You shouldn't seek for another person to supply all your needs – in fact, you'll be stronger on your own. Nobody talks about "spinsters" any more! Just live in the moment!
I just want a boyfriend. (Girl on Written in the Stars)
The tedious drudgery of being single. (Hannah Fry)
I used to pray that my children would do well at school, marry someone that's good for them and they would prosper. (@WildAtHeartAus)
When we got older and people started getting into relationships, that didn’t really happen for me. (Man with congenitally disfigured face)
Most westerners spend their youth chasing the future, their jobs, sex/romance and their kids. (@Sal_Robins)
[US Presidential candidate] Tim Scott is 57, never married, no children. Not to be harsh, but that's simply disqualifying. (@willchamberlain)
I've long thought that the problem is that the vast majority of people just want to get on with our lives and local goals like a family, nice place to live, hobbies etc, and not cause any trouble, and it's the bastards with the Big Ideas that mess it all up for us. (@IanBlandThatsMe)
When your husband dies “A woman loses caste for a long time and only regains it in very old age”. (Enid Bagnold, The Loved and Envied, 1936)
I never realised how important being pretty was. When I lived at home, my parents kept saying I was all right and I suppose I believed them. Then, when I went to Derby, all that was taken away. What you looked like was the only thing that mattered and I was ugly. You had to have a man... I am emotionally immature. Thanks to a middle-class upbringing. (So Much Blood, Simon Brett)
Cougars may be capable of swimming to some 4,500 islands in the waters of Washington state, possibly allowing them to access new territory, food sources and mates. (@newscientist. Has anybody told the cougars there are 100 genders, or that the nuclear family is the cause of all the world’s evils, or that mammals are going to stop pairing off and instead experiment with alternative living arrangements? I tweeted this reply, and got an extremely offensive picture in response.)
Absolutely baffled how nice enough but utterly average boring no-hoper blokes end up with nice women. Do women just give up and settle after about 35? (@anon_opin)
She was cute, and she was able to project herself as a catch, which is very important to someone looking for a mate. (Aphrodite Jones)
How to be more attractive, from @mehrnoosh: Wear Red, Show Off Your Hips, Make Yourself Look Taller, Travel in Groups, Fill in Your Eyebrows, Put On Some Sunglasses, Walk With a Swagger, Stop Crossing Your Arms.
I don’t regret it, but I hadn’t realised the cost. I hadn’t realised how much it would cost to live alone... As for safety, it’s a basic human need I’m learning to live without... Officially divorced as of last summer, neither a wife nor somebody’s long-term partner, I’m a woman I no longer recognise. (An ex-wife in The Times Jan 2022)
[An unmarried woman] was named ‘a jolly good sort’, and was always ‘just outside’ the real life of her friends. (Hugh Walpole)
I think it's worth keeping in mind that one major reason it seems hard now to find a partner is that (in the West) we by and large don't arrange marriages any more. To that extent it's a byproduct of greater freedom and autonomy. (@McCaineNL)
Marriage, a home and a car – the ambition of all young Iranians, according to Christopher de Bellaigue in the Guardian.
When women are without partners, it is a personal failing. when men are without partners, it is a societal issue. (@dearestfem)
An inevitable part of being a catch is one’s physical appearance. (The Times, 2022)
Dating sucks for everyone, and the fact is that we just don’t see a lot of highly differentiated status pairings. Everyone mostly pairs off within their own social/attractiveness bands. This applies to dating as well as marriage. (@constans)
That homophobia remains rife among gay men is hardly surprising. They grow up in a society that teaches that settling down with a woman is the natural order of things. (Owen Jones, April 2014)
People stopped asking me [when I was going to have children] about 5 years ago when my hair went totally white. It was surreal. Like a switch just flicked. (Alexandra Honigsberg)
Most people by my age have confronted those things. You know, they’ve got married, they’ve had kids. They’ve got pensions. I have always shied away from those things. But I realise that the way I’ve lived my life in my 20s just isn’t a sustainable model for the rest of my life. (Comedian Jon Richardson, aged 31)
Without Friends or Family, even Extraordinary Experiences are Disappointing. Happiness is inherently social, two studies find (Sci Am head)
Every single person I knew had children apart from my two childfree friends: I didn’t know anyone who didn’t get what they wanted. But I think they had this idea that I had this “other” group of friends I was hanging out with when I wasn’t with them – like I had this spare secret set of friends – I didn’t! They all went on to get new friends through their connections through their families and partners and children but I had just lost all my friends. (www.gateway.women.com)
Picture by Gordon Bruce.
More here, and links to the rest.
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