105. The stigma of being single

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Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners. So great to have you here for another episode, for another topic, one that I have wanted to discuss for some time, but it felt appropriate and you, lovely listeners, thought the same way. So today we are going to discuss the stigma of being single. In twenty twenty three, when I am recording this episode, more people I think are single than ever before. In Australia, at least I know, it's like one in four or twenty five percent of people over the age of eighteen are single, and that number climbs when we look at the US or North America or Europe. I think in some places it's as high as like thirty five percent, totally against the historical norm. And yet sometimes it feels like it's a bit of an invisible group, and we face a lot of expectations to eventually want to settle down or to find our soulmate, both externally and internally as well. I would say, there is still this general sense that being single is a phase that we all want to get out of. It's not forever, and what we should all be aiming for is monogamy and a relationship, and that expectation becomes a lot more pronounced than I would also say internalized. In our twenties, we may begin to feel a lot of shame or self stigma for not having someone, or we feel drawn by into dating apps or serial dating to tick that partnership off our list. That has been my personal experience my last relationship. If you have listened to me for a while, you'll know it left me very emotionally unavailable, I would say, for a long time, and I protected my peace a little too hard, and being single has become a very comfortable part of my identity. But some of that internalized misogyny, I would say, and that shame and that pressure to settle down has definitely been creeping in recently this episode, and I guess my general thoughts on this was also really inspired by some recent events that have happened in my life. I went to a dinner party the other day for a very good friend of mine, No shame to her. I love her to bits, but I showed up at this party and every single person there was in a relationship or had attended with their partner, and it just made me so aware of how alone I was, And maybe alone isn't the best word. It just made me consider my status as a single person and wonder whether I was really actually missing out, or I was doing something wrong, or I was in some way flawed. I've also just encountered more and more conversations and questions from friends or family or even acquaintances. The older I get, where that looming question always seems to come up, how's your dating life going? Is there anyone serious? And it feels weird to always have the same answer, and yet I am genuinely the happiest I have ever been in my life. I think here's the thing I've realized. No one can make you feel bad about something that you are comfortable with. And let me tell you, society is going to try and make you feel insecure about being single a million different ways. It's in the movies and the media, we can see, it's in our childhood experiences, in the misogyny that we internalize, cultural norm societal expectations into personal relationships and also some of the structural and economic challenges that a company being a single person in this society. But is it wrong to want a relationship? Is it wrong to feel insecure about your relationship status? Does that, you know, indicate that perhaps we're unhappy being alone, that somehow we aren't fulfilled without someone in our lives. And maybe one of the biggest questions of all, is my desire to be with someone actually a sign that I need to do more healing? Or am I only seeking a partnership because that's what society expects because of the shame, because of this whole social norm that I need to be married and I need to have someone in my life. A million thoughts, a million questions, those are the things, those are the ideas that I really want to explore today. And this is not an episode that is going to scream in your face and claim you can't have a relationship or that a partnership will limit you. Absolutely not. What I really want to dive into is all the ways that we subliminally and implicitly feel convinced that a relationship is the only thing that will make us happy, and that we are somehow less than without one. This time in our lives is so sacred, and there is a genuine science that points to the value of our single years, and it's information that I really want to share, and I feel like it's really worth knowing. The stigma of being single is alive and well, but it's not always other people who are making us feel bad about it. Sometimes the people who have the greatest stigma and feeling of discomfort towards our relationship status is ourselves. And when we're in our twenties, there is absolutely no reason to be feeling this way. So I really want to discuss why we do feel that pressure, what it means to feel stigma around your relationship status, is it wrong to want a relationship status? And so many other questions in this episode. So without further ado, let's dive into it and unpack the stigma of being single in our twenties. I've talked about this before, but I think that our twenties are a real pivot decade where half the people in this age group are settling down or they have these very adult relationships, and the other half are kind of stuck in this perpetual loop of bad dates and failed situationships and dry spells. I can directly see this in the people around me. We're on one side, I have close friends who live with their partners and who are talking about marriage and children. And on the other side is people like me who feel woefully underprepared for this next stage. Sometimes we feel like our identity is tied to our relationship status, and we can't help but notice and crave the type of comfort and security of the people we see in these very happy relationships. