You know what I really love? Beating a dead horse. Not like a real dead horse, just a figurative one. Truly, my favorite thing in all of the world is having to repeatedly explain things to people who should have listened the first time I said it. I just adore having repetitive arguments with the same people over and over again; it’s always fun and never emotionally exhausting or frustrating or ultimately pointless!

Because this is my favorite thing to do of all time, I’m gonna come back to one of my favorite topics and beat this dead horse again for all of you. This particular horse’s name is Relationships vs. Being Single (weird name for a horse I know, but once a horse named Smarty Jones won the Kentucky Derby, so stay with me here).

A while back, I wrote an article about hating being asked why I’m not in a relationship. To my surprise, a lot of people really enjoyed it and related to it, which was amazing. What is less amazing, though, is the fact that being unattached is apparently a defining aspect of who you are. What is much less amazing is how your relationship status is inherently tied to your character, your goals, your dreams, your sense of self. What just sucks is that the implications that come from being designated “single” are apparently so horrendous, they cannot even be spoken aloud.

Earlier today I overheard someone asking a person the following: “Are you in a relationship or are you just having fun right now?” My immediate thought was: why are the two things mutually exclusive? My next thought was: are those the only two options available to any person at any given time? Because I’m pretty sure I am single and not always having fun. In fact, I would wager that most people, in a relationship or otherwise, are probably not always having fun. Because that’s just how life works.

It was strange to me how this person directly asked about them being relationship but wouldn’t even use the word “single” or any similar word/phrase, and instead opted to imply that they must be having fun (because God forbid someone be single and not “having fun,” whatever that even means). It’s almost like “single” is some kind of word that dare not be spoken. Instead, it is safer and less, I don’t know, harsh to say that this person who might just not be romantically connected to someone at the present time is “just having fun.”

So apparently, being single is basically being Voldemort, which is interesting. Whether you’re currently not in a relationship or "He Who Must Not Be Named," no one wants to say the truth about who you are, they fear it too much.

Maybe it’s the fear that saying the word out loud will curse them or something. Like, if you say “single” three times while looking in a mirror, a demon will drown you in your bathtub. Or worse? What if suddenly you become single?

Whatever the reason is, it just strikes me as odd. Why is being single so terrible that even alluding to the word itself is dangerous territory? Why do we have to make up little jokey euphemisms for it? Why must we imply that someone who is single is “having fun” because obviously they must have to be having fun otherwise why would they be single at all?

Why is it so deeply ingrained in our culture that being single is a terrible thing?

Anyway, I guess I’ll give this extremely dead horse a break from its beating for now. Instead I’ll just sit here on my soapbox and dream about a future in which we’ve finally moved past this strange fixation on everyone’s personal relationships and stopped attributing so much value to something as inconsequential as their dating life.