'We Want To Live Our Own Life!'

There’s more to life than being in a relationship. Many girls have long-term plans which are bigger than having a boyfriend

- Vibha Singh

Gender [a social, rather than biological construct] contradicts the contemporary idea that men and women share a human identity prior to all differences between them. It belongs to a worldview in which an irreducible experience of otherness is fundamental to being alive… There is something I can never do, something I can never know, an interdependence I can never overcome, a gulf that only metaphor can represent and only imagination can bridge….

— David Cayley, Ivan Illich In Conversation (introduction)

There is more to life than love. There’s more to life than finding your soulmate at 24, and getting married by 30. There’s more than just settling down in your early twenties and staying stagnant. There is so much more to life than that. There is more to life than the boy you pine over. Because you see, this boy that you madly love, is only a boy. He’s not a god, or an angel sent down from the heavens to save you. He’s only a boy. Today, more Americans are choosing to hold off on marriage or forgo it altogether. In 2009, the marriage rate dropped below 50% - the first time in history.

That stat is highlighted in “All the Single Ladies,” a 2016 book by writer Rebecca Traister that chronicles the history of American singlehood. The book features interviews with over 100 unmarried women from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds.

Traister’s goal: exploring how social progress connects to changing marriage patterns, and what that means for American single women today.

Women are no longer dependent on marriage (and men) for economic stability, children, or social support. They can now have all of these things without ever tying the knot. If and when women do marry, they have a higher bar for their male partners.