To ask if it’s crazy to be single all your life?

[CantAskAnyoneElse]

Just been thinking about this for the past few days…

Obviously I’ve been aware about my singleness, but it’s just hit me that I don’t know anyone like me and that I probably will never know what it’s like to be chosen and loved by someone, what it feels like to build a life with another person.
And just feel more ’normal’, bu this I mean I at least feel like there is still stigma being a single woman.

Great minds. Like a pp upthread, resolutely single (decades) and no intention of changing that.

My great aunt's fiance was killed in WW1. She never married, fiercely intelligent and worked for years in a solicitor's office (was pretty much a solicitor except GGM, who she lived with, didn't approve of her studying for the exams), had a house, a garden, her dog, a rocking social life and I bet a few men around as well - she said to my brother once, 'I don't want Miss on my tombstone, I haven't missed as much as some people think!'

No I don't think its crazy. In fact the older I get the more I think a single life is in many ways preferable. I certainly think a very large number of women spend far far too much of their time and energy limiting their lives to fit what men want from them. Women get far more done with their lives and achieve far more without relationships and in many cases I think would be better off without them.

I don't regret much in life, but most of my biggest regrets are to do with men who I spent far more energy on than they deserve and if I had my time again I would basically not expend any energy on the vast majority of them. I certainly would never have got married.

The difficulty of course is that its very easy to say this with hindsight but socially constantly and relentlessly pushes to thinking that we are never more than our relationships with men. When you're a young woman its very hard to see past this and realise that 95% of this is a lie. So I can understand why if you had never had a relationship you might feel you were missing out. And a very lucky few people do find genuinely life enhancing relationships with people who support them and give them depth and meaning.

Honestly though, the vast vast majority of relationships are not worth the candle. I wish I'd understood 30 years ago how under-rated being single was.

Most of the couples I know are actually miserable.
As long as you’re happy, who cares!

I'm 44 and dated someone for about 2 weeks when I was 18 as a "might as well try it" thing. I'm aro ase though.

Ask yourself a question OP: do you really, really want a relationship, or do you just want to feel 'normal'? It isn't the same thing. I'm an introvert. During my teens and 20s I tortured myself by going out and doing things I didn't want to do. Society had convinced me I should be socializing and 'having fun'. It's only now, looking back, that I realize I never actually wanted a big group of friends or a hectic social life. I just wanted to be rid of the shame I felt at not having those things. What I really wanted, deep down, was to be at home with a book. Now, at last, I have stopped pretending to be something I'm not.

The longing to 'be normal', and the shame people feel at not conforming, leads them into all kinds of trouble. Countless people marry, or have kids, not because they really want to, but because they long to fit in. Before you can be happy, you have to absolutely know who you are. Once you know, you can adjust your life accordingly. Unfotunately, a lot of people allow others to tell them who they are and what they want.

I’m early 40s and apart from a couple of 3-month relationships (if you can even call them that!) I’ve been single all along.

I had fertility treatment to have my DD.

I have a busy, happy life with good family and close friends.

I do though sometimes long for adult company in the evenings - just the simple stuff like someone to ask how my day was and sit and chill out with, share a meal with etc.

I also could definitely do with feeling like I’m attractive to someone as it has affected how I view myself, and I could do with some intimacy from time to time.

Having said that though I’d far rather be single than with a partner who wasn’t right for me. Someone did want to marry me but I knew he would drive me potty and that I’d probably not be very nice to him as a result so I didn’t let that happen.

The longing to 'be normal', and the shame people feel at not conforming, leads them into all kinds of trouble. Countless people marry, or have kids, not because they really want to, but because they long to fit in.

This. So many marriages and relationships, probably a majority in my opinion, are based around people wanting to be “normal” and feeling that this is something they need to do to complete themselves.

The tragic irony is that you basically can’t ever be complete unless you have learned how the be single first.

There's no right or wrong to life only what suits you.

We have several friends (male) who are now in their sixties/seventies and have been single all their days. They gave up on women in their twenties/thirties and simply got on with enjoying the life they had. Wondering if it could be better is destructive, just make the best of the life you have.

I so agree with this. I know two young women who are in relationships (one of them just married, actually). Yet in both cases I can see the writing on the wall. The women are quite similar: well-educated, sociable, ambitious, keen to travel, etc. The men are nice enough, but they're such boring oafs. One is like a perpetual 12-year-old, who plays video games all weekend. The other is like a miserable old man. Neither is capable of holding a conversation, and neither seems to have any interest in anything. It just baffles me that these young women have got so deeply involved. Both would be much happier focusing on their careers and going traveling with their friends.

I don't mean to sound anti-men. There are plenty of lovely guys out there trapped in relationships with selfish narcissists. We really need to get away from this idea that it's 'normal' to be in a relationship, and that if you aren't, you've failed in some way. A bad relationship is hell – for both men and women.

Like you, I've wasted so much of my life on relationships. Books, travel, friends, horses, dogs, the countryside, etc, have brought me infinitely more joy.

I've 4 single friends. All 40 or coming up to it. 3 haven't been in a relationship since early 20's. All seem very happy. Great careers, social life, travelling etc. they never talk about wanting a relationship and seem happy. Fair play to them!

I'm single. I've never been married, and I honestly don't see it as an issue.

I have ds, my career, my job, and lots of hobbies. I'm happy. DS is happy.

But I look at my friends and very few of them are. I listen to my friends complain about husbands who are financially or psychologically abusive. Men who make more work than they clear.

I've had more than one friend ask me how they could get by if they leave their dh. So the grass isn't always greener. Don't be in any rush to pair up until you're completely sure.