The single woman - commitment or simply a choice now!

I don’t mind admitting I have been married three times. The fact I have two ex-husbands suggests that I entered these relationships without due care and attention. I probably didn’t understand myself back then, least of all what would make a marriage work. Potentially, this was because no one ever seemed to question whether we should get married; it was always seen as the ‘done thing’.

My current husband and I have been together for decades now. We have created a life where we consider each other’s needs and live life to its fullest together. So, it’s safe to say that right now, I would describe myself as happily married.

The Changing Landscape of Relationships

But a huge number of my middle-aged female friends have recently headed towards divorce. Many have chosen to stay single, while my younger female friends are talking about never marrying or living with a partner. Many state they want to remain childless. What’s more, they seem really happy with their decisions. Research now claims that the happiest group of people are married men and single women! Why the divide?

So, what has changed? What was once the norm, or even the goal of many women—to be in committed relationships and have a family—is now becoming something to consciously reject.

Let’s talk about this properly. The internet often turns it into a shouting match. One side says women have become selfish. The other says men are useless. Neither perspective is psychologically accurate, and neither helps anyone build the kind of relationship that actually lasts.

As I said, I am very happily married now. I have also left two marriages. I say that plainly because it matters. It means I can hold the hope of partnership in one hand and the reality of what happens when a relationship doesn’t work in the other. Love can be real and still not be enough. Not because people are “broken,” but because the system you build together has to be livable and workable for you both. When it isn’t, the choices are change, stay in unhappiness, or leave.

And right now, more women are looking at the reality of the system and thinking, “I cannot do this” or “I don't want this anymore.”

They aren’t saying, “I don’t want love.” They aren’t anti-men, as some would have you believe. They don’t necessarily struggle to commit. More often, it’s becoming a case of them saying, “I will not sign up to a life where my nervous system is constantly on duty and my needs aren’t considered equally.” Maybe most importantly, it’s because they now have a choice.

The Story We Were Sold About Marriage

If you grew up like me, with the cultural script that marriage is the natural next step, that it equals stability, and that it is what “grown-ups” do, then it makes sense that choosing singleness or leaving a marriage can feel like a personal failure. But psychology is very clear on something: humans will tolerate a lot for belonging, approval, and security until the cost becomes too high.

Historically, marriage was a form of security, especially for women. It offered financial survival, social legitimacy, and, in many eras, basic protection. When women could not easily own property, access education, open bank accounts, or earn a stable income, marriage was not just romance; it was the structure that made life possible.

So yes, marriage “favoured” women in some ways in those eras, but it was a double-edged favour. It came with dependency. It came with expectations about obedience, sexuality, motherhood, and emotional labour. It came with a narrowing of options. It is hard to call something an advantage when you do not have meaningful alternatives.

Men, historically, also gained something important from marriage: certainty. Certainty about who the children were. Certainty about labour in the home. Certainty that their needs would be prioritised because the structure demanded it. So for both sides, marriage was seen as the 'right thing'.

In the past, each gender had a culturally shaped and clearly defined role. Men earned the money and provided, while women kept house and raised the children. Whether you agree with those roles, there is an argument that at least there was some equality in the division of labour.

Fast forward to now, and the structure has changed and continues to shift. Women wanted more and were expected to do more, maybe even too much.

The Psychological Piece: Load, Safety, and Fairness

For many women, the shift away from marriage is not about romance. It is about chronic nervous system strain. There is a particular kind of depletion that happens when you become the default manager of everyone’s life. Not just doing tasks, but holding the thoughts in your head. Remembering what needs doing and when. Anticipating needs before they become problems. Tracking moods. Planning meals. Organising childcare. Noticing when the toilet roll is low. Booking appointments. Carrying the passport. Knowing where the hotel confirmation is. Remembering birthdays. Buying all the gifts, even for his family. Keeping family connections warm. Doing the weekly shop. Thinking three steps ahead so everyone else can just turn up.

