The Community of Single People: 8 Years, 100+ Nations, 7,500+ Members

We discuss everything about single life except dating or trying to unsingle ourselves

Photo by Wout Vanacker on Unsplash

Eight years ago, in July of 2015, I started an online Facebook group, the Community of Single People, for people who want to discuss every aspect of living single except dating or trying to unsingle themselves. We talk about all sorts of things — our joys and accomplishments, our challenges and frustrations, our observations and our questions, the latest studies, something intriguing or enraging that showed up in our feeds or in the media, and those experiences that sometimes only single people really “get.”

We now include more than 7,500 members from more than 100 nations. We are an engaged group, too. Each day, members contribute an average of about 15 new posts. Over the past month, 63 percent of the members have posted, commented, reacted, or viewed posts.

To give you a sense of our sensibility, over the past week or so, about a dozen people posted the same cartoon. (I don’t know if I can share it without violating copyright rules, so I’ll just explain it.) A woman is dining alone in a nice restaurant in which all the other tables are occupied by a couple. The waiter says to the woman dining alone: “We’re going to relocate you to the bar. Your contentment is unnerving the couples.”

The creator of a new and wonderful Facebook page, “Single Normativity,’ often shares her posts in the Community of Single People. “Single normativity” asks, “What if the world switched the way it values romantic relationships with being single?” It features cartoons such as this one: A man says to a woman, “I can’t believe you’re not single. You’re such a dynamic, interesting, smart person!”

I’ve highlighted two cartoons, but most posts are discussions of our single lives.

Who We Are — And Who We Aren’t

If you look at the “About” section of the group’s page, the first thing you will see is this important reminder, “This group has nothing to do with dating,” then this:

Welcome to this Community of Single People who want to live their single lives fully, joyfully, and free of stereotyping…