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. It's not jealousy. There's not something inherently wrong with us. We psychologically crave what we don't have. It's scientifically proven, and it has a very appropriate name. It's called the grass is greener syndrome. And this can also be explained by the scarcity effect. When we feel like something is desirable or worthwhile or rare, such as a relationship, our subconscious mind makes us want it more so, for example, when when everyone around us has this beautiful partner, or when we feel like the dating pool is slowly becoming a lot more limited and scarce, such that the potential for a relationship is more rare, we crave them more because its value in our mind suddenly goes up, and that can really diminish our decision making and our standards, because we do become desperate, we do feel like we are racing against the clock. I think there's also the fact that our society still very much values the idea of monogamy and partnership. Being single is not the norm, and as this amazing article put it, it's more acceptable to be part of a couple, even a dysfunctional one, than it is to be happy and content by yourself. There's a lot to be said about this and about where this comes from the origins of this stigma. And if you're thinking that the use of the word stigma is perhaps a little bit dramatic, you may or may not be surprised by how much research has actually been conducted into this rising trend. I think this The term stigma is used pretty broadly in psychology and in society to refer to negative attitudes towards someone based on a particular characteristic or an attribute, and it's also typically accompanied by false stereotypes such as I don't know spinster or old maid or cat lady. All of these stereotypes associated with singleness, particularly female singleness, really firmly plant people who choose to be single as inherently unhappy, as unsatisfied, or to be looked down upon. So there is this amazing psychotherapist called Alison Abrams, and she has done a lot of thinking about this, and she said that single shaming is negatively judging somebody for not being partnered up and not conforming to society's expectations to be married or at least in a relationship by a certain age, And it manifests in a lot of implicit judgments and phrases that I'm sure we are probably familiar with. You know, you must be so lonely. The right person is out there for you. It's just a numbers game. You know, once you get to thirty it becomes a lot worse, or you know, you'll find someone eventually. When people make these statements, it may sound like encouragement or sympathy, but what they're really enforcing is that you kind of better get a move on, because if you're not in a relationship, there must be something inherently missing in your life. And we can't fully believe that you are happy or secure until you conform and until you find that puzzle piece, I think it's and peity derives from this inherent belief that you must be suffering or that you're experiencing some grave misfortune. In a study conducted by Match Research has found that of the common shaming phrases, thirty five percent of single people were told that they would find someone soon, twenty nine percent had heard that they must be lonely, and thirty eight percent reported a general pity over their relationship status. So why is that? Why do we still face this implicit idea that in order to be happy we have to be in love. We have seen a big change recently accompanying the acceptability of singlehood, both in attitudes and demographics, particularly amongst women. In the past, marriage was one of the only ways to really gain social power or even security. If you've read Pride and Prejudice or you've seen the movie, you'll know that in miss Line, you know, I'm twenty seven, i have no money, i have no prospects, I'm already a burden to my family, and I'm frightened. And that's a pretty accurate depiction of the choices of women in particular. Back in the day, it was either marriage or it was poverty, and you know, we can thank the suffragettes and first and second wave feminism for kind of liberating us from that belief. But as much as our society has experienced somewhat of a cultural and sexual liberation in the last fifty years, it does take generations for stigma and certain expectations to be eliminated. There is still a typical, normalized script for how our lives should run that at its core is focused on obtaining partnership and starting a family. In some ways, this is evolutionary, you know, partnership provided offspring which continued on our genetics and the survival of our speed, and those offspring were more likely to survive if there were two people to take care of them. In other ways, it's very cultural. Some you know, still consider women over the age of thirty who were single to be left over, and we implicitly do place couples or partnership on a pedestal because they have met the blueprint of what our society expects. They have done what they've been told to do, which is to find each other and to hold on to each other. And maybe the reason why there is such an obvious pressure to even do this before thirty is because of our cultural and our biological awareness of