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We are the invisibles. The people who are not even supposed to exist. Today we celebrate the one-year anniversary of our community.
I’m talking about single people who love single life. We have found a place online to come together and share our experiences of living single.
The one thing we are not doing is what just about everyone thinks that single people are obsessed with – talking endlessly about attempts to become unsingle – for example, by dating or trying to figure out what we need to “fix” about ourselves in order to attract a mate. We don’t talk about that stuff at all. But we do discuss just about every other singles-relevant topic you can imagine.
We got our start a year ago today, on July 9, 2015, when I posted articles on all of my blogs about a new Community of Single People and invited anyone who is interested to ask to join. (It is a closed Facebook group, but we admit just about everyone who is not using it for unwelcome reasons, such as to get a date or sell stuff.) I also shared the invitation on my personal Facebook page. Those were the only announcements I made. I never bought any advertisements.
I wasn’t sure what would happen, but within five months, we had about 600 members from many nations around the world and every continent except Antarctica. Apart from a few ruffled feathers here and there, I loved what the group had become and I wrote about it in this article. (Some of the basic information about the group is there and I won’t repeat it here.)
By May 19, when the group was about 10 months old, our membership passed the 1,000 mark. Now, on our 1-year birthday, there are 1,170 members of the Community of Single People. We are women and men, adults of all ages, parents and people who are not parents, pet owners and people with no pets, people living on our own and people living in all sorts of shared and innovative arrangements.
As for our work lives, we are quite the diverse lot. We are artists, actors, filmmakers, singers and songwriters. We include many teachers, educators, and researchers, and a librarian or two. We are salespersons, IT specialists, human relations specialists, marketers, businesspersons, attorneys, and legal assistants. We are writers and editors. We are personal trainers, coaches, and mentors. We are butchers and bakers, but so far, no candlestick makers. If you can think of a job in the medical profession, there is probably someone in this Community who has it. We are caregivers, consultants, construction workers, custodians, drivers, farmers, house cleaners, makeup artists, secretaries, security guards, technicians, engineers, baristas, and cashiers. We have jobs in language and communications, the travel industry, and aviation. You can find us in politics and in the military. We include a chaplain and a Vicar, people in a convent, a seminary, and a Bible College. Some of us own our own businesses or founded a nonprofit organization. You can find us in banks and restaurants, at a nuclear power plant, teaching yoga, or participating in a happiness project. We work with all sorts of creatures, from birds to horses. Lots of us are self-employed. A whole bunch of us are retired.
More important than our demographic profile, I think, is what we do in the group, and what we get out of it. Here is just a sampling of the many kinds of posts that show up in the Community:
- Discussions of what we love about our single lives, and what we find challenging
- Personal sharing of particularly bad times, and particularly good ones – usually with lots of support forthcoming, either way
- “What do you think of this” kinds of posts, usually inspired by something someone said to us, when we wonder what to make of it
- Examples of singlism and matrimania
- Lots and lots of links to singles-relevant stories in the media. We post them to share what we appreciate about them, or to mock what we don’t like, or to start a discussion. (Personally, I have been especially grateful for this aspect of the Community. I thought I was on top of most of what is out there about singles, but this Community has alerted me to so much that I would have otherwise missed.)
- Critiques of misleading claims about what the research has supposedly shown about benefits of getting married
- Suggestions for books, movies, and TV shows that are gloriously free of the usual matrimaniacal themes
- Discussion of practical issues and how we deal with them
- Lots of discussions of travel, including solo travel and other travel opportunities and considerations for people who are single
- Suggestions for social action to get fairness and justice for single people
- Invitations to participate in singles-relevant research studies
- Links to articles and essays written by members of our Community
Of course, people post quotes in the Community, too. I haven’t kept track of them systematically, but I’ve noticed that a few get posted again and again. For example:
- "I think therefore I'm single"
- "I've been single for a while and I have to say. It's going very well. Like…it's working out. I think I'm the one."
- "The reason Mayberry was so peaceful and quiet was because nobody was married. Andy, Aunt Bee, Barney, Floyd, Howard, Goober, Gomer, Sam, Earnest T. Bass, Helen, Thelma Lou, Clara…and, of course, Opie – all single. The only married person was Otis, and he stayed drunk to avoid his marriage."
