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NOT SORRY
Why more and more people are ditching the wedding ring and choosing uncoupled adulthood. TEXT ROBYN GRIGGS LAWRENCE
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y first newspaper job was on the night desk of a daily. Weekends off were the only time to have any sort of normal life with nine-to-fivers (most of the world), and they were awarded based strictly on seniority. When my time finally came to trade in Wednesday and Thursday for Saturday and Sunday, my boss said not so fast. Steve, who had started several months after me, had a wife. Steve needed weekends off more than I did. “You understand,” my boss said. I was furious, but it was the ’80s. I gave Steve the weekends because that’s what you did (and my boss hadn’t really given me a choice). Over the next couple years, I would leave the newspaper business
and marry the first of two wrong-for-me husbands, beginning decades of coupledom that ended recently. I’m single in the age of Tinder, and this is a whole new world. Singledom today is nothing like it was when I was a twenty-something copy editor looking for love (in all the wrong places, as it turns out). It’s no longer weird to be single. Lots of people have made it their choice. And if you give weekends off to the married guy, you’ll likely be called out as a singlist, which some people consider just as bad as being a sexist or a racist. Singles are demanding respect—and getting it—because they’ve (oh, sorry, we’ve) become a powerful force, in numbers as well as influence. As Americans live longer, marry later (or not at all),
and divorce more, singles have increased from 29 percent of the adult population in 1970 to 48 percent today. Baby boomers are driving the numbers with divorce rates that have nearly doubled (and involve unprecedented numbers of second and third marriages) from 1990 to 2015, the Pew Research Center reports. Determined not to make their parents’ mistakes, more and more millennials are skipping the whole wedding thing. The number of unmarried 18-to-29-year-olds has grown from 40 percent in 1960 to 80 percent today, and the Pew Research Center predicts a quarter of today’s young adults will be single when they turn 50. More than half— 51 percent—of 18-to-34year-olds reported not
having a steady romantic partner last year, a record high for the annual University of Chicago survey. Getting married isn’t the great big life goal it was 25 years ago, when I was among the last of my high school friends to walk down the aisle at 27. More than half—55 percent—of participants in a 2017 Census Bureau report said getting married wasn’t an important criterion for becoming an adult. Instead, 95 percent said formal schooling and full-time employment were key. Half of young millennials told Tinder they were worried about being in a long-term relationship because they didn’t want to lose their independence. A Bustle survey found that 60 percent of people who were single and not dating were prioritizing self-care. NOVEM BER 2019
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