fertility. There are so many justifications, but I think that a biological explanation actually eliminates some of the societal responsibility for this implicit stigma against single people. And we cannot talk about this stigma without examining the psychology behind gender and misogyny. Like most things in society, Like most stigma, single shaming is not equally distributed. Think about the words used to describe singleness past thirty. A woman is a spinster, a man is a bachelor. And words are not empty constructs. They contain an implied social message and a meaning, a certain tone. Women tend to endure the most shame or prejudice because of the emphasis on marriage and child rearing, and we can understand this by looking at gender schema theory. So gender schemer theory it was introduced in the nineteen eighties by this amazing psychologist. Her name is Sandra bem a Central reading you should go and look her up, and this theory essentially says that the binary or the suggested differences between male and female have become one of the basic organizational structures of human society. Whereby men are the breadwinners, the moneymakers, the leaders, the powerful sex and women are the wives, they're the homemakers, they're the mothers. As children, we learn about gender through these specific attributes and we create gender schemers, And a schemer is essentially a pattern of thought or behavior that's used to organize categories or to simplify our interpretation of the world. If you were born a girl, you're implicitly influenced by what you observe, by how your behavior is corrected by the media. You consume, the words of your peers and adults, the behavior of your parents, so many things. You know. If you were raised in a traditional culture, there may have been very strict divisions between men and women. Women belonged to the private sphere, to the home. They took care of the household and they raised children, whilst men had access to the public sphere. They worked outside the home to support the family. And when we are raised in this culture, which I think is every culture in some way or another, we develop gender schema in line with what we observe, and through this schema we develop an understanding of what we can do to be a woman or to be a man. Of what society expects from us, and when you act in line with those expectations, your behavior is reinforced. You are praised, you are told you're pretty, you're told that you're good, such that you become conditioned to embrace a certain gender identity and expression. And a big part of the equation of being woman of that identity that we learn is being a wife and being a mother. And we often construct the identity of a woman based on her relationship to others and her social role. And because of those very early and consistent influences, it does feel like a natural duty for you to live up to those expectations, to fulfill that role. And who are we without a husband, without a manie, without a child. So we really feel shame around being single because we're not living up to what we know is expected of us. We're not fulfilling that role, that trope that has been sold to us since we were children. It's also important to examine the continuing and i'd say maintaining influence of the media and television. The media, i would say, is the main way that societal norms are reinforced. There's even a whole new discipline in psychology known as media psychology that looks into the impact of the media on our perspective of the world and the role of online learning. So there is this infamous study. If you're a psychology student, you will definitely have come across this. But it found that when children were exposed to, for example, violence on television or violent video games, they were more likely to be aggressive towards their peers because they believed it was socially acceptable and they modeled their behavior on these displays. And we can make that same connection with the presentation of singleness as a concept in television and movies. Okay, let me list a few movies for you. Bridget Jones's diary. The proposal was Standardbile, a very good movie. I will say, twenty seven Dresses, Ten Things I Hate About You, The Devil Wears Prada. You want to know what all these movies have in common. They all peddle a really familiar narrative and storyline. There is a woman who is focused on herself, who was successful, who was career driven, who at many times is quite content being alone, but she needs a boyfriend or a husband to complete her, to tame her. And when she finds him she's happy, and that's when the story kind of ends. Once you begin to recognize that pattern, I think there's no wonder that we feel less than if we aren't in a relationship. A relationship, marriage it's presented as the end game. You know, what more is there to a successful story, to a happy ending, then a wedding than a ring. And if that's not enough to reinforce the stigma of singleness, our society also makes it much harder for those of us who are not in relationships. I think a lot of our cultural context and how our society operates is built on the concept of the nuclear family, or at least some form of partnership. You know, think about buying a home these days, I think you need two incomes to do that. So that economic security provided by marriage back in the sixteen hundreds, it's still very much around. It's just been repackaged and rebranded. You know. Some other examples insurance, it's cheaper for couples, being married, is great for tax purposes. And there's even been this term kind of coined for those policies, called singalism, So the