Words and Deeds that Are Hurtful to Single People

. . . and how to be supportive instead

Photo by Denis Pozdeev on Unsplash

“They mean well” is something my mom used to say when someone did something hurtful but did not seem to realize there was anything wrong with it. I’m 71 and I’ve been single my whole life. Over and over again, especially when I was younger, I’ve been wounded by words and deeds often generated not by malice toward me as a single person but by obliviousness.

I’m also a social scientist and I’ve been studying single people and writing about them for decades. I now have a better understanding of where the clueless behavior of coupled people comes from, and I rarely feel hurt by it anymore. But I’ve heard from hundreds of single people who feel distressed by the way they are treated just because they are single. They’ve lost sleep, lost friends, and maybe even lost faith in themselves. That upsets me far more than any insensitive comment ever could.

The problem is that people who are married or in a committed romantic relationship, or who want to be, see the world from their own point of view. Maybe to them, being in a romantic relationship is what makes them happy and they cannot imagine that anyone can be truly and deeply happy if they are single. To them, it may seem obvious that anyone who does not have a romantic partner wants nothing more than…