I keep hearing about how there’s too much pressure to settle down. Apparently everyone wants to know when you’re getting married, when you’re having kids. Being single is stigmatized, shamed, pitied. We supposedly feel so rushed to find partners that we choose wrong, and that’s why relationships are failing. It’s this pressure to couple up, this fear of being alone. This pressure, on young women in particular, is “overwhelming,” a “violence,” a “cruelty.”
But this has never been my experience. My whole life I’ve only ever felt the opposite, an overwhelming pressure to be single. In the secular liberal world I used to think there were no expectations, no pressure. There is, though: The pressure today is to avoid anything that might stick, to run through life without getting snagged on any responsibilities, without getting tethered to someone else too early. I’m sure in some cultures, some families, there is still pressure to find someone. But I have felt rushed to do many things in modern life, and settling down has never been one of them.
