Why "I can't believe you're single" is the worst thing to say on a date

Or ever

I typed ‘date’ into the photo library and this is what came up. Please can we stop asking why people are single like we’re still in 1875? Photo by Lidia Nikole on Unsplash

Hello! And thank you so much for being here, whether you’re new or have been reading The Honesty Box for a while.

You may notice I’m a day late (I’m usually fairly punctual on a Sunday morning each week). I travelled to Norfolk on Saturday for a few days’ break and was too tired to write, but the extra time helped me chew over what I wanted to say.

A couple of months ago, a friend went on a second date. All was going well: he booked a bar with great music, they both showed up on time, the cocktails and conversation flowed.

And then, an hour or so in, the dreaded words slipped out of his mouth: “I can’t believe you’re single. Why is that?”

This was probably well-intentioned - or even meant to be flattering - but for me there’s so much going on with this question.

Choosing someone to have a long-term relationship with is one of the biggest decisions you’ll make in your life, so it’s good to be bloody picky.

It’s a BIG question, with no simple answer. He may as well have asked her to describe in a nutshell the vagaries of her life over the past 40-something years, to explain her status as a single person - or even as human being.

We’ve all had (whether we know it or not), many sliding doors moments in our lives, many times when we made decisions that led down one path or another. And none of them are wrong, they simply happened not to have resulted in a partnership.

So the question is kind of unanswerable in any sensible way, because finding a person who you vibe with, are attracted to and can grow with has multiple factors - a big one being luck. “Because the universe has not yet conspired to create a big bang between me and my ‘perfect partner,’” is one answer.

Finding the right partner is hard, and for me there’s no judgement if it takes three weeks or 30 years to come across and then get to know that person and decide that you complement each other well enough to have a relationship.

The apps make it worse, because they are designed to keep you swiping and single so they can make money from you, not to help you find a partner - which makes it effing hard for single people who would like to be in a relationship.

My friend could have answered in any of those ways. But let’s look at the question. “Why are you single?” is loaded with a sense of: “You’re attractive, you have a good job, you’re an interesting person… so what’s the catch?” AKA, there’s something wrong with single people.

There’s a massive societal assumption that partnership is the norm

Or, to quote Bridget Jones when asked why there are so many unmarried women in their 30s these days: “I suppose it doesn’t help that underneath our clothes our bodies are covered in scales.”

(By the way, there is NOTHING wrong with my friend. She is all of these things and more - she’s kind, funny, fit and generous. She’s done therapy and she knows herself well. Her heart is open to a relationship but she doesn’t need one to have a great life because she has that already.)

“Because I haven’t met the right person,” is what my friend replied. Fair enough.

But when single people reply like this (usually for lack of anything better to say because it’s an effing stupid question), it opens up the conversation to comments about whether you’ve tried hard enough, or are too picky. Why not lower your standards?

Choosing someone to have a long-term relationship with is one of the biggest decisions you’ll make in your life, so it’s good to be bloody picky.

There’s also the fact that there’s a massive assumption that partnership is the norm.

If society prizes coupledom over singledom (and politicians do too, with marriage or civil partnerships incentivised in all kinds of ways that keep some people together when they’d rather not be), being single can be seen as a problem to be solved.

Someone I knew a few years ago asked me why I was single. Then she told me she met her husband when she was 39 and he 42, but she wondered what was ‘wrong’ with him because he hadn’t had a long-term relationship (neither had she). This person could not see the double standard, rather like my friend’s date.

Frankly (and as my friend agreed), we don’t know why we’re single, and actually, we don’t care. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Thanks for reading! What do you think? Agree? Disagree? I’d love to know. You can comment below.

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