet someone we just wander around confused in our homes. Picking up and putting down the TV remote to watch Netflix but then realising we can’t because we don’t have an “and chill partner”.
It’s a generational thing too. Gen Z women/ millennials are getting married later, changing careers, having babies later, if at all and often our mothers are still in the mindset of 30 or so years ago where “having it all” meant attempting to do all of that at the same time. Is it because we know that “having it all” is actually impossible?
Currently, the working world is still fundamentally a man’s world, structured around the assumption that you can afford childcare or for one of you to stay home, with very little built into company protocol around women’s health, made even more difficult if you’re two women in a relationship. Recently, there was a landmark law passed in New Zealand which means a couple who have suffered a miscarriage will be given 3 days leave, without having to tap into sick leave. Laws like this are fundamental in changing how we live and the kinds of bodies we respect. And until I can be at a BBQ and proudly sing that I’m single in a full musical number feat. dance flashmob, without anyone attempting to set me up with their son, we really haven’t got there.