Why Do We Treat Being Single Like a Social Disease?

We aren’t born into marriages, yet we’re bombarded with this narrative that we’re failed or lesser humans for not being coupled up.

Right before the pandemic hit, I had a major foot surgery when we were still innocent starlings dreaming about our epic 2020 plans.

As to be expected with most major operations, the recovery sucked worse than the surgery. I was put under and vaguely remember grabbing the nurse saying, “If I don’t make it out of here, primary Cuomo for fuck’s sake.” Then I woke up in the middle of it and asked why a retail gun was being drilled in my leg before summarily passing out again.

Whereas there are few things that suck more than schlepping to physical therapy three days a week in sub-Arctic temperatures trying to push a Rollator with your leg in a boot, all while you have to navigate public transit that is completely inhospitable to disabled people and has been crumbling like an Aldi knock-off Oreo thanks to your sex pest governor’s continuous refusal to maintain it.

About a week after I commenced physical therapy, I got a phone call from an acquaintance in the entertainment industry who wanted to check on me, which I appreciated. He inquired about how my surgery went and how recovery was going.

Then the call took an odd turn that led to us not really being in touch anymore because I was too weirded out.

“How does your boyfriend feel about this?”

This inquiry was so unexpected to me, I legit busted out laughing.

I don’t know why he assumed I had one in the first place since I never mentioned a partner the whole time we knew each other. My last significant involvement that was hardly even a demo version of a real relationship took place when Obama was still in office, long before this acquaintance and I had even first exchanged words.

Moreover, even if I did, why would he care about how this guy felt? I’m the one who just had my foot opened up for the fourth time in my life.

“I’m single, and why would that matter?”

He said, “Really? What are you doing about that?”

I responded, “Dude, I just had my foot and part of my leg hacked open with 39 stitches as a door prize, and I’m downing Percocets like Skittles. All my life and business plans are on hold until I’m done with PT in a few months. I don’t think I’m exactly in a place to find the right guy to raise a bunch of toads with.”

“I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, but…wouldn’t having someone make it easier to get through this?”

I was just so stunned. Especially given that women are highly likely to have their husbands leave them after a serious illness or operation. Being married or in a relationship didn’t cross my mind with respect to recovering from my long-awaited operation.

Although there were certainly things about the recovery process that angered me, like the stupid torture device I had to strap my leg into once a day to elevate for 15 minutes. That was easy to set up in the doctor’s office where I’m on a lay-flat chair designed for such things and had a nurse strapping me in.

This shit was NOT designed for single people who live alone in your average crappy NYC apartment. Medical devices are designed for married men, and people who live with their parents or caregivers if not a group setting where they have on-site healthcare workers to assist you with setup. I expressed this injustice to my podiatrist and he said, “You’re the only patient who’s had problems with this!”

This doctor is one of very few I’ve had who actually listens to his patients. So I dead looked him in the eye and said, “How many of your patients are single and live by themselves?” and it actually gave him pause. Most of his patients around my age are married, or perhaps still living with family because of tearfully high housing costs. Doctors and device makers don’t think of single people living alone.

As for everything else, Grubhub and Instacart kept me fed. My wonderful next door neighbor volunteered to help with stuff I needed around my house, and my dad brought me food and household things when he took me to my appointments. A Twitter mutual drove me to my stitch removal appointment when my dad was unavailable, and Lyft took me home when the deteriorating MTA with its piss-poor accessibility couldn’t accomplish this task. Then I reached a détente with my podiatrist and said I’d do additional physical therapy since I was doing such a half-assed job trying to get myself in and out of that horrific strap monster, that it probably wasn’t even having the intended effect anyway.

The whole experience made me think of how single people live in a couples’ world, but that we treat it like a problem to be solved instead of a simple life circumstance — or even choice.

Would I like a guy to raise toads and some giant lizards with? Sure! I’m down for romantic love and a lot of sex, and to share the life that I built.

Does it mean all my problems would’ve been automatically solved? Fuck no.

