A Guide to Embracing Life as a Single (Without the Resignation, That Is)

For some singles at New Year’s Eve soirees tonight, the minutes leading up to midnight will be agonizing as they ponder whom they’ll be standing next to at the pucker-up moment.

Sherri Langburt, a founder of SingleEdition.com, a Web site on navigating life as a single person without the drumbeat of dating advice.

But a new Web site, SingleEdition.com, wants nothing more than to embrace them. And unlike dating sites that treat being single as a predicament, this one celebrates flying solo, and offers shopping, financial and other advice to help them do so with pride.
“If you Google the term ‘single,’ all that comes up is dating, dating, dating,” said Sherri Langburt, a founder of SingleEdition.com. “But what we’re saying is there’s a whole other realm of things that go on for a single person that are not dating.”

Articles on the site give advice on how to entertain in small apartments (have cheese- or chocolate-tasting parties instead of sit-down meals), how to cook for one (try freezing homemade soup in ice trays to simplify defrosting single portions) and how to select gifts for other singles (perhaps an audio book or a G.P.S. device to help a solo driver).

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NVDL:I said to a friend once, who is married: 'The difference between us is that you have too little time for yourself, and I have too much.' But I become increasingly convinced that not getting married and not having children is an altruistic and necessary act. I see it becoming a sensible trend, a choice, for an increasingly conscious set of the population. It is good for the individual and society, with the proviso that the single person can at least maintain some kind of connection/long term relationship with groups and individuals within society. This isn't always easy. Older singles can develop bad habits, become brittle and selfish. Maintaining openness, a fresh and flexible attitude is the best way to embrace change. Can individuals deal with change better than families? In extreme scenarios, I would argue, yes. And especially scenarios that severely erode wealth, and could mean losing your job and home.

We are living in a world with too many people, too few resources, and some critical, painful and austere issues facing us. To then get married hoping to live with a brood happily ever after is, I think, delusional. Perhaops get married but don;'t have children? What is the point of that? Of course, what if things unravel in the generation after mine? Should I have partied on and made the most of my life (assuming getting married can be assocaited with 'getting the most' or is it the best and worst out of life), leaving my children with a messed up world?

Doubtless I am outnumbered in this assessment, but this ought - unfortunately - to change, and it is changing.
Also read: The Marriage Myth