Single by choice or single due to a lack of choices?
When do you decide to down tools on dating, relationships and marriage?
I spent the weekend catching up with single girlfriends at a dinner party, and as always the topic of dating (or at least attempting to date comes up).
Overall, a mixed bag — you have me who is a user of dating apps and now going to singles events, one who is in the early days of meeting two men she actually likes, one who was considering downloading dating apps and then given the conversation at hand I’m pretty sure was scared off them, and two others who have decided to take a break. With the single women I’ve met along the way, that’s often been the case.
“Taking a break” often means deleting the dating apps from your phone and removing yourself from the tedious back-and-forth messaging, because let’s face it — who is actually even meeting in person these days, if you can make it through matching someone you actually like?
But the pipeline from “taking a break” from dating, to being settled in singlehood, and removing yourself from the marriage trajectory seems to be trending upward.
So many conversations I have with single female friends are centered around how our lives would be so much easier if we just started a commune together. Just on a vast plot of land in a beautiful, big house that we can decorate on our own, looking after one another and our children (should we want to have them) because that is the kind of support we’re looking for and feel that we lack in our romantic relationships.
This same level of care, consideration, tenderness, empathy, generosity of time and spirit is what we receive in our female friendships.
Most of the single women I know who are my age are holding down full-time jobs and side hustles, are in higher education, or are working for themselves as entrepreneurs. Many are mothers! And most of the single women I know are exhausted. Remembering what support from a partner feels like is but a distant memory.
For my best friend, marriage and children are off the table, and after 13 years on dating apps she has been off of them completely for the last three years. Naturally I keep her up-to-date on everything she’s missing (she’s ahead of the dating wrapped before anyone else) and her constant refrain is how blissfully happy she is without all of the stress that comes from dating.
The personal is what we all deal with, right? Our own insecurities and pasts, the anxiety of meeting someone new, the worry of disappointment and the general expectation that first dates are more often than not, a dud.
But now, women are encountering things that are becoming more non-negotiable as our single lives have been built up in the ways that we like and prefer. We spend our time and money with the people we love. We rent or purchase our own homes. We go on trips and retreats. We go out to eat. We stay in and order in. We pour into ourselves in ways that no romantic relationship has before. And we pour into our platonic and familial relationships too.
We have the education, the money, the time, and access to things that most women a lifetime before us didn’t have. And all of these things afford us choice.
And the choice to down tools on dating is a major one.
The reports coming out of America are painting a considerable chasm between straight men and women and their attitudes towards dating and marriage, with marriage rates in decline.
The Wall Street Journal reported this past week that in a 2023 Pew Research Center survey of 5,073 U.S. adults, “48% of women said that being married was not too or not at all important for a fulfilling life, compared with 39% of men—up from 31% and 28% in 2019. In a 2024 Wall Street Journal/NORC poll, 58% of women aged 18 to 29 said marriage was at least somewhat essential to their vision of the American dream, compared with 66% of men.”
“Meanwhile, over half of single women said they believed they were happier than their married counterparts in a 2024 AEI survey of 5,837 adults, while just over a third of surveyed single men said the same.”
Financial earnings and education aren’t the only reasons for the widening gap, but political and social issues are becoming more of an issue as “men and women aged 18 to 29 have increasingly diverging political views” as women’s value systems have moved further left while men’s move to the right.
I’ve seen it in subtle (“not political” or “moderate” politics on men’s profiles) or more explicit (“traditional man looking for a traditional woman”) ways on the apps.
In this same week, Bumble Inc. announced the return of Whitney Wolfe, the original founder and CEO of Bumble after she stepped down in 2023.
In the UK, the entire Bumble Instagram feed has been wiped and has just one singular post:
“It’s not you, it’s us. You deserve better. We’re committed to fixing dating. Starting with ourselves.”
The post also calls for suggestions in the comments of what they could do to change the app or user experience for the better.
While the bio reads:
“Putting women first, always.”
Bumble began over a decade ago as an app that put women at the forefront, allowing them to “make the first move” when it came to starting conversations on the app. Starting from last year, men have been able to “make the first move” when it comes to starting conversation upon matching.
I can only assume Wolfe’s return and Bumble’s pivot comes after it’s major PR fail, marked as the “Bumble fumble” after a rebrand that was meant to inspire women after feeling fatigue and frustration from using dating apps with ads in major cities saying “You know full well celibacy is not the answer” and “Thou shalt not give up on dating and become a nun.”
The take home message being, come on girls, get back on the apps, and get to fucking these men who are waiting for you!
They have since issued an apology for the campaign.
Bumble’s reaction to its decline in users (most of whom I can imagine are predominantly women) and a crash in shares, was to revert back to its original USP with its original founder. Now I’m not entirely convinced that’s going to solve its problem or any of ours when it comes to what we’re looking for out of dating, but it’s a very interesting shift to take note of.
What it’s telling me is that dating, finding love and partnership had long been a problem that just women had to solve.
Our dollars and pounds have been funnelled into it in many ways. The majority of us grew up believing we had to become the best physical versions of ourselves in order to find love. To attract a man.
What have we bought into? Paying to get our hair done, paying for hair removal, paying for gym memberships, paying to get our nails done, paying to whiten our teeth, buying new outfits…then we started paying for therapy as well to better serve our mental health.
Keeping us in this mindset has become a very lucrative one for many, dating apps, dating coaches, matchmakers and the long arm of the wedding industry. It’s patriarchal, it’s capitalistic, and it’s not fit for purpose.
And now here we are, with women ready to set aside romantic love to continue to create a life that actively makes them happier.
Single, abstinent, child-free, single mother, we get to choose what our romantic lives look like and do away with whatever isn’t serving us.
About me: I'm Nicole, the writer of A Crumb of Romance. I’m the co-author of The Half of It: Exploring the Mixed-Race Experience, a content creator and the co-host of the award-winning Mixed Up podcast. Having been chronically online since the age of 13, you can also find me on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Pinterest.
Omg I’m not alone in seeing ‘not political’ and ‘moderate’ on the apps! And they are often POC, like who can afford to not be political?!