There’s women whose husbands would’ve gone straight into caregiver mode and done a better job than many people do with their own kids, and others who’d do so little that she’d be reliant on the same apps I used and had to call friends and family for help.

And even the most adept kinkster who loves rope play would’ve thrown my foot brace out the window after trying to strap me into it. Seriously, I JUST WANT TO TALK to whoever designed this overpriced piece of garbage.

Yes, relationships (especially live-in ones) will have an impact on your day-to-day life but you shouldn’t be in one solely so you can have a gopher, chauffer, cook, maid, and other paid jobs. Starting a romantic relationship solely to get people to do things for you is just as selfish as only having kids because you expect a caregiver when you’re old.

Why do we treat being single like it’s this horrible affliction we must change at all costs, when I clearly found ways to get through my recovery by relying on both my community and apps?

What about single people who don’t have strong communities, friends and family who live near them, or the financial means to rely on apps? What about the fairness in how the workers behind those apps are paid and treated, given that the work they do is so essential to keeping society running and the pandemic only proved that tenfold?

The solution shouldn’t be “just get a partner, you need to change that!” 3 in 10 American adults are single and not in a committed relationship of any type. That’s about 31% of the adult population in this country, or around 80 million people. That’s a pretty big group of people to just write off and tell them to change such a massive aspect of their lives.

I can’t fathom being in a relationship for the sake of it.

So, let’s put my major surgery aside for a minute here. What got me the most about this acquaintance’s phone call was that dude just couldn’t fathom being single. He saw being single as some kind of “failure state” and that I wasn’t living my life right by not just shacking up with the first guy who was halfway nice to me.

Personally, I’ve never understood serial monogamists. You never have time to yourself? You need to depend on someone to just plain get through life? Are you that worried about being single and how people perceive it?

I’m anticipating and have been through so many major life changes by myself, that I can’t imagine a co-pilot as an option. I can now check off some pretty damn big ones — starting a business, surviving a pandemic, a major surgery, and my first cross-country move.

I’m incredibly self-reliant. Maybe to a fault, this is a common trait among child abuse and trauma survivors. Of the twenty million contradictions women are given, we’re told we can’t come off as clingy, whiny and *gasp* NEEDY, yet you also don’t want to come across as too tough and independent or no man will ever want you, dooming you to live alone with 200 feral monitor lizards.

(As the kids these days say, “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”)

Yes, I’d like a partner. I spent a great deal of my late twenties and early thirties figuring out what I want in a relationship. Upon becoming more literate in gender and sexuality terms, I also found myself asking questions like, “Trying for a monogamous relationship seems doomed for me, am I meant to be polyamorous?” (No. I respect it if that’s your lifestyle, but it’s not for me.) “Am I aromantic?” (Also no. The guys I really liked didn’t feel the same about me, and I didn’t want to reciprocate with the guys who crushed on me hard. I also wasn’t allowed to be “truly” romantic because of both the trauma inflicted on me and subcultural pressures.)

The amazing life I had built before the pandemic and my surgeries also taught me that it’s better to build a life that you love while single than to treat your singlehood like it’s this state of damnation that must be ceased no matter how much stress and anguish it causes. Shani Silver’s writing has been LIBERATING as fuck with this: she breaks down that reductive binary that “single = automatically sad, happily single = you must not want a relationship”. As I build a new life in a new city while this pandemic still rages, I’ve taken her words to heart. I am going to love the living shit out of my new life where my heart and bed are open, and if things are essentially Infrastructure Week, I’ll still be happy.

You need not put off having a relationship until your life is absolutely perfect, otherwise no one would ever pair off. But sometimes, there’s these mammoth obstacles you know you have to overcome alone. And for vulnerable states where you actually shouldn’t be alone, like when you’re hopped up on Percocet with a hacked up leg — we need a massive societal and governmental overhaul that prioritizes care, not to tell people just to find romantic partners.

If we stopped treating being single like some kind of social disease, this is a discussion we could actually have on building better communities and lives.