“Most people don’t need a mug to remind them that they’re single. Amy, 38, says that between the tabloids and television, she can’t escape it. She sometimes wishes she’d gotten hitched — even if it were just for 72 days like Kim Kardashian — if only to get people off her back. “People want you to have reached these major life goals that they’ve reached, and they want you to be like them,” she says. “But I don’t need a man in my life to make me happy.” Steve, who’s 43 and hails from Lexington but now works in L.A., says remaining single has put ­distance between him and his married friends. When he returns home, he finds them so focused on their kids they can’t have a conversation. All right, he tells himself, I’ll give them a call in 10 years. Tara, who’s 38 and doesn’t want to get married, ended up in an argument with her brother-in-law over Thanksgiving about whether having kids meant your life was automatically busier than a single person’s could ever be. “Your whole life is you!” he shouted. That was the end of the conversation.”

From: Single by Choice: Why More of Us Than Ever Before are Happy to Never Get Married – Boston Magazine.

The piece I’ve quoted from was recommended by a commenter and I really enjoyed it. I had no idea that single people spend roughly $2 trillion on consumer products and yet, marketers hesitate to single them out for fear of alienating single people. I liked some of the language in here referring to spinsters instead as spinners or singles as singletons. I think the idea that “singlism” or the bias against singles in favor of people in couples, is very real. It’s a bit long but worth the effort.