This is not new. For a few generations now, the work of organising life has quietly fallen to women. What is new is that women are doing it alongside full-time employment and then coming home to what can feel like a second shift. Paid labour in the day, unpaid management at night. A constant state of being the one who holds it together.

In psychology, we call this the mental load, but that phrase can make it sound neat and manageable, like a list you can simply tick off. In reality, it is rarely just mental. It is cognitive labour plus emotional labour plus relational labour. It is the thinking, the feeling, and the smoothing. It is the job you do in your head while you are doing everything else that never lets you truly rest.

And here is what I see again and again. Women are not necessarily leaving because their partner does nothing. They are leaving because their partner does not carry responsibility in the same way and then either fails to appreciate or even belittles their efforts.

They might help, and help can look impressive on paper. But helping still positions the woman as the manager. The one who has to ask. The one who has to notice what needs doing and then has to delegate. Help does not remove the load; it often just turns the load into being the coordinator and the doer.

If you are reading this and thinking, “Yes, that is exactly it,” you are not being dramatic. Your brain is doing what brains do. It is tracking fairness and predictability. It is constantly scanning: Is this shared? Is this reliable? Is this sustainable?

Humans have a deeply sensitive internal system for injustice, especially inside attachment relationships. When you repeatedly experience imbalance, your nervous system does not simply register mild irritation. It registers risk. Not danger in a dramatic, headline way. Danger in a slow, cumulative way that says, “I cannot fully rest here. I cannot rely. I am carrying too much. I am alone in this.” And when that message repeats itself often enough, something shifts.

You stop reaching. You stop asking. You stop hoping it will be different this time. Not because you are cold, but because your body stops investing in a system that keeps taking from you. That is the beginning of emotional distancing. Not a choice to punish, but a form of self-protection. A quiet withdrawal of energy from a place that no longer feels like it gives anything back.

For many women, rejecting marriage is not rejecting love. It is rejecting the role.

And when you finally see that clearly, the question is no longer, “Why are women leaving?” The question becomes, “Why would they stay if it is like this?”

Motherhood: From Manageable to Unliveable

Even in couples who feel basically okay before children, the arrival of motherhood can reveal the true distribution of labour and power. I want to say this carefully because these are stereotypes and generalisations. Plenty of men co-parent beautifully. Plenty of couples genuinely share the load. Things are changing, and I see that change more and more.

But there is a pattern that shows up often enough that many women recognise it in their bones.

It is the difference between co-parenting and “helping.” The language gives it away. Men who say they are “babysitting” their own children. Fathers who are praised for doing normal care tasks as if they are exceptional. Partners who assume that changing nappies, getting up in the night, remembering school events, staying home when a child is sick, or knowing where the spare clothes are is best left to the mother. Not malicious. Often unexamined. Sometimes inherited. Sometimes shaped by workplaces and social expectations. But the impact lands the same.

Psychologically, this matters because parenting is a full-body experience. It is sleep deprivation. It is sensory overload. It is constant vigilance. It is responsibility that does not end at 5 PM. It is being needed all the time. If a woman is doing that, and also carrying the relationship’s emotional climate, and also managing the household, and also working, she is no longer a person with needs. She becomes a system. And systems eventually crash.

So when women say it would be easier alone, that sentence is often misunderstood. People hear it as a rejection of partnership. Often, it is a description of reality. They already feel alone, but with the added workload of managing a partner’s needs, preferences, moods, or avoidance. They are doing the coordination, the emotional translation, the reminders, the repairing, the planning, the relentless noticing. Being single can feel like less labour. Not because life is easy alone, but because the output matches the input.

Hormonal Change: A Catalyst for Change

There is a reason some women describe perimenopause as the season where they suddenly stop overfunctioning, stop smoothing, and stop saying yes when they mean no.

To be clear, this is not as simple as “low oestrogen equals no more people pleasing.” The science does not neatly map a hormone to a personality trait. What we can say is that oestrogen interacts with brain systems involved in mood, reward, motivation, stress reactivity, and higher-order regulation. This includes networks that help you inhibit impulses, tolerate discomfort, and choose your response under pressure. It is also linked to measurable changes across the menopausal transition in brain structure, connectivity, and energy metabolism in regions that support cognition and emotional regulation.