The group is mostly an online community, but a decent number of in-person connections have also happened because of it. For example, a group of New Yorkers got together to have dinner and go to the movie, “The Lobster.” When I saw that invitation, I wished I did not live several thousand miles away. But I can’t complain – people near or passing through my town Summerland California have stopped for lunch or dinner, and that’s been wonderful, too.
The Community has made the leap into the professional offline world, too. One of our members, Craig Wynne, took the initiative to get a special section on singles included in the conference of the Popular Culture Association next year. A number of Community members will probably present their ideas at the conference. (Others are welcome to submit, too.) Craig has also been looking into starting a Singles Studies Journal.
It is now part of my daily routine to check out the goings-on at the Community. There is never a dull day. I feel like I’ve missed something during those times when I’m too pressured with deadlines and such to keep up.
A few days ago, I asked members of the Community if there was anything they wanted to say about the Community for this article. Here are a few of their answers (along with their names if they gave me permission to use them):
- “This group puts a smile on my face…every day. You people are wonderful! I’ve never felt so much support for my decision to be single as I do here.” (Linda Kroon)
- “This community has made me aware of my own strength, which at times I have forgotten about. I am constantly striving to become better, like everyone else here. It is great to be able to offer a voice or lend an ear or be critiqued by such a wide assortment of great minds.”
- “…my world has been ‘embiggened’ as a result of this community. I have friends from all over the world who are as real to me as the ones in my actual space. Being able to speak freely has allowed me to play with thoughts and ideas I wouldn’t otherwise try to express.” (Kristin Noreen)
- “It is nice to have a community of people experiencing and feeling similar things… [So many coupled people] think we are incomplete, or something is wrong with us…This is a great place to share and get support.”
- “There is such support here. I am now into a decade of being single, most of which is by choice. I am open to a relationship and if it happens it will no longer define me, my choices, my future…” (Liisa MG)
- “I love and need this site for support, friendship and advice. A place to laugh and vent…”
- “Finding this community has been a godsend for me. …it never dawned on me that I could opt out of the whole marital paradigm. Hence, in the wake of my divorce, I was eager to fill the void with another partner. I guess I didn’t realize what that meant until I misstepped a lot on that path and found this support group…I am so happy single! I’m not opposed to relationships necessarily, but I’m not looking and not willing to give up the new life I’ve created for myself as a happy single.” (Corina Corinna)
- “I wish the world outside [this community] would be a little bit more like it.” (Ibrahim Umar, Nigeria)
- “My friends and I used to say that unless a man adds to our lives, why would we put up with them? Our lives were pretty great already. However, over time I forgot that, and for a long time I have found myself in circles where most people around me are married. So I gradually lost confidence in myself and felt second-class. The subtle stings about being single were there, but hard to call because they were easy to dismiss as over-sensitivity on my part…[Now] my life feels like it has been lifted from the margins to the forefront of a new movement…It has been a rare, dizzying and truly powerful experience.”
- “I know it’s a cliché, but this group has changed my life. I feel completely different about my own need to couple than I did a year ago.”
- If you are thinking that it can’t be that great for everyone, you are probably right. Some people have left and they rarely tell me why. There are also times when feelings get hurt. That will probably always make me feel badly, but I keep trying to remind myself that in any human interactions, that’s a risk. You just can’t have 1,170 people and not find some people taking offense sometimes. (I think it is a risk even with just 2 people.)
We are not a moderated group but we do have administrators who accept people into the group and respond when people reach out to them with concerns about the group. I am deeply indebted to all the people who have served in that role.
Finally, I should note that not everyone in the group sees single life as their first choice. But I think everyone does want to live their single lives fully, joyfully, and unapologetically, for as long as those single years may last.
This one last comment expresses that, and offers good suggestions for some future directions of the group:
“I’m glad we have this community. I’m not thrilled about being single but I have been my whole life and probably will be forever. This is a great place to be OK with that.
“Next step: meet-ups and vacation planning!”
