Picking the right(?) narrative

People who are unable to find a romantic partner:

- Tell themselves that the quality of the available set of potential partners is so low that it’s not really worth searching for one.
- Tell themselves that the above statement has no bearing on their own potential partnership quality.
- Tell themselves that a lot of ‘lower quality’ males/females are in relationships, so the decision to stay alone/single is their own.
- Tell themselves that potential partners have unrealistic standards, so the fact that they remain single is mostly other people’s fault.
- Tell themselves that life without a partner is simpler and easier – that a relationship is too much work.
- Focus on the downsides of relationships.
- Tell themselves that they’re not missing out on anything much and that the benefits of being in a relationship are exaggerated.
- Tell themselves that they’d not be happier if they were in a relationship.
- Tell themselves that they’d be much happier if they were in a relationship.
- Feel socially rejected and isolated, but attempt to compensate by seeking validation elsewhere (friends, career, hobbies, …).

People who’ve already found a romantic partner:

- Tell themselves that they’ve found the most awesome partner in the whole world (until the temporary insanity wears off)
- Tell themselves that they’re higher status than singles because they have a partner.
- Focus on the upsides of relationships.
- Tell themselves that the work a relationship requires is more than worth it.
- Tell themselves that they’d be very lonely if they didn’t have a partner.
- Tell themselves that they’d be very unhappy if they didn’t have a partner.
- Tell themselves that they’d be better off without such an annoying partner.
- Tell themselves that the downsides of being in a relationship are exaggerated.
- Feel socially validated.
- Feel socially isolated because interactions with the partner take time away from other types of social interaction.

…

I try to keep reminding myself that the resulting narratives are just that – narratives. They’re stories about the world, nothing more. Stories humans use to justify decisions we make, decisions we’ve already made, or perhaps decisions we’ve decided to make. There is no ‘right’ story, no ‘correct’ story which is somehow ‘objectively’ truer than the other. People without partners find their choice harder to justify because for hundreds of millions of years nature has given preferential treatment to the guys who made the other choice. Perhaps they’re less happy than people in relationships and so one might argue that the ‘looking for a partner-strategy’ will on average make the individuals better off. This however ignores group heterogeneity, search costs, and costs related to repeated social rejection as well as costs related to poor matching.

I’m leaning towards the ‘it’s not worth it’-narrative at this point. Which begs the question: Why the hell do I keep going in the first place? The hope that I’d some day in the future have a relatively normal life where you find a partner and get a job and all that stuff was a big part of what kept me from killing myself in the past. Remove the potential relationship and it starts looking real depressing real fast. I know what people without a partner who compensate with hobbies and work look like – I know more than a few of those people. I don’t want that life. But at this point the alternative isn’t very attractive either; settling with an intellectually incompatible partner (see khadijah & razib’s comments here) seems to be the only alternative outcome worth even spending time thinking about.

I know people ‘on both sides’ like to say that ‘if you don’t learn to love yourself you can’t expect to be able to convince others to’ (or something along those lines). For singles this is often coupled with an argument for not searching while ‘improving yourself’ – in reality just taking a break from getting/feeling rejected all the time. I’ve seen a lot of advice here, but not a lot which does not serve a very specific and convenient purpose.

I’ve been told that it gets easier. My friends and family do not have the type of problems I do regarding finding a partner; most have one. So they keep reminding me, whether they’d like to or not, of what I’m missing out on. Cutting links with these people would make things both easier and much harder – I have no plans of doing that, but in 10 years time? Most singles lonely people I know who’re significantly older than I am seem to mostly interact with other singles; it’d be naive not to assume that pain associated with this stuff might not at least be part of the explanation.

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