How is singleness viewed?

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One question I can't seem to come up with the answer to-even with lots of google searches-is how do we view guys who are long term or perpetually single? I don't mean single because they don't want to be tied down and are playing the field. I mean single in no girlfriend and no dates. I still feel a lot of shame over that part of my life because I believe everyone probably thought I was a loser and really defective.

NTs often have a strong sense of entitlement in this area, which is also the main reason they usually think chronically single people are super-weird.

I guess everyone would view it in their own way. I generally view it as "interesting", as in, I'd be curious to know why. If the person in question was a potential partner, the why would be quite important for me to find out, but I wouldn't be thinking he is necessarily undateable, because I tend to be attracted to the more odd people anyway. If the person is just an acquaintance or something and not a potential partner, then it would just be a generic curiosity like all the other things I get curious about.

http://belladepaulo.com/

I've read some works by this author, and it seems like there's actually a fairly big problem of society actively discriminating against single people.

most nts call such mean creepy losers. something must be horrible wrong with them. etc.

besides that. people who aren't single won't hang out with single people. and in places like churches or other traditional places you're miss out on jobs and promotions.

they'd rather have a couple in those positions. my sister is great with kids but gets passed over all the time for married/dating women. who the church figures is a better match solely because they have a husband.

most society is geared towards couples.

friends who get married tend to only hang out with other married friends and singles get excluded

From an NT point of vieuw: it is seen as a red flag, there just "has" to be a reason why this guy didn't go on any dates over the last year. If other woman (or man, for that matter) didn't want him/her, why should I?

at least, that's the general vibe that's going around with perpetually single people

lol@NT:herd-mentality

Most people, unless they were your immediate friends and family, probably didn't think about you and your singleness at all (unless you talked to them about it.) If they did bother to wonder about it, they might have thought you were a closet homosexual. Since you ended up happily married, any opinion they might have had about that period in your life has become obsolete.

I did ask this of a friend I went to graduate school (who had no problems in this area) and he said they didn't think anything of it all at, which I found hard to believe, but maybe it was true.

I am one who always wants at least some access to the charms of a lady.

How did you acquire the skills to make sure that always happened?

I just got lucky, I guess.

I would say, between the ages of about 21 and 26, that there were lots of times when I didn't have the requisite "access" to love. I used to count the months between sexual encounters--a regular Kinsey I was!

Of course, I spent the first 17 years of my life being a virgin. I only had occasional "make-out" sessions until age 18, when I got my first steady girlfriend.

There was this one girl whom I had a great desire for when I was 15. She pulled me into the vestibule of her apartment building, and told me that she liked "A" students. Then she taught me, in one session, how to French kiss properly. This only happened once, unfortunately. Her father banned me from seeing her, and she lost interest, anyway. For years afterwards, I used to gaze up at her window, hoping to see her. She was my Maria! (though her name was Patricia).

This goes by the name of 'couple privilege'.
It applies to rather more than just 'churches'. Most obviously to management and politicians...

In NT Land, guys can get away with being single a lot better than women can. I've never been married and now if I date someone they better be marriage material - hence I find it hard to find a decent date. I've been called the Crazy Cat Lady. I only have one cat - Waldo. Give me a break. But women are thought to be lonely old spinsters while men are thought to be just "playing the field" if they are dating. Anyone who is single and older and not dating is thought of as "having something wrong with them" or "too picky". I keep thinking that maybe I should be a nun because I'm getting none.

I view it as a necessity. I don't recall ever having a choice, and it's very hard for me to understand how most people manage to avoid the same fate.

I went all the way through my teenage years and quite a bit beyond without suspecting that it was part of the job of fathers to keep their daughters locked up so no filthy male youngster would blemish the honor of the family by approaching them. Now that I've begun to learn about these ideas, the profound mystery of any kind of relationship with the opposite sex scares me more than ever.

I think society views those as "p*****s" who are afraid of approaching women or who have too high standards in women for what they are themselves.