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The Insidious Binaries of Singledom Forced on Millennial Women

Even if being single or taken is a binary, the conditions and individual wants and needs surrounding one’s relationship status are far from a simple either-or.

Rachel Presser
8 min readJan 12, 2021
Images licensed and assembled in Canva Pro by the author

In a world where we have seemingly endless options for everything from sandwiches to gender expression, single women [namely, cisgender women who primarily date men] seem to be given just two of them when it comes to relationship status: you’re either in this constant state of despondence and desperation as a result of not having a permanent guy in your life, or YAS QUEEN you don’t ever need a man at all, you never want to bother with that!

If you’re happy and single, so many people take it to mean that you don’t want a relationship. If you’re unhappy about being single, you’re told to settle for the first schmuck who’s halfway nice to you or perhaps some variant of, “But your life sounds AWESOME! Why do you want a boyfriend/husband?”

Funny, I thought that we were supposed to work on ourselves and find out what makes us tick before signing up for a relationship.

No, you don’t need to wait until everything in your life is shining perfection or else you’ll probably drop dead first. But first I’m told I…

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Rachel Presser
Rachel Presser

Written by Rachel Presser

Game dev, writer, small biz & tax consultant to indie devs. That loud socialist Frog Slut from The Bronx, now in Angel City. https://linktr.ee/sonictoad

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