Valentine’s Day has come and gone once again, and, as
always, I find my thoughts turning inward.
Those who know me know that this isn’t exactly my favorite time of
year. As a 32 year old, perennially
single guy, it tends to just make me feel left out and unwanted. But as I’ve grown older (and hopefully more
mature), I’ve begun to think about the bigger picture. Sure, it sucks to be alone on Valentine’s
Day, but it’s not like I’m the only one, and it could obviously be so much
worse. I generally just do my best to
ignore it, but being that you can’t walk into a store without seeing a
nauseating display of cards, balloons, and flowers, that’s certainly easier
said than done. But I don’t like feeling
that way about Valentine’s Day. I don’t
like feeling mopey and lonely. So I’ve
been looking inwards in an attempt to find the true source of the negativity
that I and so many others feel towards both this day and towards our lack of
luck at love and romance. I believe I’ve
figured it out, and it’s not what you might think it is.
In previous essays, I have touched on societal norms; that
is, the rules and expectations of society.
From a young age, we are taught what is and isn’t acceptable in our
community. We are given certain
expectations that we feel an inexplicable need to adhere to. The most obvious of these is religion; each
religion has various rules, precepts, and doctrines that must be observed. But general rules for society are no
different. We have to obey the law and
respect authority figures. We have to
get an education, at least through high school.
We have to get a job so that we can support ourselves. The list goes on and on, but the meaning is
very clear: if we don’t do these things, then we can’t properly function in
society, or so says the messages instilled in us from day one.
So what does this have to do with feeling lousy about being
single? Everything. One of the sets of rules imposed on us by
society governs love and romance. We’re
expected to start dating in our teens.
We’re expected to lose our virginity sometime in our late teens or early
to mid twenties. We’re expected to be in
more serious relationships in our twenties.
By our early thirties, we should be settling down with someone and
starting a family. These expectations
are instilled in us just like the ones above, meaning that we are taught that
we cannot be happy unless we achieve these goals.
That is nothing but complete, total, and utter hogwash. But it is also why I and so many others tend
to feel miserable when it comes to romance.
These things are set down like goalposts, and because of societal norms,
we legitimately feel terrible about ourselves when we miss them, like we’re
freaks because we’re so far behind everyone else. As if it wasn’t bad enough that we are often
mocked for our lack of luck while still in school, we also see this represented
in the media. Characters like us in TV
shows and movies are often portrayed as dorky losers. Women are often shown as either prudes or
ugly geeks. Men are shown as small,
physically weak nerds with zero masculinity.
These portrayals are often more intense (and thusly more offensive) when
the character is long past the “normal” time to lose one’s virginity.
These portrayals are nothing more than stereotypes, and like
any other stereotype, they are often very offensive and very damaging to a
person’s self-worth. Stereotypes may
contain a grain of truth, but that doesn’t negate the fact that they are often used
as a way to denigrate and mock people.
Moreover, because they are used to insult people, whatever truth they
contain is twisted and manipulated, making them inherently inaccurate.
Despite the erroneous and offensive nature of these
stereotypes, it would be wrong to conflate them with those used to disparage
entire ethnicities or religions. Those
stereotypes were intentionally designed to mock and deride them by taking what
were considered laughable or idiotic traits and exaggerating them. Rather, I believe that these stereotypes came
more out of ignorance than anything else.
They are created by people who haven’t experienced what it’s like to
have no luck at romance, to be long past the “normal time” to lose one’s
virginity. I don’t think they mean to
cause offense; rather, they are simply relying on old tropes without
questioning the validity of them. Look
at the portrayal of certain ethnicities in cartoons from the 1930s and 40s;
they are considered offensive now, but that doesn’t make them inherently racist
(though there certainly were many that were inherently racist, particularly
those created as propaganda during World War II). Rather, they were a product of people who
were simply insensitive to the effects their work had on minorities. But that doesn’t equate to racism, instead
being a result of the ignorant culture of the time (however, ignorance is
certainly no excuse either). The same is
true of stereotypes that suggest people who have no luck at love are losers;
they are old clichés that people don’t bother to question because they haven’t
been educated on this.
Despite the prominence of these stereotypes, there are a
couple of notable exceptions that show you can realistically portray people
like me without relying on offensive notions of what our lives are like. One of the best was the protagonist Andy in
the film “The 40 Year Old Virgin.” He
led a life that was certainly not exciting, but he was content with
himself. He had a decent job, and
enjoyed his hobbies. The only thing he
didn’t have was romance, but it didn’t bother him all that much, at least
externally. He felt incredibly awkward
and embarrassed about still being a virgin, to the point of completely flipping
out after his coworkers learned his secret and played a crude practical joke on
him.
As a 32 year old virgin, I can personally attest to the
veracity of this portrayal. Like Andy, I
sometimes still feel embarrassed about my lack of experience. I sometimes question whether any woman would
want me, or if it’s just too late for me.
