Essay : How to hate being single in a post incel world

 

I Hate Being Single

I hate being single. But let me dispel a few myths our culture has brainwashed us into assuming after hearing that statement.

I don't hate myself. I don't feel entitled to the sex or love of anyone, ever, and I don't resent people for rejecting me. I'm not a miserable person. I'm imperfect and mentally ill, like a lot of people, but I'm also more doggedly hopeful and optimistic than most people with my disposition. There's a lot in my life I love and enjoy. I only hate a rare few things: my parents, for sending me to conversion therapy at fourteen, where I was tortured for five years straight; the government, capitalism, conservatives, and the state of the economy — basic stuff everyone hates; some of my bullies; mustard and peanut butter; ableism, especially against mental illness; and drunk drivers. Probably a few other things. But there are very few things in this world I truly hate. Being single is one of them.

 Why Wouldn't I Hate It?

We live in an amatonormative society — one that, in nearly every culture on earth, but especially in American Christianity, treats marriage and cohabiting couples as the assumed default. A lot of people have been brainwashed into believing that if you're single, you're not allowed to be upset about it. That it's desperate, tacky, that it just means you need to work on yourself, love yourself, or that you're not ready for a relationship. That's not true for everyone. Maybe it's true for some people, but it isn't the rule. You don't need to love yourself to be *in* a relationship. And you can be deeply unhappy about being single without being an incel. Wanting a partner and grieving not having one doesn't mean you don't love yourself or aren't ready. It's a perfectly natural way to feel — it's biology, and it's sociology.

We weren't built to live the way we do now. It's breaking us, because it isn't what we evolved for. Human beings are social animals; we evolved to live in partnerships and groups, for survival, to defend against predators, protect each other, and raise children together. The specific shape of romantic love has changed constantly throughout history — arranged marriage, prostitution, apprenticeship, age-gap and power-dynamic relationships, queer love, polyamory, love born from lust or artistic inspiration or slow-blooming friendship. But love itself is a real biological and chemical phenomenon. We didn't invent it out of nothing. Across history it's been treated as sacred and inevitable, as fundamental to life as air or water. So when modern society strips away the social mechanisms that used to bring people together, it's no surprise that our ability to find that love gets crushed along with everything else.

 What Broke It

Most people now live a huge share of their lives online and have lost basic social skills. Male loneliness has become a documented factor in school shootings, sexual violence, and the rise of online misogynist culture — men who claim to hate the women who "won't date them." Dating apps are flooded with bots and barely function. People in even the biggest cities have gotten more territorial, more separatist, more rude, incurious, and unromantic than they've been in decades. Society, as a whole, seems to be choosing hate over love, fear over connection, risk-aversion over commitment and loyalty, and social-media pile-ons over direct communication.

People are overworked, exhausted, and poor. Desperate, lied to, and hopeless. Working two or three jobs just to get by — and you can't date at work. So when is anyone supposed to find the time to scroll the endless, casino-like hellscape of a dating app, or track down a speed-dating event that isn't a scam? Outside of work, most people are just tired. They want to make art, see their friends, watch YouTube, and rest. We no longer have the built-in social networks that high school and college used to provide — especially if you're autistic and spent those years with few friends and a lot of bullies. Meeting someone to date now, even if you're attractive and have great qualities, means being one person in a sea of millions. Because dating apps aren't designed to help you find love — they're designed to keep you paying. If you find someone, you delete the app, and they lose a customer.

In a society with no time, no money, and no margin for error, people can't afford to make mistakes, explore, or take chances on love. They can't afford dates, travel, or compromise. No one trusts anyone. Everyone is too afraid of getting hurt to get invested. All anyone wants is easy — and people, and relationships, are not easy. So it's become about sex instead, when relationships were always supposed to be so much more.

