“No wonder you’re still single.”
There’s a strange kind of pity reserved for single people, especially those of us who’ve been single long enough to appear comfortable. It’s not always spoken outright. Sometimes it’s wrapped in concern: “Don’t you want someone?” Other times, it’s offered like a curse: “No wonder you’re still single.” As if solitude were a punishment instead of a path.
Let me say this clearly: being single is not a failure. It is not a shortcoming. It is not a hole in your life waiting for someone else to fill.
When people try to use singlehood as an insult, what they’re really saying is: “I don’t know how to exist without someone else validating me.” That’s not your burden to carry. That’s not a reflection of your worth. It’s a projection of their fear.
Singlehood can be a time of powerful becoming. It can mean choosing peace over chaos, solitude over a shallow match, or simply that your life is too full of meaning to settle for someone who doesn’t add to it.
You don’t owe anyone a performance of longing. You don’t have to make excuses. You don’t have to explain why you haven’t “found someone,” as if love were a pair of keys misplaced under a cushion. Sometimes love finds you. Sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes, the love that matters most is the kind you build with yourself—slowly, day by day, by choosing to treat your own soul with dignity and care.
If anyone tries to make you feel small for standing alone, let that reveal more about them than about you. People who weaponize singleness are often scared of their own silence. They’re uncomfortable with stillness. But you? You’ve made a home in it.
To anyone who’s ever felt the sting of those words: “No wonder you’re still single,” as though it were the final, fatal blow—know this: your worth is not attached to a relationship status. You are not lacking. You are not waiting. You are living.
Single isn’t something you “end up” as a punishment. It’s something you live as a person—with agency, joy, mess, strength, and choice.