So if oestrogen is dropping, sleep is disrupted, your stress system is more reactive, and your cognitive bandwidth is thinner, something shifts. The cost of accommodating everyone else becomes more obvious. The internal “I can cope” buffer reduces. You have less tolerance for ongoing unfairness, less capacity to keep translating your needs into palatable language, and less willingness to perform emotional safety for someone who is not offering it back.

There is also a psychological layer that matters just as much as the biology. Perimenopause often arrives at the same time as big relational and family shifts: children needing you differently, parents ageing, careers peaking, and your own sense of time sharpening. When your body is changing and your life is changing, you are more likely to ask the question you have avoided for years: “Is this what I want my life to feel like?”

That question can be confronting, but it can also be freeing.

Financial Independence: Changing the Rules of Attachment

Money matters.

When you are financially dependent, your attachment system behaves differently. Not because you are naïve or powerless, or using anyone, but because your brain is doing its job. It is scanning for threat, calculating consequences, and prioritising survival.

If leaving would mean losing housing, stability, childcare, community, or safety, your nervous system adapts. You tolerate more. You rationalise more. You soften the edges of what is happening. You tell yourself it is not that bad. You minimise. You keep the peace. You try harder. Not because you are weak, but because you are biologically wired to protect your base.

When you have your own income, leaving becomes possible. And when leaving is possible, staying is no longer survival; it becomes a choice.

And that changes everything.

It changes what you negotiate. It changes what you excuse. It changes what you silently carry. It changes what your body is willing to endure before it starts signalling no. It is not that you suddenly become unreasonable; it is that you no longer have to organise your entire nervous system around making something tolerable.

This is not women becoming too picky. This is women becoming less trapped. And now that women are able to earn the same, if not more than men, they bring financial equality or independence, and they bring their own choice.

A Vision of What is Possible

Women now have language for what used to be hard to name.

Social media, therapy, and talking with friends mean that women can recognise boundaries and emotional safety. They have a framework for secure attachment. They can spot coercive control and the slow erosion of autonomy. They can see weaponised incompetence for what it is. They understand gaslighting and the subtle ways someone can make you doubt your own reality.

When you have both financial agency and psychological insight, you become harder to keep in a relationship that relies on your silence.

And women have a part in this too. If you want an equal partner, you have to be willing to do equality, which means giving up the idea that he should change while you stay in the “pampered princess” role. Otherwise, the imbalance just flips direction, and you end up recreating the same resentment, only the other way around.

A Balanced View: Men Are Also Living Through a Transition

If we want a real conversation about why women are stepping back from marriage, relationships, and children, we also have to talk about men without turning them into villains.

Because the truth is, many men are genuinely fabulous. Kind, engaged, emotionally aware, curious, willing to learn, and ready to co-create a life that actually feels fair. Plenty of fathers co-parent, not “help.” Many partners carry the invisible load without being asked. Plenty of men are doing the work their fathers were never taught to do.

But many men know no better, not because they are bad people, but because they grew up without modelling for modern relationship skills. They may have been socialised to equate worth with providing, not with emotional presence. They may have been praised for competence at work, not competence at home. They may never have learned how to name feelings, repair conflict, share mental load, or tolerate emotional discomfort because nobody asked it of them until now. Historically, they did not have to.

For a long time, many women could not afford to leave just because they were unhappy. Marriage was often economic safety, social legitimacy, protection, a route to housing, a route to status, and a route to basic survival. Even when a woman was chronically lonely, emotionally neglected, or carrying the entire home on her back, leaving could mean losing everything.

So men did not necessarily have to develop the skills that keep a relationship healthy when the other person has real choice.

The ground has shifted so much that it is becoming an avalanche.

For some men, consciously or unconsciously, modern equality can feel like a loss of identity.

• If I am not needed, what is my role?

• If she can leave, am I safe?

• If I am not the provider, how do I matter?

