When The Heteronormative Music Stops...

“I can’t believe my parents are pressuring me to find one of you people.”

Doing this podcast has made me reflect on our collective fear of singleness. Life is long and we’re all single for some of it - why is it so stigmatized, especially for women?

“I sat, head down, quivering furiously at their inferences of female sell-by dates and life as game of musical chairs where girls without a chair/man when the music stops/they pass thirty are 'out’.”

Bridget Jones’ Diary came out in 1996, but I thought about this quote yesterday, when I heard an interview with the sparky writer and broadcaster Vanessa Feltz. She described her views on being single:

“It meant that nobody chose you. You were unclaimed… just one of the odds and sods… and the really awful part of this is I don’t have a happy ending in this regard.”

It made me so sad. Our fantasies are so informed by happy endings - when life, frankly, is a series of mixed middle after mixed middle. Vanessa is 61, heterosexual (as far as I know) and currently single. She got married at 21, to a right prick by the sound of it, after getting her first class honours degree in English from Cambridge university. She’s been hugely and visibly, unlucky in love. I hate that this bad luck (and whatever the ins and outs of the relationships, she was clearly treated poorly, not to mention unfaithfully by both her long term partners) warps her view of her own success.

She’s a resilient, talented woman with a planet-sized brain, big heart and a varied, stacked CV. Not to mention what seems like a great relationship with two lovely adult daughters, and friends who adore her. I felt myself raging at the bullshit expectations heterosexual women are haunted by.

Why do we hold marriage in such high regard? Or romantic relationships at all? I remember watching TFI Friday back in the 1990’s, and seeing Melanie Sykes being asked by Chris Evans if she had a boyfriend. Just look at her!! Why wouldn’t she? She was affronted at the idea she might be single.*

What does it mean? I seethed at the time. Anyone can “get” a boyfriend. No, really - take your pick of the grim, the boring, the lazy, the mean, the thick, the desperate, the shady, the slobby, the abusive, the inattentive, the cold, the damaged, the unhinged, the venal, the inconsiderate LOSERS or CRIMINALS who are out there. Help yourself.

Why is partnering up so automatically celebrated, before we know any details? Why are we encouraging token engagements? Elderly aunties whooping with relief that the shame of singleness has been extinguished from the family. In 2024? I remember my Granny whispering a dire warning about a relative of hers who’d ended up an old lady with just a parrot for company. Yeah? I bet she was COOL.

Don’t get me wrong, we want our friends to feel loved and fulfilled, and often that will involve having a decent, loving, supportive partner, but the pressure to lock some rando husband down is horrendous and outdated. The idea that marriages are in some way an apex of female achievement is depressing. In one of my favourite films When Harry Met Sally, Sally says:

“What are you saying? I should get married to someone right away in case he's about to die?” Her friend replies:

“At least you could say you were married.”

It’s the ultimate thing to have on your gravestone. If you’re a woman.

It’s been said many times before, but it’s so unfair that bachelors get to be cool, fun loving “seed-sowing” types and spinsters are sad, lonely, crazy cat (or parrot) ladies, keeping their eggs tucked up inside their dusty, wool covered uteruses.

I realise I sound cynical and I’m not. Not only am I currently happily married (like a big hypocrite), but I’ve attended over 50 weddings and at almost all of them I’ve cried with sheer, overwhelming love and joy. They’re an expression of public love and optimism. Long may they continue to be bright spots in our social calendars. As I announced on instagram recently, I’m super keen to celebrate love of all sorts in party-form. Otherwise as we age, the gossip is all death, disease and dictatorship. So let’s celebrate marriages, anniversaries, non-milestone birthdays, washing-machine purchases, all of it.

But we all know about marriages that have gone south - that have turned out… disappointing. Or downright horrible. Marriage shouldn’t be taken lightly. Nor should it be seen as an end in itself. I love the line in The Royle Family episode where Denise says “All I wanted, was the happiest day of my life, and to live happily ever after”. We’ve all been burnt by this bullshit.

I’m not anti-marriage but I am with Jerry Seinfeld when he said “I’m just surprised it happens so OFTEN”. It’s a fact that half of them end in divorce. I don’t know the statistics about what happens to the rest of them, but I do know that the best result you can hope for is death. So what happens if your husband dies and you are (shock horror), yet again single? Is allowing him to die considered a failure? How quickly do you have to hook up again to remain a success?

And from where I stand, there’s no denying that divorce can be a way of saving lives. Yes, they can be painful, traumatic and expensive but rarely regretted - if only as a way of ending something that isn’t working. The best marriages take work and compromise (and are something to be proud of maintaining) but breaking your back to stay in an abusive, uneven or unfulfilling relationship should never be seen as some kind of a triumph.

At least equal marriage has given the institution of marriage a real boost. It gives me such joy to know that future generations of young people can be unreasonably pressured to pair up with people of their own genders. In all seriousness, it’s genuinely fabulous that the hoary old marital husband-wife preconceptions are being shaken up. I’ve always joked about wanting a wife. And what I mean by wife is a sweet-smelling cook, housekeeper and administrator who brings me aperitifs and never questions any of my terrible views and decisions. Doesn’t sound like a partnership, does it?

I’ll be telling my daughter there’s zero pressure from me to get married. She will have to get a degree though. KIDDING - we’ll all be fighting over water in a dystopian hellscape by then. She’s better off learning how to fight rats and live on an all insect diet.

In conclusion, I’m happy for marriage to be a great celebration of love and a partnership, where you legally pool your resources (so romantic). What it shouldn’t be, is a reward for being good, a sign that you’re better than single people, or a way of getting your family to shut up.

*I should say I was irritated by this comment, but have nothing against Melanie who is a talented broadcaster and was very young at the time.I guarantee I was irritating people every day in the 1990s, I just wasn’t on the telly. She went on to have very public struggles within her own life and relationships and if she’s reading this - solidarity, babe.