Country singer Hunter Hayes recently teamed up with pop star Jason Mraz to create the hit song “Everybody’s Got Somebody But Me”. The song is admittedly catchy with a groovy guitar riff and an overall mellow feel to it. Unfortunately, I think it’s sending a dangerous message to its listeners.

The duo makes some valid points throughout the song to express their feelings of displeasure with the couples that surround them on a daily basis. Hayes starts off by remarking “I wish the couple on the corner would just get a room, seems like everyone around me is on their honeymoon.” Mraz continues “Well I don’t know how I landed on this movie set. It’s like a casting call for ‘Romeo and Juliet’.” I don’t disagree with their observations and I tend to share in their annoyance of seeing overly-attached couples cluttering my Facebook Newsfeed and the hallways on my college campus. However, the other points they make in this song are what have me second-guessing the song’s main purpose.

What gets me is the chorus: “And I miss you. Without you I just don’t fit in. I know we’re through, but I’m wishing we could try it again.” Obviously this part of the song is directed towards the singer’s ex-girlfriend. Now it’d be one thing for the singer to comment on how he misses his ex because he realizes how great of a girl she was, how shallow of a guy he was, or some combination of the two (which tends to make up the majority of country songs). What makes this song unique (or maybe not, as we’ll see later) is the emphasis on the singer’s reasoning for wanting to get back together with his ex; namely because “everybody’s got somebody but (him)”.

I think this exemplifies a big problem in today’s society. From some of the things I’ve seen and heard in my life, too many people these days seem to date simply to avoid feeling alone. In the meantime, those who are single think they must be doing something wrong if they’re the only ones without someone. Kacey Musgraves addresses the concept of the rapid tick-tock of our social clock in her song “Merry Go ‘Round” when she says “If you ain’t got two kids by 21 you’re probably gonna die alone, at least that’s what tradition told you.” Hunter Hayes seems to address this feeling of pressure from society by alluding to the fact that he wants to get back with his ex simply because he keeps seeing couples in love and feels left out.

In his book “The Seven Levels of Intimacy”, Matthew Kelly shares a story of an encounter he had with a young woman who came up to him after he gave a talk at an all-girls high school in Kentucky. The young woman asked “How do you become comfortable with yourself?” Kelly recalled his answer, “You have to learn to enjoy your own company. Before you can learn to be with someone else, you need to learn to be alone. Until you are comfortable being with yourself, you will always be afraid of being alone.”

Relationships that begin due to one or both of the partner’s fear of being alone are not going to be healthy relationships by any means. Such relationships may begin to resemble more of a hostage situation than a special bond that helps each other become the best-version-of-themselves.

If you are considering entering into a relationship, I encourage you to take the time to re-evaluate your reasons for doing so. Are you comfortable with who you are as an individual? Are you simply doing this to avoid the feeling of being alone? Does the fact that all your friends are getting engaged play a role in this hurried decision? If you are currently single and feeling the pressure from society to change your relationship status on Facebook, stay strong. Take advantage of your time as a single person by growing more comfortable with who you are while working on becoming the best-version-of-yourself. If you are called to marriage, your future spouse will be grateful for the work that you do now while you’re still single.

Above all, don’t get caught up in the pressures of the social clock that movies, TV shows, commercials, and so many country songs these days want to try to guilt you with. They want you to think that everybody’s got somebody but you. Basing your decisions on such an exaggerated idea can ;lead you down a road that will leave you even more heartbroken; the theme that makes up the other 98% of country songs.