To wonder where on earth all of these allegedly single women are hiding?

[gilmoregirl]

Just catching up on my weekend papers, interesting article in the Observer (ok, last weekend am not very up to date with the news am I?)

Title "Single for life" why millions of women like me will never get married, at the bottom of the article there are some statistics - apparently around 51% of women under 50 in the UK have NEVER been married.

Really? I find that hard to believe as I feel very much in the minority as a single 38 year old spinster. I work in an office of seven - the six other women aged between 25 - 55 are ALL married. Only one of the women I went to university with is also unmarried. I am very much in the minority out of the parents I come across.

Does this ring true to anyone else?

Tiggy way hay. You've just described me

Bridget Jones does have it better gilmore oh to be able to go out after 7pm would be amazing!being single isn't bad, its just the 'hurry up and get another man' thing (from family, friends and work colleagues) that winds me up. I am quite happy on my own!

I'm 39, a single mum to a 5yo and my friends are all married. I've been engaged but never married (long story ). The only women I know who are single are ones I work with and they're all under 30. The worst thing is when elderly relatives ask 'are you courting yet?'. Courting?! What year is it, like, 1856?!

I went to a friend's hen do about 18 months ago and was the only single woman there (and at the wedding itself), and even the bride's mother said to me 'Don't worry, you'll meet someone soon' with a look of pity. Thing is, people assume that I want what they've got, e.g. a relationship, but I'm not sure I do. I like my life the way it is, just me and DS, and I'm not sure I want someone upsetting the equilibrium. People never actually ask me what I want though, they just assume I want to be the next one holding a hen night/getting married.

So while the figures may or may not be correct, they don't take into account those of us who are happily unmarried .

I see what you mean trills - that is a good point the wording is "women under 50" so may well include ALL females under 50, in which case even I can see that is likely to be the case.

Most of the time I am ok with being single (really I am) I just get on with it - I love DS to bits and we have a nice life together. Other times it really gets me down as I feel so lonely - like if something goes wrong I have no one to help me.

I do feel sorry for myself sometimes and woudl love to meet someone (sadly v unlikely as everyone I know is married!) and if I ever dare to complain to a friend or one of my sisters I get one of two things: either "oh you are so lucky to be single, my DH drives me mad" or "you could meet someone so easily if you tried".

Both of which are infuriating and demonstrate clearly that they have no idea how I am feeling (which has to be pretty low to draw attention to my sad single status as most of the time I just deflect any attention off myself)

40's, single, and always have been, and intend to keep it that way. I love to see my friends happily married, but many are actually unhappily married too. And I've always known it isn't for me. I've turned down proposals from some very nice men, no reflection on them, just don't want to be half of a pair. I have 2 kids.

Gilmoregirl, you need to meet some new people! I know lots of co-habiting people (self included) and quite a few single people, all in our 30s. I don't mean 'you must go out and find a man' just that your world of married people sounds a bit insular.

I did have to tick 'single' on some form or other recently, as it offered only married or single. Women does not include children. There are lots of co-habitees.

i'm 39, single, 2 dc, never been married. Wanted to, but not to the only person who asked me.

I do have lots of married friends. However my 4 closest friends are all unmarried, one has been married years ago, none of the others have, and none have children. In my workplace oddly there are lots of married women in their 20s, but all but one in their 30s/40s are unmarried, and about half of those are also single.

I suppose the thing for me has always been although I had lots of childless single friends, until recently I didn't know anyone who was single with children.

I am a single mum, I've never been married. (I love being single!)
One of my close friends is the same, although she was in a long term relationship for most of her 20's (although not fully co-habiting).
Another 2 of my close friends are single and childless.
We are all around middle to late 30's.

oh shit I clicked on here thinking it was someone looking for a date

that was a joke the sad face kind of spoiled that should have put a few of these

I'm single, never been married, 30 and got one DS. I actually don't mind being single that much in that I dont miss having a man around, but miss the social side of having a partner. I never get invited to couply things and the friends I do have (not many!) are all busy on weekends with their OHs.

I do love the Gilmore Girls though, so I'll be your friend gilmoregirl :)

I'm the opposite.

I have 3 'best' friends and I'm the only married one. I have lots of other unmarried friends too. Many are single, others cohabiting.

I feel like quite the freak for going and getting married.

AND I'm 36 so not a spring chicken.

I'm the same as Justified. I have 37 female cousins over the age of 18 (and only 1 male!) and 1 sister, and there are only two of us who are married. In fact, at big family functions, we are both quite often ridiculed...my cousin got married last year, and even on her wedding day, a family member said to her "you're mad. What if you ever fancy someone else?" - in complete seriousness.
Most of them (actually all, except my dsis) have children. And most are not with partners. You are not alone, OP.

I think YABU. The vast majority of women I know are unmarried. I can't think of a single woman I know of my generation who married before 30, and married women were very much in the minority at my last workplace. I'm pretty sure this isn't an unusual situation.

Lots of women are long term relationships with no intention of being married in the near future. Even if every woman was to get married in her mid 30's half the women 20-50 would still be unmarried.

I'm one!!! And many of my friends are too and my boss at the office - I'm surrounded by them. I know more unmarried than married - I guess people who live together are included in those figures as well as single people.

