why do we worry about single men but celebrate single women?

who is worthy of our collective sympathy?

I’m a single feminist woman in my 30s, and my tik tok algorithm knows it. My feed has become so predictable. It’s usually a mix of gen z creators with impeccable hair teaching me about feminist theory, mixed with a soupçon of male creators who will reverberate their ideas, and get twice the amount of likes. I’ve become accustomed to the special serotonin sauce that tik tok has meticulously chosen for me, but lately I’ve noticed a new crop of videos, mostly from female creators determined to convince me that being single is a superior way of life and that yearning to be in a committed relationship is just a “coping mechanism” created by “capitalism.” The best term I came up with to describe these mental health pundits is to call them “singlefluencers” and for some reason, my algorithm seems to be filled with them.

But it’s not just me, and it’s not just my feed: there seems to be a growing and very vocal group of people who believe that being single, especially if you’re a woman, is better. Julia Fox recently declared in an interview with Glamour that she is no longer having sex or dating men, claiming that "at the end of the day, a wife and a prostitute are both doing the same thing." I would argue that both are worthy of our respect, but hey that’s just me. Or just look at the comments under this post celebrating the fact that the amount of single people is growing globally and that half of young singles aren’t open to a relationship, or even to going on a single date. While being single forever is a noble and worthy goal, the unanimous cheering is worrying for a species predicated on human connection to survive.

Many of these singlefluencers accounts will promote self-care, de-centering romantic love and reallocating time to friendships, but that’s not what the data is showing us that people are doing. The most recent research from the Survey Center on American Life shows that we have less friends than we did 30 years ago and that the number of people who had have ten friends or more, has gone down by almost 300%. One in five millennials currently reports having have zero friends. The diminishing quality and quantity of our relationships, has followed the increase in depression and anxiety. We are spending more time alone, more time on screens, and we are feeling less connected than ever, and now a majority of singles aren’t even open to meeting a new person? How is this…good?

To be abundantly clear, I have nothing against being single, I do it all the time and I’m doing it right now! As Rebecca Traister and many other brilliant authors have argued, single unmarried women have been the epicenter of infinite amounts of social progress. And part of the reason why we spend so much time celebrating single women is because they have been derided and degraded for so long. As an avid consumer of books and films that salute the female single life, I love when women don’t lower their standards for anybody. I love women, and it’s because I love them, that I think they deserve to flourish in their relationships, and that includes the romantic ones. But judging by all the clap emojis under every post about the rise in single women, I’m left wondering if we have confused female individualism, for female freedom.

Photo by Morgan Sessions on Unsplash

Just look at how differently we treat the same data about women and men’s dwindling number of sexual and intimate partnerships. The headlines about the rise of single men are about how sad, depressed and lonely they are, and why society should take more responsibility for them, while the rise of single women seems to exclusively produce trite girlboss takes. When men are single, it’s a crisis of loneliness, but when women are single, it’s a feminist accomplishment? Currently, one in four single women walking around in United States hasn’t had sex in more than two years and one in ten single women, haven’t had sex in more than five years. And Black women have long talked about discrimination on dating apps and receiving an inferior number of matches which has narrowed their mating pool. Where is our collective curiosity and concern for women’s shrinking sex lives, when we’ve spent inordinate amounts of time thinking and worrying about men’s?

I find it bizarre that male loneliness earns so much public sympathy while women’s doesn’t even merit an analysis. The headline is either “Men aren’t having sex with women, what a tragedy!” or “Women aren’t having sex with men, you go girl!” Both framings feel like parody to me, because neither even feel about sex at all. In a patriarchal society, sex for men, is a proxy for intimacy while sex for women, becomes a proxy for power. A man who doesn’t have sex is powerless, while a woman who refuses sex is powerful. But in this paradigm, are either of us really free? Is the goal for women to be as lonely as men? As my friend Dax told once, “freedom for women shouldn’t be that women get to be as miserable as men.”

The celebration of singlehood for both men and women is crucial, but it shouldn’t dismiss our human need for intimacy. My fear is that by denying our hard-wired biological desires, single people who do feel lonely, will feel like there’s something wrong with them. Loneliness is normal, and many of us feel it even when we’re in love, but what makes any difficult emotion worse, is thinking that you shouldn’t be feeling it. And singlefluencers advising single people to deny their yearning for love or sex, or that they “need to be happy alone before being happy with anybody else,” is a great way to make sure they never feel ready for the partnership that they deserve. Believing that being in a relationship is the key to happiness doesn’t set up relationships to succeed either. If we truly want people of all genders to have the choice to be single or be in a relationship, we must acknowledge that both are equally valuable desires, and come with a range of complicated feelings and growing pains. We shouldn’t be in the business of glamorizing either arrangement, and accept that either choice will lead to an imperfect life.

So in honor of valentine’s day, let’s not wallow in heteropessisim, but rather recognize that connection is valuable in itself, and that just because you’re single now, it doesn’t mean you will be forever, and that just because you’re in a relationship, it doesn’t mean you will be in it forever either. When we feel unsettled in our circumstances, we tend to look for certainty, but that state of permanence is an illusion. Some days I love being single, and some days I don’t. And I remember feeling the exact same way when I was in a relationship. Loving my life when I’m single doesn’t prevent me from also loving the idea of sharing it with someone else. Loving my partner doesn’t prevent me from also respecting and loving myself too. Both parts can be true, and anyone who tries to convince you that one is better than the other, is probably just trying to resolve something in themselves. Misery loves company, and so do algorithms that want to keep us scrolling for more solutions to mental anguish that comes with simply being human.

Whether you’re a guy, a gal or anything in between, it’s okay to want someone to squeeze on valentine’s day. It’s also okay to prefer celebrating with your friends, your family or yourself. The more we can be comfortable and curious about all our needs for intimacy, and resist the urge to rank them, the better partners to others and ourselves that we become. Listen to your urges, give them the dignity of being heard.

And if you’ve been heartbroken one too many times, remember that those scars aren’t proof you’re damaged, they’re proof you’re brave. If you loved, it means that you lived and what a courageous thing to do. As Louise Erdrich once wrote, you are here to risk your heart. Now grab your beautiful broken heart, and go risk it.

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.”

― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

happy valentine’s day angel x

Liz-