A random walk through the idea of trying to come to terms with being eternally single. This single life is largely derided. How can I live my life without constantly craving the love of another? Do people live successful single lives and embrace it?
Start - Google search: Living as a single person
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| Six ways I'm embracing being single. |
Up pops 10 tips on living life as a single person ... really? I don't need tips thanks.
Spinster is the new black says that we're in the middle of a new "Single Moment", which is all about how ways we can live outside the ideal of 2.4 children families.
A guide to embracing life as a single is a piece written in the NY Times in 2007. We were battling the stigmatism that comes with being single. Unfortunately the website it was advertising no longer champions the lives of the single, it's been taken over by a marketing company.
Strangely both of these articles written eight years apart are championed by Bella DePaulo who has written loads of books on the subject.
Google search: Why do people think they need to be in a relationship
Science says you don't need to be in a relationship to be happy ... We live in a culture that's very couple orientated, where singles feel deviant ... Bella DePaulo again!
Why do you want to be in a relationship? Finally away from Dr. DePaulo some very good points about the different reasons people want to be in a relationship. There's getters and givers. Getters, people who want to be in a relationship to get something back, largely have an unsuccessful time. Givers see the relationship world differently and want to share the experience of love, rather than take it.
Google: Why does society expect people to be in relationships?
What people want from relationships "For millennia relationships were dictated by survival". This points to the fact that relationships are linked to procreation, that love is possibly a by-product of the need for humans to survive. Two is better than one.
Some people believe that single people could literally cause the breakdown of a well-structured society i.e. people in relationships are needed to maintain an ordered society. Religious people look scornfully on single people as they are not fulfilling their role as a human being. And here's where the stigma starts to unravel itself. I didn't realise I was such an odorous member of society! Dear old Penelope puts it so well, "People in a relationship are more healthy and happy and live longer than single people... Single people are considered pathetic and not able to pair up. Those who deliberately choose to stay single because they prefer staying single instead of having an a...hole as a partner do not stay single of choice. Staying single because the option of having a partner is not appealing, is not of choice but of inability." Nice!
Searching for images has taken me a while. A google search for, 'single' brings up loads of negative and some positive single memes.
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| Be happy being single, and then you can find, 'The One'. |
Finally I am on the way to finding a positive spin - The New Spinster : We are starting to reclaim our lives.
And my final destination for the moment Sad spinsters and lonely cat ladies. This says it all. Next stop ... famous spinsters.
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