Mid-30s here, never married and never set up home with a partner either! (I've house-shared etc, but never "lived as married" with a partner)

I feel like a right old statistical aberration!

I got back in touch with an old (married, male) friend a while ago and the bit of his email where he asked after me basically read "So how are you? Are you married?" as if that was the one thing that would enable him to get a grip on the progress of my life.

Nobody would expectantly say "So how are you? Have you been made a director/earned over 100k/got a BMW yet?" It would be the height of crassness to impose such definitions of progress on others, but with marriage it still seems to be fine. It's like Bridget Jones was never written.

I'm married and 35, but I'd say about 1/3 of my female friends are still single. And they are AMAZING. I can't compare it to male friends as I don't have as many.

A lot of my friends with partners are not married, but that's different.

Here's one gilmore!
I was married a little bit in my twenties, but it doesn't count as i was drunk.
I had looong relationship before then too, and we lived together, so it's possible my life is progressing backwards, because I haven't had a proper man for about 5 years.

I have a set of married friends with kids, who never go out, and are very grown up, and a set of thirty something friends who have never married and don't have kids, and still do the drinks, clubs, casual sex thing.
They all want to meet someone great, but sometimes I wonder how possible that even is after 30?

I had a brutal wake up call the other night, when I bumped into a guy I hadn't seen for a few years. He used to like me and be really flirty, but at the time I had a baby and a job and wasn't in a dating place.

Plus, I thought he was OK, but nothing special.
Anyway, there he was with his 24 year old girlfriend, who looks like a model, talking about their plans for kids.
So I had thought he was nothing special, but actually he was way out of my league!!
It made me wonder whether the brutal truth is that I can't hold down a man (so to speak) because I am OK to have fun with, but men my age don't want to settle down with someone as old as me!!

Please, some man come on here and lie to me tell me that's not true?

Ahem. Anyway, I know how you feel about the school thing OP, and I always feel like the flaky kid among my proper grown up married friends.

Is good to hear that there are indeed some other single women out there then! I must just hang our in the wrong places I think.

WTAF - would love to be friends am glad have found a fellow gilmore girls fan - I am ridiculed for my love of that show. Plus Maid in manhattan - just need to get my single mother role models from somewhere as never meet any in real life.

I have been single for five years without literally so much as a sniff of a date or any male whatsoever showing an interest which is rather depressing as I cannot see that changing: my life involved taking DS to school, going to work, hanging out with DS and family / friends (all married) and going swimming. The closest I get to a possible venue to meet men is going for a coffee but so far no tall dark handsome stranger has eyed me up over my ginger bread latte....so any suggestions on how to remedy this wlecome

guardian soulmates! I have done it, and gone out with some men, although no serious relationship yet.

Its expensive, but my theory is that if you go on the free sites, you only get cheapskate men!

Gilmore Girls is brilliant! I have the first 4 series on DVD, and number 5 might have sneaked onto my Christmas list! If only there were a Luke for each of us

I've tried internet dating but only made one friend and met one freak! Not sure it's for me. But as I'm currently between jobs, DS is too young for school and I have very limited childcare, I don't know how else to meet anyone! On the rare occasion I've got a sitter I've got no-one to go out on the town with anyway :( It's very hard. I'm currently reading The Rules (recommended by a friend) to see if that's where I'm going wrong but there's certainly some iffy sounding advice in there! Not sure I'll ever have anyone to practice them on anyway! Has anyone else read it?

I agree about there being a difference between unmarried and actually single. I do know a lot of women who have never been married but do live with a partner.
Also I read somewhere that 50% of babies are born out of wedlock (shock, horror!) so this figure would seem to ring true.

I am 47 and have never been married and never will. Nor have I ever lived with a partner. I consider myself lucky in this respect. I've also got quite a few single friends, at least one of whom has never lived with a partner either, a few more who have lived with partners but not married them, and several who are happily heteromonogamous, living with partners but haven't married and won't because they have ideological objections to the institution. There are quite a lot of us about.
Mind you, if you are surrounded by appalling Noah's Arkers, one thing that might help is to take up some sort of hobby, preferably a not-too mainstream one, that will help you mix with a wider variety of people, single and otherwise.

The Rules? DEFINITELY would not recommend that. A little of the stuff is useful advice for stopping yourself making a new bloke the centre of your universe if you're prone to that, but certainly not all the passivity and game playing. Following the whole thing is only going to attract overbearing chauvinist men, IMO. As well as suppressing who you really are. There is a counterblast book called The Real Rules by Barbara de Angelo. I read both it and The Rules about 10 yrs ago. TRR was a bit new age hippy in places, but mostly it talked sense IIRC.

Lots of my otherwise liberal, unconventional friends in their early to mid 30s are married. Surprisingly few just living together. [Have read research somewhere that middle class people with degrees are more likely to get married these days. Bears out here. These are people who have mixed gender hen and stag parties, they're so right on.] Then there are a few long-term singles like me who mostly have health problems or perhaps are not over something from the past. All putting way time and energy into other interests and hobbies and not Bridget Jones style moping about and dating - )that something I only seem to hear about from younger friends these days.)

This divide has become really obvious among my old uni friends in the past couple of years.