Singles: Navigating a Couples World
Can you be single and happy?
Being in a relationship has always been a norm in our society.
50 years ago, a single woman of 25 was automatically labeled an old maid. Today, women can achieve both professional and personal fulfillment.
However, the pressure of society when it is not our immediate entourage, always brings us back to these prejudices which are hard to die. After 30 years, you should already be in a relationship and with children. If this is not the case, there is necessarily something wrong with you.
Based on the woman's side, the latter is then considered as a perishable commodity, withering with age. Conversely, the male gender, it improves with age, developing a certain charm with their wrinkles and their salt and pepper hair.
Not to mention the sword of Damocles hanging over our heads, ladies, of the famous biological clock, bringing its share of anxieties about the possibility of bringing our maternal ambitions to fruition. We are no longer looking for an appetizer to pass the time but in the quest for a future with someone with whom we hope to go some of the way and for a majority, to be the future father of our children.
At 35, you don't meet people like you did at 20.
Meeting people is easy, from the university benches to the first job.
After the age of thirty, our life is more stable, more settled, often with the famous metro-work-sleep routine...
Meetings can only really take place through going out to bars, nightclubs, dinners with friends or on dating sites.
Due to the health crisis, all opportunities for meeting people in real life have been stopped dead in their tracks. It was already difficult to meet people until then, but this pandemic has made things worse
Many people who sign up to dating sites have realized, after being hit hard by their loneliness, that they want longer-term relationships than just going on dates.
In this stigmatization of single status, there are also the different reactions of couples of friends to our single status.
There is this super close couple, who spend their time throwing their happiness in your face, with "my kitten", "my love"...
They can't tear themselves away from each other, still in their love to love phase of the beginnings of their relationship.
There are those who push you aside as their relationship progresses and end up no longer sharing anything with you, just between themselves in their bubble, or between couples.
You, single, you can't understand them, you become a pariah while a few months earlier, these same people openly criticized this type of couples. In short...
Not forgetting those who come out with these corny, kitsch phrases like "But tell yourself that it's when you least expect it that it will fall on you." or even "It's when you look that you don't find."
Yes of course, in these cases I will wait patiently on my sofa for Bradley Cooper to come knocking at my door...
Finally, these couples who tend to take you to task when they disagree, so that you take a stand for one or the other, unbearable...
This whole society revolves around couples, the single person is not recognized.
Just look at taxes, for example.
A person living alone without children will have to pay the full price and will not be entitled to any assistance.
You manage on your own with a single salary, having to face practically the same fixed costs as a married couple.
Or, you are single with children, it's a given, but alone with yourself, it's a no...
And what about supplements when you travel solo?
Whether it's a cruise, a package tour or a hotel room, it's the same struggle. The feeling of paying the price for your loneliness...
Having often been confronted with this type of supplement as soon as I planned my various road trips, I had to learn to organize my trips differently without going through all these organizations.