• If I cannot rely on being forgiven, how do I cope with conflict?

• If I have to share power, what happens to me?

  
  

Those questions can bring up fear, shame, and a kind of grief that men are rarely supported to process. And when those feelings are not recognised, they often come out sideways.

Defensiveness. Withdrawal. Control. Stonewalling. Passive resentment. A refusal to learn. The quiet insistence that her needs are “too much.” The belief that if he does a few tasks, he has done his share. The sense that he is being judged rather than invited into growth.

None of that makes imbalance acceptable. But it does help us understand why some couples get stuck in a power struggle rather than moving into genuine mutuality. When two people feel threatened, they stop collaborating. They start protecting.

And we also have to name something darker that is emerging alongside this cultural shift. When women reject more, some men do not respond by adapting. They respond by radicalising.

You see it in online spaces where vulnerability is twisted into entitlement. Where loneliness becomes ideology. Where rejection becomes rage. Where women’s autonomy is framed as cruelty. Where the story becomes, “I am owed love, I am owed sex, I am owed a relationship, and if I do not get it, someone must be to blame.”

The incel pipeline is not just about dating. It is about identity and belonging. It is about taking men who feel unseen, unsuccessful, or ashamed and offering them a simple explanation and a target. It replaces self-reflection with blame.

And while most men are not in those spaces, the cultural influence leaks out. It shows up as bitterness, misogyny, cynicism, and fear-based narratives about women being “too picky” or “ruined by feminism” or “impossible to please.”

It also creates a painful bind.

Because women are not rejecting men because they hate them. They are rejecting relational systems that do not feel safe or fair. They are rejecting roles that cost them their nervous system. They are rejecting the idea that love should mean carrying everything.

And men, in turn, are being asked to do something many have never been trained for. Not just to provide, but to participate.

The hopeful part is that change is absolutely possible. It requires a willingness to learn relational skills the way you learn any other skill. It requires letting go of the idea that being asked to grow is an attack. It requires understanding that equality is not the loss of manhood; it is the creation of trust.

Because for women, the new baseline is not perfection. The new baseline is safety, fairness, and shared responsibility.

Sex and Sexuality: The Impact of Imbalance

Another piece that comes up, often from men, is the withdrawal from sex and sexuality. I understand why that feels painful. Sex can be a main route to connection for many men. It can be how they feel close, chosen, reassured. So when intimacy drops off, it is easy to interpret it as rejection or as something broken in the relationship.

But for many women, it is not that desire disappears. It is that the conditions for desire get crushed.

It is hard to feel sexy and connected when you are exhausted. When you are overwhelmed. When your mind is running a constant background programme of logistics, childcare, appointments, meals, chores, planning, and remembering. When you have spent the day being needed, managing, anticipating, soothing, and holding everything together. When you feel under emotional and mental load and underappreciated on top of that.

Because desire is not just about attraction.

If your body is in survival mode, sex can start to feel like another demand rather than a place of pleasure. If you feel like the manager of the household, it is difficult to drop into the softness of being a lover. If you feel unseen, it is difficult to open. If your partner feels like another person to care for, it is hard to access erotic energy, which thrives on freedom, safety, and mutuality.

This is why “just have sex more” rarely works. It treats intimacy like a task when intimacy is usually an outcome.

For many couples, the real turning point is not a sex technique. It is a redistribution of load. Appreciation that is felt, not just said. A partner who notices without being asked. Who carries responsibility without needing direction. Who creates space for her to rest, to feel human again, to come back into her body.

Rethinking Marriage: A New Standard

If you are reading this and feeling defensive about marriage, or sad, or a bit panicked about what all this means, I want to slow down here. Marriage is not automatically bad. It is not a trap by default, and it is not doomed. It is a structure. What it feels like depends on what the two people in it actually do day to day.

When people talk about equality, it can get weirdly abstract, like it is just about splitting chores or making a rota. But relationships are not spreadsheets. They are lived. You feel them in your body.