policy of making single people pay more than couples for their basic needs. As a way of kind of nudging people towards partnership through this positive reinforcement, and as a way to kind of make people feel like they have to conform and fit into this box. I think when you look at all those factors, there's no wonder that we feel terrible for being alone. In so many ways, you know, from social schemers to the media to economic security, society is actively implying that if you are single, you are somehow not really made to fit into this society. This is not acceptable, and when we begin to internalize these beliefs, we no longer need others to tell us that will never be happy if alone, because we start to believe it ourselves and apply that stigma in our own right. This is known in psychology as self stigma in contrast to public stigma. If we are exposed to enough conditioning and negative beliefs, we begin to self regulate and we internalize that negative stereotype. We internalize that belief that we should not be satisfied, that we should be looking for someone, and that's where a lot of the shame comes from. You know, I haven't I really need to do a whole episode on this, because I think that shame is such a powerful emotion, and we feel shame when we feel like we have violated a social norm and it makes us feel ourselves in a negative light or feel like we are flawed for not fulfilling some kind of social duty or expectation. And our proneness to this shame. It's influenced by a lot of factors. But according to researchers from the University of Bern in Germany, they did this really interesting study where they found that younger people in particular between the ages of eighteen and twenty nine and women as well, are much more impacted by the consequences and the experiences of shame. And I think that is the target audience for the stigma around being single women between eighteen and twenty nine. And as much as you may, you know, really love your single era, you're embracing your alone time, You're really loving that you can put effort into your friendships and your hobbies and your dreams, sometimes we can't ignore that little voice in the back of our head that is waiting for the right person to come along, that is dreaming of love and dreaming of partnership. So does that kind of mean that we've succumbed to public stigma, and that we've internalized the belief that we need to be in a relationship. I guess, is it wrong to still want to be with someone? Is it wrong to be in a relationship, or is that just an acknowledgment that we do feel shame. I really want to unpack that, because I think that that is really fascinating. I think that we can both recognize that there is a certain social and public stigma around singleness and still want to experience love and partnership. So we're going to discuss all of that and more after this shortbreak. Wanting to be in a relationship does not mean that you are abandoning yourself. I read that the other day, and I didn't really know how I felt about it. I think when you are someone who is single, especially in your twenties, in order to kind of replace that cognitive dissonance of perhaps wanting love and not being able to find it, we can create a very apathetic exterior.

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Speaker 2: Maybe this is familiar to you, you know, that pattern of telling your friends, you know, I don't need anyone, and men are trash, and lover is a lie, and I'm never settling down and perhaps that's true and power to you.

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Speaker 1: But what I've personally found is that deep down we kind of know we don't believe it, We kind of know that we do want to conform to that narrative. It's really an armor that we use to protect us from being hurt. Again, if we appear detached to others, perhaps we can convince ourselves and that we are, and we know that we can protect ourselves from being hurt. It can also be seen as kind of this protest against society's obsession with partnership and monogamy and that repetitive narrative that love is the point of living. But does craving that relationship, that partnership, does that inherently mean that you're not happy alone? Or is it something else? I want to discuss that because and firstly, I think it's absolutely okay and in fact, highly normal if you do dream of finding your person. I know that we have spoken a lot about the stigma to conform and the societal expectations, but sometimes it does just come down to some super rudimentary basic neuroscience. Humans rely subconsciously on others for security, We rely on them for recognition and love, and the presence of these things in our lives brings us an important psychological sense of comfort and safety. It kind of all derives from our innate human urge for belongingness, and when we look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, for example, belongingness and intimate relationships are a critical psychological need that is required to be satisfied before we can reach self actualization, and a lack of belongingness, or a failure to maintain at least a minimum amount of lasting, positive and significant relationships can have an impact on our mental well being but also our ability to achieve our higher selves. There was this really amazing article in Psychology Today which I'll link in the show notes, and it really explains this quite well. It says that the need to belong goes beyond the need for superficial social ties or casual sexual connections. We want a profound bond, and when we feel that that is absent, we inherently feel like