«Anyone who lives alone and manifests no longing to be in a relationship is – in our times – almost automatically (though more or less secretly) viewed as both pitiable and deeply troubled. It’s simply not thought possible to be at once alone and normal.
This sets us up for collective catastrophe, for it means that a huge number of people who have no innate wish to live with anyone else, and are at heart deeply ill-suited to doing so, are every year press-ganged and shamed into conjugal life, with disastrous results for all involved.
[...]
Here, then, are a few of the many good reasons to spend your life alone:
– For a start, we should recognise that the idea of being deeply in love with one special partner over a whole lifetime, what we can call Romantic love, is a very new, ambitious and odd concept, which is at best 250 years old. [...]
– Those among us who chose to stay single should not be thought un-Romantic. Indeed, we may be among the very most Romantic of all, which is precisely why we find the possibilities open to us especially unappetising. [...]
– Though it is a sign of some maturity to know how to love and live alongside someone, it may be a sign of even greater maturity to recognise that this is something one isn’t in the end psychologically really capable of – as a good portion of us simply aren’t. [...]»
[da tradurre]
[www.thebookoflife.org/reasons-to-remain-single]