A balanced relationship has a certain feel to it. You can relax. You are not constantly scanning for what has been missed or what will go wrong if you do not step in. You can have a bad day without everything falling apart. You can say what you need in a normal voice instead of only being taken seriously when you finally hit breaking point.

So the real question is this: What does it actually look like to rebalance a relationship without it turning into blame and defensiveness?

Couples Work: A Path to Healing

Because many couples are not failing due to one big betrayal. They are eroding through a thousand small imbalances. One person carries the mental load, the emotional climate, the logistics, the repairs. The other person feels criticised, misunderstood, or never good enough. Then both people get reactive. One pursues, one withdraws. One nags, one shuts down. Both feel alone.

Good couples work slows that cycle down and makes it visible.

It helps you move from blame to pattern. From “you never” and “you always” to “this is what happens between us when stress hits.” And once the pattern is named, it becomes something you can work on together instead of fighting each other inside it.

A few ways couples work can genuinely shift things:

• It makes the invisible visible: Mental load, emotional labour, assumptions about roles, weaponised incompetence, the second shift. Couples work gives language and structure to things that were previously argued about as if they were personal flaws. Once you can map who is carrying what, you can redistribute it in a concrete way.

• It builds real repair skills: Many couples have conflict but no repair. Therapy can teach how to come back together after rupture, how to apologise properly, how to validate without agreeing, how to stop defensiveness, how to make requests without criticism, and how to respond without stonewalling.

• It renegotiates the contract: Most couples are living under an unspoken agreement, inherited from family culture, gender norms, or survival habits. Couples work helps you consciously redesign that contract. Who does what? What does “equal” actually mean in your home? What does responsibility look like, not just occasional help?

• It shifts intimacy at the root: If sex has become a battleground, couples work often helps by addressing the conditions that kill desire: exhaustion, resentment, feeling unseen, feeling parentified, lack of appreciation, lack of safety. Intimacy improves when partnership improves.

• It creates accountability without humiliation: A good therapist helps a couple talk about hard truths without turning it into a courtroom. That is crucial because people change more when they feel supported and held to a standard rather than shamed and attacked.

• It helps couples decide with clarity: Sometimes couples work leads to staying and rebuilding. Sometimes it leads to separating well. Either way, it reduces the limbo. It helps people make decisions based on reality, not panic, resentment, or fear.

  
  

And one important note: couples work only works when both people are willing.

Not perfect, not instantly skilled, but willing. Willing to look at themselves. Willing to practice new behaviours. Willing to stop outsourcing the emotional work to their partner. Willing to turn “helping” into shared responsibility. Willing to treat the relationship as something they both build, not something one person maintains.

If that willingness is there, couples work can be the bridge between love and a life that actually feels sustainable.

Final Thoughts

If you have read this and felt defensive, sad, relieved, or seen, that makes sense. This topic hits deep because it is not really about marriage. It is about what marriage and partnership have looked like in practice for a lot of women. When women step back from relationships or from motherhood, it is rarely because they have stopped believing in love. It is often because they have stopped believing that love should cost them their nervous system.

These are generalisations, and they are not true of every couple. Many men are excellent partners and co-parents. Many are trying hard, and many genuinely want to do better. But it is also true that for a long time, women were expected to carry the invisible work of life, and many did not have the option to leave just because they were unhappy. Now that more women do have that option, relationships are being tested in a new way. Not by romance, but by fairness, reliability, and shared responsibility.

And if you are not sure what to do next, start small and start real. Have the conversation before resentment turns into disgust or shutdown. Use couples work if you need support, not because your relationship is failing, but because you want it to be sustainable. The aim is not a perfect fifty-fifty split. The aim is a life where both people can breathe, both people can rest, and both people can trust that they are not carrying the whole thing alone.

And that is why I keep coming back to this line: women are not leaving love. They are leaving imbalance. When relationships evolve into mutual partnership, marriage does not die. It becomes better. It becomes something you choose, not something you endure. It becomes a place where both people can breathe and grow.

And this blog is dedicated to my husband, who breathes and grows with me.

As always, until next time

Carla