I also share his discomfort at letting friends help out, both because I
am an introvert and because one of those lovely messages ingrained in us by
society is that we should be able to attract someone by ourselves. Above all, I know how it feels to worry about
not being perceived as “normal” simply because you don’t have the same romantic
track record as everyone else.
There’s another more recent character that sums all this up
well, and that is Ted Mosby on “How I Met Your Mother.” True, he is a serial dater, meaning he is in
many ways the complete inverse of someone like me, but he also personifies how
we make ourselves miserable in our search for love. Through the whole series, we frequently see
Ted refusing to allow himself to be happy simply because he hasn’t found “the
one.” He obsesses over his search,
making himself blind to all the wonderful things in his life. This is a real problem, and it isn’t limited
just to people like me who have no luck at love (it doesn’t even stop at the
gender barrier; men, women, and those in the LGBT community are ALL affected by
this, and all face very different challenges as a result); it affects everybody
equally, and it is due precisely to societal norms. Combine this with the damaging way that
single people are portrayed in TV, movies, and society at large, and you begin
to see why people like me feel such loathing towards things like Valentine’s
Day.
The thing is, it simply doesn’t need to be this way. Being single is not some sin against
nature. It doesn’t make you a
freak. Lacking romance doesn’t make you
less of a person. Being a virgin doesn’t
make you pathetic. You can lead a
wonderful, accomplished, and happy life without any of those things. I’ve seen this firsthand; my great-uncle, who
died shortly before his 90th birthday, was a lifelong bachelor. He was a fiercely independent man who didn’t
talk much about himself and somewhat preferred to be alone (clearly,
introvertedness runs in the family), but he was an accomplished writer who was
quite happy in life.
Our sense of doom and gloom at our perceived inability to
attract that special someone is completely in our heads. It’s completely natural to feel lonely from
time to time, but that doesn’t mean we should tie our love life directly to a
self-worth. Instead, we should celebrate
ourselves for being the wonderful people we are. We also need to be sensitive to the way other
people feel about these things; as I noted before, these feelings of
inferiority are not limited by the gender barrier or even by age. In a weird example of subconscious sexism,
nearly all advice in these matters is directed at women, be they from newspaper
columns or self-help books. Speaking
from experience, it’s hard to find things written for guys struggling with
being single. This is, I believe, due to
two factors: the fact that men don’t tend to be very forthcoming with their
emotional struggles, and that in the eyes of society, our ability to attract a
mate is tied directly to our masculinity.
We have no fewer struggles in this field than women, yet there is far
less readily available help for us. But
that is not to say our struggles eclipse those of women, or those of the LGBT
community, where the search for love can be far more difficult due to the struggle
of just finding oneself (and the fact that society’s rules, while evolving to
be more accepting, haven’t caught up to them yet). Rather, we all share in this struggle because
we are all suffering due to societal norms.
So how do we fix this?
How do we ease the struggle? Both
sides need to work together to change these things because the long-term
solution depends on the short term. In
the short term, we need to believe,
not just know, that our luck in love
or ability to attract someone is completely irrelevant to our happiness. Yes, romance can bring great happiness, but
that doesn’t mean we can’t be happy without it.
As I said before, we must avoid tying our self-worth to our love life
because we are more than just our love life.
There is absolutely no shame in being single, having bad luck at love,
or being a virgin, and this is an irrefutable fact. I of all people know how hard it can be to
truly believe these things, but I
also know that belief is so often what hampers us in life.
By working to combat these things, we can also work for the
long-term solution, which is to actually change these societal norms. History shows that changing societal norms
often takes years, even decades, but it often starts with people standing up
against those norms. If we show that the
current norms don’t dictate the only way to lead a happy, productive life, then
we take the first step towards changing them.
For example, not so long about, society taught that a woman’s place was
in the home, but thanks to brave women (and men) who stood against this
ludicrous teaching, things changed.
While I don’t pretend that the way society views us single folk is even
in the same category as what they once taught about women, I do think that the
theory is the same. These norms get
passed from generation to generation, sometimes for hundreds or even thousands
of years, because nobody challenges them.
The norms surrounding love, sex, romance and marriage have been
challenged greatly, particularly in the last 50 or so years, but we have yet to
challenge those surrounding being single.
Now’s the time to stand up and do this, to show that love and romance
and sex aren’t the only factors that determine happiness. It won’t be easy, but we need to embrace
ourselves and our singleness; doing so will allow us to cast off the stigma and
shame that society insists on shoving down our throats.
There’s nothing wrong with us in the slightest. We are wonderful people just the way we are,
and we can still follow our dreams. We
can still lead happy, productive lives because, despite what society might
think, our relationship status is completely irrelevant. A relationship is just an added bonus to our
life.
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