Face it. You’re a loser. You’re a sad, lonely, loser. There you are, slumped on your sofa, gulping down a bowl of grease alone. And you thought you could keep it secret! Well, we know exactly what you’re doing and we think it’s tragic – but also quite funny. So we thought we’d get everyone else to titter at the mess you’ve made of your life.

This appeared to be the message one company was keen to send out to single women this week. Next to a giant bank card on one of the billboard ads for financial technology company Revolut were the words: “To the 12,750 people who ordered a single takeaway on Valentine’s Day”. Followed by the punchline: “You OK, hun?”

The ad – either an imitation or a pastiche of a campaign by Spotify in 2016, which was actually quite witty and managed not to insult its potential customers – certainly created a stir. A financial blogger, Iona Bain, pointed out the “patronising language and awful single-shaming”. Another woman pointed out that “you OK, hun?” was not a question that was ever asked of men. Another said: “This is my first Valentine’s Day as a widow.”

Revolut is, by the way, a “unicorn”. That’s as in a private tech startup valued at more than $1bn (£78m), not as in a demand dreamt up by the British government to take to Brussels. Revolut’s head of global marketing, Chad West, made the ritual not-quite-apology. They would, he said, be “more careful” in future. Perhaps they might even consider joining the 21st century, but let’s not start demanding unicorns of our own.

What’s so depressing is how little has changed. In literature, single women have so often been portrayed as shrews and battle-axes, or pretty young women just waiting to be picked and saved. One minute we are ripe for the picking. The next, we’re a Miss Bates or a Miss Havisham, struggling on with our tiny lives. And then along came Bridget Jones, and then along came Sex and the City, and we dared to believe that there might even come a day when a woman wasn’t defined by her relationship with a man. Where a woman might, in fact, even choose to be single, and, you know, pay her own bills. But oh no. It’s now clear. If you’re single, you’re just a faded item in a bargain-basement sale.

I’ve been single for nearly all my adult life. At times, I’ve felt that by being single I’ve failed. Holidays aren’t designed for me. Christmas isn’t meant for me. Politicians don’t even want my vote. They want the votes of people who force their children up chimneys or into sweatshops, because what else can a “hard-working family” be? And Valentine’s Day? Who doesn’t hate Valentine’s Day? But on the rare occasions I’ve been in a restaurant on Valentine’s Day, the key thing I’ve noticed is the silence. Quite a few couples seem happy to forget conversation and focus on their phones.

For my book, The Art of Not Falling Apart, I interviewed a number of wonderful women who have chosen to be on their own. They are very happy to be single. It took me quite a while to realise that I was, too. Once, at a low point in my life, a therapist said to me: “I don’t think you actually want to have a partner.” At first, I was shocked – and then realised he was right.

If I look at the single people I know, I’d say they nearly all have more friends than the people I know who are in couples. They make more of an effort. They do more interesting things. I’ve been to places and had adventures I would never have had if I’d been coupled up. Life would certainly have been different if I’d been in a couple. But would it have been better? In his new book, Happy Ever After, the behavioural economist Paul Dolan quotes plenty of evidence to show that those “traditional narratives”, such as getting married and having children, often give more pleasure as stories than in the lived experience of daily life. No wonder about a third of us are now choosing to stay single.

There is, of course, no such thing as “happy ever after”. It’s up to each of us to find our own way to live a fulfilling life. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing on Valentine’s Day. I don’t really care what I do on Valentine’s Day. But I’ll probably have a nice meal and thank my lucky stars I’m not Chad.

• Christina Patterson is a writer, broadcaster and columnist, and the author of The Art of Not Falling Apart