something is lacking from our lives and we feel unhappy. I also think, let's not get ourselves here. Love feels great. Scientifically, of course, we can talk about oxytocin, we can talk about zo For me, We can talk about serotonin, but it just feels really nice. It's also not the only thing that feels really nice, and it's not the only thing that can fulfill that psychological need for belongingness. There are so many other aspects of our lives that fit that profile, that match that requirement, you know, deep meaningful friendships and familial closeness and shared jokes and memories and platonic soulmates. I think the problem with desiring a relationship comes when we implicitly or unconsciously believe that a partner will replace our need for that more complex, diverse sense of belonging for example, you know, using a relationship as a band aid for loneliness. I think in some instances we do use romantic partners as kind of this symbolic proxy coping mechanism or distraction. And when that occurs, I think we see the greatest correlation to things like codependency, but also identity fusion. Identity fusion it normally relates to in group loyalty, but we can also examine it on an individual level. So it's this kind of visc psychological sense of a oneness with another person and what that can create and What that can cause is for us to entirely eliminate our own identity and sense of self in devotion to what is best for others or in this case, what is best for our relationship and what is best for our partner. When we feel a sense of unease in ourself or loneliness, perhaps a lack of personal fulfillment, we may find that we are more likely to choose people who can aid in that insecurity, who can make us feel loved, And the same can be said for low self esteem. When we don't feel confident enough, we use the validation of others, including love and attraction, as an alternative to the internal validation that we lack, and we can become dependent on that feeling. I always think that this kind of offers an explanation for those people who jump from one relationship to another as a coping mechanism rather than doing some of that deeper dirty work. That and I think the combined stigma of being single offers a pretty accurate explanation for why we stay in dead end relationships, or why we feel this urge to just like find someone and date them and be with them even when they don't actually enhance our lives. So that kind of leads me to the next question. In a society where marriage and monogamy are very enviable and they are placed on this pedestal, do we have to be completely healed before pursuing a relationship to kind of ensure that we're doing so for the right reasons, not just to meet some cultural or societal norm. I have a lot of opinions on this because I think there are two kind of camps or schools of thought. The first is that you need to heal completely before entering into a new relationship, and the second is that a re relationship in itself can be healing. I do believe that what you don't address when you are single, particularly around attachment issues and trust and understanding your values and standards, those conflicts and those kind of problems will show up in your next relationship. But that doesn't mean that you need to be completely perfect to pursue healthy connection. You just need to be cognizant of what triggers you, of what upsets you, and how you typically react to those triggers. For example, a common one we see with an anxious attachment style is a fear of abandonment, and that may manifest in extreme anxiety and pulling away at the slightest sign that someone is planning to leave you, even if it's as innocent as not replying to your messages straight away. I was actually talking to a good friend of mine about this the other day. We've both definitely been through the ringer, I would say, with a series of very emotionally unavailable men, and as a result, I think both of us kind of have this tendency to have one foot out the door whenever we enter into a new relationship. For example, if you follow me on Instagram, you'll know this. But I've been dating a bit recently, and I've been going on a few dates with this guy and one night he was like, just letting you know I'm going to be really busy for the next few weeks. And my first thought was like, liar, I know what that means. And my second thought was like run ice amount block his number, which is an entirely disproportionate response to the situation. And I think because I understand this now, I was able to apply rationality and recognize that this is a learned behavior from myself. It doesn't mean that I am not deserving of a relationship. It doesn't mean that I am somehow flawed or not healed or not working on myself. It's just something that you have to be aware of. You know, you can want a real relationship and still be in the process of healing as long as you are a pursuing connections for the right reasons, not because of your self stigma or public stigma, and if you understand how your past experiences may create a pattern of behavior that is self sabotage. But there's also this question of standards right because as much as we do feel the pressure to settled down from literally every direction and we want to experience love, being able to identify whether that person is right for you or whether you're just settling because they are the first one to come along is crucial because I truly believe it is a thousand times better being single than being in the wrong relationship. The wrong relationship can do so much harm, but deliberately choosing to build a healthy relationship