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“My parents married when they were children. She was 19. He was 23. Then they had some. She did everything for her husband and her children. Then she lost herself. By the time I turned 12, my Mom was very unhappy, but she didn’t know why. But I do know why. My mom never had the time or the room to find out who she was. She only knew who she was supposed to be.”

The woman speaking is Carol, just two months shy of her 32nd birthday, slim and quite attractive. She is a manager at a bank, owns and drives her own car, enjoys running, badminton, and diving. She lives at home but as an adult on her own terms. She hands over a bit of money to her mother every month for her share of the household expenses. On weekends, she goes out with friends from work, or sometimes, friends from college. Occasionally, she allows herself to be set up on a blind date. And a few times in recent years, she’s asked a guy out herself. Yes, she’s single. “I just haven’t found the right guy. Or he hasn’t found me. Basta, we haven’t found each other.” Single and above thirty—that’s the phrase that used to function and sadly, among some circles still does, as the permanent seal of spinsterhood.

“I’m what my mother’s generation would call an old maid. Matandang dalaga.” Carol squats on her haunches to lace up her crosstrainers, preparing for her morning run. She smiles winningly. “Tell me, do I look like a matandang dalaga to you?”

Mona makes a matter of fact confession: “Sure, I dreamt of being married and having kids by age X, but the number kept climbing and finally I stopped counting. I realized that was the only thing that was keeping me from being completely happy and I decided to just be that. Just to be happy. Why do we think that being single is such a bad thing, anyway?” An interior designer with her own thriving consultancy, Mona has had her share of romantic relationships and even came close to actual marriage.

She laughs. “I was 25. We actually got engaged, and I had a ring and everything. My friends ask me now, do I ever regret it? Do I wish I could turn back the clock? Did I ever think when I ended it that I’d still be single at 31? And my answer is no, no, and no. I didn’t think I’d be single still, but—and this is a big but—I don’t regret my decision. That was the wrong man for me. I knew it then, and I still know it now.” Mona is adamant. She would not trade her single life today for a marriage to a man that she refused yesterday.

“Do I still want to get married? Sure, I’d consider it. With the right guy. But I wouldn’t get married just for the sake of getting married. I’m happy now. It’s going to take a really great guy to make me happier.”

Evelyn, 27, is single too, but not as single as the first two women. She has, she thinks, found the right guy, but chooses to remain single for now. “I don’t know if it’s the times or it’s me and my ambitions.” Maybe it’s also the fact that she and her boyfriend have been seeing each other for a year and a half. “We’re in love…but we’re also very busy with our careers. Now isn’t the time. There are a lot of things I feel I have to do first.”

A New Breed of Single Women
Carol, Mona, and Evelyn are part of the growing new breed of single women who enjoy their single status, and have opted to pursue their happiness and their ambitions—with or without a man. Unlike the spinsters and old maids of the older generation, these women are youthful, vibrant, independent, and self-motivated. While women in their position fifty years ago were tolerated, even pitied, single women these days are envied. As a matter of fact, there’s never been a better time in history to be single. So why should any girl sit and sulk about her supposed status when it is such a small part of who she is? These days, it would be a disservice to these wonderful times when there are so many wonderful opportunities available to the single woman.

There was a time, not too long ago, when women could not work. They could not own property or run their own business. Our generation is fortunate in that young women can do just about anything they put their mind to. From a certain point of view, having it all is possible…when you’re single. Single women have the freedom, the independence, as well as the time and inclination to promote themselves. They are able to do as Carol’s mother was not—to find out who they are. This can be a wonderfully absorbing task, certainly, one that deserves as much, if not more attention, than the task of finding out who their future spouse will be. Of the two tasks, it should be the task addressed first. Carol, Mona, Evelyn and many other young women out there are doing precisely that.

If they’re so great, why are they single?
Jessica, 27, is one of many single girls, who is more than just a little annoyed at what she considers this society’s lame opinions. “People look at me and ask me whether I have a boyfriend. They ask me whether I’m going to get married. I’ll be feeling perfectly fine, perfectly happy—and then wham! All of a sudden, I’m depressed. Who needs it? Why am I considered kawawa naman because I’m not married? Why am I considered less?

Unfortunately, only people can change society’s perspectives. The idea that there are two states of being: single or married—and married is automatically, always better—is a notion that needs to be put to rest…and fast. Why? This is the idea responsible for many women rushing into marriage or settling for a not-so-right man or worse, a man they do not love. “At least, I’m married,” a woman might console herself. And yet, that is the most frightening thing of all. That many women give up being single for less than love, because they are under the misguided notion that being married is the status.

Worse still is how our elders consider women more of a success when they are married, more of a failure when they are single. This is clearly not an attitude held about men. Their worth and success is not measured by the fact that they are married. It’s who they are, their career, what they contribute to society. In spite of all the leaps and bounds women have taken, they are still treated as though their only role in life is to be someone’s wife, someone’s mother. Single girl Pauline, at 28, has it all figured out. “It amounts to a kind of prejudice against single women…and it’s very insidious. When a woman is single with a boyfriend, she is encouraged to coax and cajole her boyfriend into marrying her. When she is single without a boyfriend, she is encouraged to fix herself, to makeover and beautify herself so some guy will want to be her boyfriend. It’s humiliating and insulting, and it makes me think all the more that this is such a man’s world. We women are so kawawa, even now. And that’s the sad thing.”

Loneliness is a Human Condition
Of course, there are still quite a number of single women who buy into the theory. They want to get married, and they hate being single. Pia, 27, admits she enters sever depressions because she doesn’t have anyone and she isn’t married. Gretchen, 30, confesses that all she wants is to love a good man and bear him his children. “It must be biological. Like the biological clock.”

Psychologists and experts believe it is important not to deny these desires. It is natural to want love, of course, and none of the women interviewed deny this. Says Carol, “I just think that you can’t let it get to you. You can’t let loneliness or wanting love or wanting kids stand in the way of being happy. If all you are is what you want, I think it isn’t healthy. When you put all of your soul into one thing like marriage…you’re denying all the other aspects of yourself.”

Mona, too, understands loneliness, but having been witness to her parents’ marriage, she knows loneliness isn’t the single girl’s monopoly. “Come on, married people get lonely. People with boyfriends and girlfriends get lonely. You don’t escape loneliness just because you’re married.”

But loneliness is also about will. You can will yourself not to be lonely. You can will yourself to be happy. You can be alone and not lonely. Lots of single women and single man are finding this out. Marni, 30, remembers a desperate time in her life when all she could think about was finding love and getting married. She even talked to a male friend of hers. “Don’t you want to get married?” He replied, “God, no!” They were both 26 at the time. He said, “Single life has too many pleasures for a man my age.” Marni says now, “I thought about that and basically said, why shouldn’t it be the same for a woman?” Now running a thriving business, Marni has met someone who she thinks she likes, but she’s being cautious. “I’m not just going to jump into marriage. I don’t want to make a mistake. I’ve waited this long, I know I can wait a little longer to make sure this is the right thing.”

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