 My Own Experience

You can't blame us for being pissed off about being single, when it used to be so much easier — easier to find time, easier to hold onto hope, easier to meet someone interesting to talk to. I spend most of my time in queer and subculture spaces — bars, bookstores, drag shows, clown shows, parades. You'd think I'd meet people there, people I'm attracted to who are kind instead of defensive and standoffish the moment they clock that I'm autistic. Everyone says to skip the apps and meet people in person. I'm highly socially active. I go to a lot of events. I meet a lot of people. None of that translates into dates, let alone a relationship.

It's not a skill issue. I'm good at flirting — confident, funny, charming when I want to be. My game is fire. It doesn't matter. I flirt, people flirt back, I get their Instagram, and then nothing — they never want to go on an actual date, or they say they do and forget. Same story on apps, same story after speed dating. It isn't me. It's how people relate to each other right now, and not just around dating.

I think a lot of Gen Z, myself included, is scared. Defensive. Afraid of commitment, afraid to make choices and live with the consequences, afraid to ask for help or apologize or say "I love you," afraid to pick an identity instead of endlessly reshaping themselves for an algorithm. I love my generation, but I despise this part of it — ruled by fear of debt, jail, homelessness, all the things genuinely closing in on us. But I have to ask: what's the point of hiding? If they've already taken so much from us — our dignity, our rights, and for some, even our humanity, handed over piece by piece to AI — why not start choosing people anyway, despite the risk of heartbreak? Why not make bad art, ride roller coasters, eat jello, fall in love? If you really believed the world was ending, you wouldn't be this cautious. You'd throw caution to the wind.

 The World We're Dating In

Instead, people tell you upfront they're "just looking for something casual right now" — and you should respect that, always. This isn't really about any one person choosing not to date me. It's bigger than that. I'm criticizing a society that produces so many people who, if you look in their eyes, clearly want love and connection, but have been taught to protect themselves from ever admitting it. Everyone wants love in some form — commitment, care, consistency, support — unless they're genuinely asexual or aromantic. Who wouldn't want those things in a world this unstable?

A world where disabled people can't legally marry without losing benefits, where polyamorous people and possibly, soon, gay people face renewed restriction. Where countries like Russia offer couples tax breaks and child subsidies that single people can't access. Where a traditional wedding is unaffordable for most working people. Where we're told there's no future, and yet expressing love or attraction honestly gets you called a creep, and wanting love at all reads as desperate or "love bombing." Where autistic people are treated as quirky and asexual if high-functioning, or infantilized and treated as a threat if not. Where the ache goes unaddressed and people try to fill it with porn, fanfiction, fantasy, the borrowed love of a friend, or an AI chatbot — because there's no longer the hope, time, or energy left to keep searching.

What I'd Actually Recommend

Don't lose hope. Life is long. You'll find someone — not "when you least expect it," that's nonsense, but eventually, if you can keep surrendering to possibility instead of letting anxiety convince you you'll die alone. Realistically, if you're a good, interesting, talented person building a career, with hobbies and a real social life, the odds are in your favor. Value platonic love — friends, family, if you're close with them. Love yourself, and treat yourself the way you'd want a partner to treat you, without waiting for someone else to start.

But it still sucks, and I'm done pretending it doesn't. If you're single, you are not an incel. You are not a shitty person or a bundle of red flags. You are not "not trying." You just haven't met the right person yet. Your bed is empty. You want someone to trust, to vent to when your friends don't get it, someone who'll stand up for you the way no one ever has. You want to get married, settle down, share your life with someone — and it's fair to feel a pang watching friends go home to partners at the end of the day. Incel culture has made it nearly impossible to talk about this pain honestly, so people rarely get to name the systemic issues keeping so many of us single longer than ever. It's not "Stacy's never going to date the nice guy." It's more complicated than that. Most of the time, it isn't your fault.

Don't lose hope — not because you're certain it'll work out, but because believing it will is the only thing that keeps the anxiety and the urge to give up at bay. Keep putting yourself out there. Stay social, stay in your scenes, keep being kind, take rejection with grace, keep being your funny, weird, best self. You'll find someone eventually. And when you do, if it's real, it will have been worth the wait.