with yourself or to be self partnered, that really pays off in dividends. Being single, it can be stressful and it can be shameful at times because of what we've learned and what we've been taught, But so it can being with the wrong person or in a dysfunctional relationship. Maybe we've all heard the statistic that the happiest population group in the world is single women. But I think singleness offers so much more than just happiness. You know. A study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family. It found that single people exercise more and they are overall more physically healthy. And another study found that single people have a more diverse social circle, They are more attentive to their friends, they find that their friendships are more meaningful. And this one was really surprising, but single people also have the lowest rates of credit card debt, really interesting compared to married couples and couples with children, and we don't hear about those benefits. All we've been told to focus on is how lonely we should feel, how happy a relationship will make us, how much stronger we will be with someone by our side, And it seems that this may actually be a bit of a fallacy. I'm going to say it one more time. No one can make you feel bad about something that you feel secure in. And if you're feeling the pressure to settle down, just remember that there is going to be a time in your life when maybe you are married, or you're in a long term relationship, you live with this person, you see them every day. Maybe you have kids and they're sticky and they cry and they turn into children or teenagers who hate you, and you're going to make the same you know, Juni casserole every night. And in those moments, you are going to look back at this time in your life right now and wish that you could have just one more day of being single, one more day of being alone and getting to sleep in your own bed, by yourself and only being responsible for you. And that time is right now. That time, that one day you're going to look back on and be nostalgic for and wish that you were back there. That is right now, so cherish it. Additionally, when that love comes along, you will go into it so much stronger, with such a better sense of yourself. If you maintain your standards and you seek to elevate your life without a partner, and if that love doesn't come along, you'll feel more confident in your own abilities. You will have created a life that you love, and you will be okay with whatever shame or stigma or pressure society throws your way as much as these social influences, both those close to us in terms of our family and our friends, but also those more macro social influences like the media, like television, try to convince us that we are only valuable if we are in a relationship, that that is like the hallmark of happiness. We all can kind of recognize that maybe that's not true, that maybe that's not something that everyone aspires for, and that a life is just as beautiful on your own, in fact, sometimes maybe even more so, and it's also a lot more beautiful than if you were to conform and settle down just because of that self and public stigma. That's an important thing to remember, especially when we do feel that implicit shame bubbles to the surface and we do feel like we have to just pick someone and be with them for the rest of our life. No, no, that's totally not what we should do. We are still so young. But also life has so much more to offer than marriage, and so much more to offer than partnership, and we should value that just as highly as those things. We should value the to adventure and explore and be alone and know ourselves just as much as we value the concept of monogamy. I hope that if you are someone who is single and maybe you're feeling a little bit down about it, maybe you're feeling like somehow you are less than that there's something wrong with you, that this kind of helps you out. I hope you understand better now why it is you feel that way. It's not your fault. It's not because you are innately flawed. It's because of this huge, massive construction around the idea of singleness and also the idea of partnership. It was so important to me to do this episode. I think it's something that I personally have been thinking about a lot because of like the context and kind of my social relationships. So I hope you found it just as valuable as I did. I hope it helped you out. As always, if there is someone in your life who needs to hear this episode, who maybe going through a bit of self stigma or shame at the moment, please do feel free to share it along get them to listen. Also, if you feel called to do so, please feel free to leave a five star review wherever you are listening right now. I read every single one of them. They really make my day. Also, also, oh my god, so many alsos. I have a Patreon coming out in two weeks. I'm going to talk about it more on next week's episode, but keep your eye out. So many of you have been asking of ways that you can support me. That is so beautiful and meaningful, and I'm so grateful that you guys value what I'm doing. So keep your ears out and follow me on Instagram at that Psychology Podcast to be the first to know when things like that happen, or if you want to suggest a topic, if there's something you're going through and you want to hear some of the psychology behind it, follow me over there and shoot me a message. I love hearing from you guys, as all always. We will be back next week with another episode, and remember being single is not a crime. You are going to be okay. I will talk to you soon