SINGLENESS

QUOTES

Don't be fretting...about me marrying. Marrying's a trouble and not marrying's a trouble and I sticks to the trouble I knows. (Anne of Green Gables. Maud)

Don't ignore the love you DO have in your life by focusing on the love you DON'T.

I'm single because I was born that way. Mae West

It's cooler to be strong.
 
Single is an opportunity to live life on your own terms and not apologize.

Single is no longer a lack of options – but a choice. A choice to refuse to let your life be defined by your relationship status but to live every day Happily and let your Ever After work itself out.

The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.

There’s something really cool about knowing that your destiny is SO big that you’re not meant to share it with anyone. At least not yet.

Is celibacy the same as singleness?

We think this conflation comes as people define celibacy as “not marriage.” If you’re not married, then you’re single. Therefore, since celibate people do not enter into sacramental marriages, all celibate people are single

Our culture values using the presence or absence of marriage as a way to define a person’s state in life. Many people regard “getting married” as an essential coming of age ritual that marks a person’s ascendence into adulthood. Because of this, people often see singleness as a temporary state, and since most celibates are single by societal standards it gets assumed that celibates are isolated people who are missing out on an important part of adult life. Taking some time to look in the thesaurus, single has synonyms of “individual, lone, separate, simple, isolated, separated, and solitary.” There is a reasonable amount of positive associations too (original, distinguished, undivided, and unique), but in our experience, people dominantly focus on how living a celibate life features an almost definitional struggle against loneliness.

Singleness has advantages.

Single people are spared the “troubles” of marriage. There are many great blessings in marriage, but there are difficulties too. Understandably, Christian couples don’t often talk openly about the hard things they face, which can give singles a rose-tinted view of marriage. But there’s a downside even when a married couple’s relationship is good: life is more complicated. There’s more than one person to consider in decisions about use of time, accommodation, holidays, even the daily menu. And there’s more than one person to worry about. Children bring great pleasure but plenty of anxiety as well. Marriage does bring “many troubles in this life” and, Paul says, “I want to spare you this” (1 Cor. 7:28).

Choosing celibacy. How to stop thinking of singleness as a problem.

There are several reasons for this trend toward prolonged singleness. Sociologists point to a changing job market that requires extended years of education beyond a traditional, four-year bachelor's degree.