The BB Journal Editorial

“Being single is not a problem to solve”– The BB Journal

Just because the world has a script for your life, doesn’t mean you have to follow it (unless you want to!)

You know exactly what we are talking about here. 

Somewhere between your 28th and 31st birthday, something shifts in the air around you. The questions change and the silences at family dinners become louder. And suddenly, your relationship status (which was never anyone’s business) becomes everyone’s favourite topic. The aunty at the wedding who grabs your hand a little too warmly. The friend who says “don’t worry, your time will come” with a smile that means the opposite of comfort. The office colleague who asks if you’re “seeing anyone” with the kind of curiosity that’s really just nosiness dressed up as concern. The mother who doesn’t say anything, but whose silence at certain moments says everything.

And then there’s the version of it that happens inside your own head. The voice that sometimes wonders if everyone else knows something you don’t. The one that catches you mid-celebration of something wonderful in your life and whispers, “But still, though”.

That’s what we’re talking about today. Not just the pressure that comes from outside, but the one you’ve absorbed so deeply that it’s started to feel like your own.

Let’s name what’s actually happening here

There is a very specific, very old story that indian society tells women about their lives. It goes something like this: you grow up, you study, you get a job (but not one that makes you “too independent”), you meet someone suitable, you marry by a certain age, and then you build a family. That’s the arc. That’s the full story, as far as the script is concerned. Anywhere you deviate from this arc, you are considered either brave or broken, depending on who’s reading your story. And being single in your 30s? That tends to fall in the “broken” column for most people. Not because something is genuinely wrong, but because the script doesn’t have a good role written for a woman who is simply living her life on her own timeline.

But here’s what nobody says out loud: the stigma around being single in your 30s is not really about you. It’s about the discomfort other people feel when a woman refuses to confirm their worldview. When you are thriving, career going well, friendships full, life genuinely rich without having followed the prescribed path, it unsettles people who followed it faithfully. Not because you’re doing anything wrong, but because your existence quietly asks a question they don’t want to answer: did I have to do it this way?

The “still single” language and why it matters

Pay attention the next time someone says it. Still single. That one word carries so much weight. Still, as in: despite everything. Still, as in: we expected this to be over by now. Still, as in: how unfortunate. Nobody says “still employed” or “still healthy” or “still living in the city you love” with that same tone. But “still single” is delivered with a particular kind of softened alarm the way you might say “still no news from the doctor” or “still waiting for the results.”

The language we use shapes the way we think. And a generation of women has grown up hearing their singlehood described as a condition, a temporary state of incompletion, something to be remedied as soon as possible. Is it any wonder that some part of us has started to believe it?

What if we changed the word? What if, instead of “still single,” we said: “choosing to be intentional about partnership.” Or simply: “living her life.” What if being single in your 30s was described the way it actually is for so many women? A period of extraordinary self-knowledge, deep friendship, professional momentum, and the very underrated gift of freedom?

What your 30s actually are, when you’re not busy apologising for them

Your 30s, single or not, are arguably one of the most powerful decades of your life. You know yourself in a way you didn’t at 22. You know what you will tolerate and what you won’t, which is actually the most important prerequisite for any good relationship, if and when you want one. You’ve had enough disappointment to develop real resilience, and enough joy to know what matters to you. You’ve started to understand the difference between what you actually want and what you were told you should want.

And that’s not a woman who is behind. That’s a woman who is ahead of the version of herself who would have said yes to the wrong person at 27 just to make the questions stop.

There is nothing wrong with being married by 30. And there is nothing wrong with not being. One isn’t the reward and the other isn’t the punishment.”

On the fear underneath the pressure

Let’s acknowledge something without which this piece would be incomplete. Not all of the anxiety around being single in your 30s comes from outside pressure. Some of it is genuinely yours and it deserves to be taken seriously without being catastrophised. Maybe you do want a partnership. Maybe you want children and you’re aware that time moves differently for women in this regard. Maybe you have had relationships that didn’t work out and some part of you wonders if the pattern means something. These are real feelings, and they are allowed to exist alongside the strength and the clarity and the full life you are building.

Owning your singlehood doesn’t mean pretending it is always easy or that you never want something different. It means refusing to let that longing become the headline of your life. It means not letting a desire for partnership turn into a belief that you are less-than until it arrives. It means holding both truths at once: I am whole right now and I am also open to more. Those two things are not contradictions. In fact, the first one is what makes the second one possible.

To the women who are tired of explaining themselves

If you have spent too many dinners deflecting questions, too many calls ending with reassurances you didn’t mean and too much energy managing other people’s discomfort about your choices, or their curiosity, or their pity, or their louder concern; you need to first know that you do not owe anyone an explanation for where you are in your life. And you certainly don’t need to perform contentment you don’t feel just to make others comfortable.

Being single is not the story of what hasn’t happened yet. It’s the story of everything that already has.”

Why the stigma is outdated

The idea that a woman’s life is incomplete without a partner was built for a world where women had no financial independence, no legal rights over property, no access to education, no say in most of the decisions that shaped their lives. In that world, marriage was not a choice but a survival strategy. The stigma around being unmarried wasn’t cruelty for its own sake. It was a practical warning about the vulnerability of a woman without institutional protection.

That world still exists in parts. But it is not the whole world, and it is not the world most of the women reading this are living in. Women earn their own money, sign their own leases, travel alone, make their own medical decisions and build careers, friendships & lives that belong entirely to them. The stigma has not kept pace with the reality. It is a hand-me-down anxiety from a previous generation’s genuine necessity, passed down to women who no longer share the same vulnerability. Which means women get to put it down. They don’t have to carry it just because it was handed to us.

And if you want partnership, here’s what’s also true

None of this means you must be happy being single; or that wanting a relationship is somehow un-feminist or an admission of weakness. Wanting love is one of the most human things there is. But first step before moving into this partnership is also to understand that single hood is not a failure either. And when you stop seeing it as a failure, the kind of relationship you’ll eventually build, if you choose to, will look entirely different.

You will stop being someone who accepts less than you deserve because the alternative feels like the thing everyone said was wrong with you. You will stop compromising yourself before the relationship has even started. You will come to a partnership, if and when you want one, from a place of fullness, not from a place of relief that someone finally chose you. That’s everything.

Don’t let anyone rush you into a life you haven’t chosen. The right relationship should add to your world and not simply end the awkward questions at family gatherings.”

Your life is not on pause or in a waiting room. It is, already, enough.

With love, always

The BB Journal