So, last week was my birthday. My birthday happens to be just a day before Valentine’s Day. Which means this is the time well-meaning people give me unsolicited advice about relationships, so that this is the year I “settle down”.

I’m running my own business. I’m winning projects from multinational clients. I’m producing work with Olympic champions. I work out every day. I eat well. I hang out with friends. I’m a film buff and meet loads of interesting people who share this interest. I meditate. I do yoga. I keep my BMI, glucose and cholesterol levels healthy. I go on solo vacations every few months, and once a year I take my family on our annual vacation. How much more “settled” do you want me to be?

This is me being very settled in December 2019

While I’m a man, I understand that women face this pressure even more than me, and I believe this is mainly because of biological factors pertaining to childbirth. But thankfully, the conversation is changing, albeit slowly. SK-II is a brand that has done memorable work in Asia telling women that they should not be defined by their relationship status.

SK-II: Marriage Market Takeover (2016)

SK-II: Meet Me Halfway (2019)

Such films have done a great job of making so many women feel better about themselves and not be held back by conservative societal norms.

What about men? When is a men’s brand going to tell me that it’s ok that I’m a man in my thirties who is currently not in a relationship?

In fact, the advertising industry embraces the other extreme when it comes to men and makes it a common trope that a man in an ad has to get a girl to show that he has “game” and is a complete man. Thankfully, this narrative is also losing steam, as evidenced by Axe (which used to be all about man-hunting-woman-and-getting-her) reinventing itself with more evolved messaging in recent years.

Our popular culture has also created the myth of the pick up artist (the man who picks up any girl he wants by saying something unbelievably witty and charming) despite a multitude of studies showing that it’s rooted in misogyny and a hunter mindset that treats women as the hunted. Which means it’s an appallingly ineffective way to impress a serious self-respecting woman, and an incredibly effective way to creep her out. But the myth persists.

Another thing I notice is that only Asia makes advertising that challenges societal expectations of marriage. This could be based on an assumption that this is an issue only in Asia but not in the west. But is this assumption valid? Do similar societal expectations exist in a more insidious form in other parts of the world?

In the United States and Canada, there’s an increasing wave of frustrated men who are bitter that they don’t have a woman in their lives. Toxic cesspools of the internet like certain parts of Reddit are a breeding ground of such bitterness. Such men often become misogynists because they believe that things were great in the good old days before women started enjoying independence. Some of these men also become racists and claim that the problem is that women now have options in men of all races (ignoring the fact that men also now have options in women of all races).

Why do such men turn bitter? I believe that it’s because popular culture has told them that they are incomplete men if they are not in a relationship. This incompleteness manifests itself into low self-esteem which is obvious to women around them, who refuse to be attracted to these men, which in turn feeds their low self-esteem and their sense of incompleteness, in a vicious cycle. This then leads to woman-hating, which hits the last nail in their hopes of ever attracting a woman.

No matter what is my relationship status, I will never become such a bitter man, because I’ve been raised to respect women. In fact, I believe that there are so many areas in which men need to learn from women. Just a couple of examples. For all the talk about women being emotional, I find that women never get emotional when important decisions need to be made. They don’t do what is known as “thinking with our cock” or making important decisions while driven by hormones. Let’s just say there’s a good reason why it’s called “thinking with our cock”.

Also, very rarely do I find women wasting their time and energy on random useless topics that contribute nothing to their lives. Again, in a mockery of the stereotype of the emotional woman, their emotional strength is evident in how few women end up in jail or kill themselves. Women are also exceptional at wading through complexity and synthesizing clarity from it, a quality that lends itself readily to leadership. There’s no shame in me as a man accepting that these are all things we can learn from women.

This being my attitude towards women, there’s no danger that I will become one of those bitter men. And the reason I’m able to see the beauty in women regardless of my relationship status is that I’m a complete man regardless of my relationship status.

If you are a man reading this who is frustrated by not having a woman in your life, please remember that you are a complete man right now. This complete man is what will help you attract a complete woman. And in case you don’t, well, you’re still a complete man. Believe this, because it’s the truth, not because you are kidding yourself. Believe this, and you wouldn’t need to have a woman in your life in order to be happy, and you wouldn’t need to have a woman in your life in order to respect them.

It’s almost absurd that I need to say this, but some men absolutely need to be reminded of this: The absence of a woman in your life doesn’t reduce the beauty, talent, strength, confidence and power of the female gender in any way. No individual man is so powerful as to devalue the entire female gender. Neither is any individual woman so powerful as to devalue the entire male gender.

Coming back to the situation in Asia, it’s a well-known fact that festivals like Chinese New Year are a time when well-meaning relatives ask single people when they are getting married, married people when they are having children, and children how many marks they are getting in school. A version of this exists in the west during Thanksgiving.

I recently came to know that there’s a term for making people feel inadequate for their single status, and it’s single-shaming. Yes, it’s like body-shaming someone for being too fat/thin/tall/short.

Very rarely does single-shaming take the form of overtly belittling someone for being single. It often takes more insidious forms. A well-meaning friend who constantly recommends the latest dating app to us so that we can “solve” our single status is one example.

In my case, it takes the form of a dad who maintains a mental database of everyone in our circle who’s married, and everyone in our circle who’s married with children, especially if those people are of my age group. He employs this mental database whenever we meet those people, artificially peppering the conversations with digressions about their spouses and children. This invariably creeps people out, as they don’t realize that they are part of a wider conversation my dad is having with me regarding my marital status (or lack thereof).

The saving grace is that I have a progressive mom who understands my perspectives and disapproves of my dad’s attempts to single-shame me. I sometimes shudder at how my life would have been if both my parents collectively single-shamed me. Then I realize that lots and lots of people are going through exactly that. I’m definitely luckier than them as I face only half the pain they face.

But rejecting the institution of marriage is not the right response to this pain. This extreme response will only cause you more bitterness and resentment, because it’s rooted in a generalization that the world is essentially bad and out to traumatize you. It will also make you despise half the human race, which can never be a good thing.

The right response is to embrace all aspects of your currently-complete life, and build those facets which you may wish to work on (e.g. find a new hobby, learn a new language) which will only make you more complete. And along this journey, if you are lucky enough to find the right companion to share this journey with, seize the opportunity to share it with them.

And if you are not lucky enough to find such a person, maybe you’ll be lucky in other ways and will find happiness differently.

If this is your outlook towards life without a partner, you’ll find beauty in the world. You’ll find that life is far more pleasant than you ever dared to dream it could be. You will find that you are indeed the most “settled” you’ve ever been in your life.