It’s that time of the year again. ‘Romedy Now’ is having a carnival day, restaurants are offering special February discounts, and if you happen to be a single woman, every ‘chick-flick’ is telling you to get into your pajamas and eat ice cream out of a bucket.
Rejoice! Valentine’s Day has come a-knocking!
It’s bad enough that you're single. But being single on the sacred holiday of ‘coupledom’ (read: monogamous, heterosexual union) is a reminder of how lonely you really are. This is so bad a sign, you might as well join the ‘Frustrated Feminists Support Group’.
Fear not, this isn’t an anti-Valentine’s day rant, or advice on what to do while you’re biding time, waiting for your soulmate to arrive.
It’s simply to say that being single is not necessarily a short-term fix before finding ‘The One’.
Our Society Rewards Being Paired Off
The stigma of being single is systemic.
It’s why landlords are reluctant to rent apartments to single (debauched) people and it’s also why workplaces prioritise the schedules of married people over single people – since they have family to go back to, but single people have no such ‘responsibilities’.
Heck, even Karan Johar thinks the personal lives of the guests on his show is the sum of their romantic relationships.
Unsympathetic connotations of the ‘single status’ are many – lonely, bitter, unattractive spinster – so much so that the person is conditioned to believe all of those things about themselves.
So if we go by heteronormative codes, there are only two ways to be single: a) miserable, spending your days wondering what’s wrong with you; b) taking a temporary (wild and fun) hiatus from the ultimate journey of finding your soulmate.
If Romance Is an Ideal, Marriage Is the Endgame
The quest for romance is actively encouraged by society, as it puts you on the respectful path to blissful monogamous matrimony, to have legitimate children and to legally share property.
But monogamy, as an ideal, is inherently gendered. For centuries the practice has been sold to women as something they should desire, so if they deviate from it, they become ‘harlots’, or ‘sluts’, in today’s parlance. Men, too, are taught to have fun while they’re ‘bachelors’, but finally pick a ‘good woman’ to come back home to.
You can be non-monogamous and ‘single’ (i.e, not involved with one person exclusively), but society will keep reminding you how unromantic and lewd that is.
The only rewards are, therefore, in finding someone or having your parents pick them for you, and sticking your “happily ever after” out with them.
But the truth is, the determinants that made marriage a viable choice no longer applies today. Single women can have children, seek romance or have sex with one or multiple partners (without having to marry them) and also be financially independent.
This is not to say those who genuinely want to get married or find a long-term monogamous partner are less enlightened. But to argue that it’s the only way to be happy is patriarchy’s attempt to make men and women feel constantly insecure about being ‘alone’.
There’s Much to Do When You're Not Thinking of ‘Romance’
Wean yourself away from the narrative of ‘eternal romance’, and it might free you up to do a lot else.
If finding idyllic romance wasn’t made out to be the objective of our lives, then who knows, maybe DDLJ’s Simran could write about her work or even a high-flying career, in her privately penned thoughts, and maybe protagonists in Karan Johar’s film sagas could realise ladka aur ladki can indeed be friends, allies even.
Of course, there are bound to be bouts of loneliness. Society does not look kindly upon those who deviate from norm. After all, the point of finding a companion is to not wind up alone, and therefore lonely.
But what about investing in yourself? What about making the effort to be on your own, and learning to be okay with it; to make art, make history, change the world?
Single or coupled, happiness takes work – there are no shortcuts. You could be with the love of your life, and still feel all alone – loneliness is not just a share of the singletons.
But along with tales of soulmates, if we also told stories of friendships, of singleness and independence, perhaps we would all feel less alone.
(With inputs from The New Statesman, Maclean’s)
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