Friday 28 March 2014

Things that drive me nuts: the definition of single

I've mentioned this before somewhere I'm sure but I'm mentioning it again, because, quite frankly, it's ridiculous. Mostly it's in the fine print of one of those 'feel good singles' articles, you know the type that tells you people are staying single longer or some such. Usually I start to smell a rat around the part where they mention more single people are choosing to have children-read the fine print and you'll discover that by single they mean not married. This is just stupid beyond words. What part of having an exclusive relationship is 'single'? If we judged people this way in real life a hell of a lot more people would be single! Someone has a girlfriend/boyfriend? No worries they're sill single! God. I'm sure the numbers would be infinitely more depressing if they actually only included actual single (my definition: someone who isn't in a relationship) but at least they'd be honest. And then there's the whole can of worms that is those 'where are all the single women/men!' interactive maps-pretty inaccurate if they class everything but married as single, I'm sure the results would be much different (not to mention more helpful) if they only included people who were unattached.
Anyway rant over.
Vanessa

2 comments:

  1. Yeah, it bothers me too when "single" gets used to mean "unmarried". Maybe a long time ago it was more commonly used that way, but these days language has moved on and it's just confusing!

    But I think that there are still plenty of single-meaning-not-in-a-relationship people out there - otherwise online dating wouldn't be so popular these days, right? (I know a few people on those sites might only be pretending to be single, but the vast majority are really available - and it usually seems like there are more men than women, at least in younger age brackets.)

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    1. It bothers you because you're a rational human being who knows that marriage is great but you can be committed without it too :)
      And yes one would hope the dating site peeps are single as in unattached, but I guess there are some sleazy ones out there!

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