SINGLE = SAFETY
“No woman ever died from being single. They have died from being with the wrong man.”
The line lands with the sting of a slap because it is painfully, statistically true. In the United States alone, an average of three women are murdered every day by a current or former male partner. Globally, the United Nations estimates that a woman or girl is killed every eleven minutes by someone in her own household. Strip away the romantic veneer we drape over marriage and cohabitation and a darker story appears: for countless women, the least safe place in the world is the very home that society says should complete them.
Domestic violence is often quarantined in the public imagination as a private misfortune—tragic, yes, but exceptional. In reality, partner violence is so widespread it rivals public-health crises we routinely fund with billions of dollars. One in three American women has experienced some form of physical violence from an intimate partner; one in four has endured severe beating, strangulation, or sexual assault. Intimate-partner violence (IPV) accounts for nearly half of all female homicides, and when firearms are present, the risk of a woman being killed increases by 500 percent.
One in three American women has experienced some form of physical violence from an intimate partner
The brutality starts early. Women aged eighteen to twenty-four suffer the highest rates of IPV, a period when cultural scripts insist we should be tasting the thrill of new adulthood, college, and first apartments—scripts saturated with the idea that a boyfriend marks one’s arrival in real life. Instead, these are the very years when partnership often proves lethal.
Financial costs mirror the human toll. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calculates that IPV drains more than ten billion dollars annually from the U.S. economy in medical bills, lost productivity, and law-enforcement expenses. Add in the price of relocating, court fees, and long-term trauma therapy and the ledger balloons. For many women, the bill is paid in homeless-shelter beds, unemployment lines, and missed semesters.
Given these numbers, one might expect society to applaud women who choose singlehood as a legitimate safety strategy. Instead, patriarchal culture talks about single women the way doomsday preachers talk about the unrepentant: with warnings of loneliness, wasted fertility, and the alleged joylessness of dying without someone to “take care of you.” The implication is clear: couple up, or fade into spinster oblivion.
That narrative does more than shame; it obscures the risks of conformity. A woman who exits a toxic dating relationship may receive pitying looks—still single?—while a woman who stays and suffers bruises is told, “Relationships take work.” In other words, patriarchy not only normalizes male entitlement to women’s bodies and resources; it gaslights women into believing that the pain of partnership is a badge of honor, proof of endurance, or—even worse—proof of love.
Language itself becomes the handmaiden of danger. When a man kills his partner, headlines still lean on passive constructions—Woman dies in domestic dispute—as though the weapon discharged spontaneously. Men who murder strangers are called killers; men who murder wives are “good guys who snapped.” The euphemism “domestic incident” metabolizes femicide into something private, regrettable, and therefore less worthy of collective outrage.
Long before violence turns fatal, it rewires the survivor’s neurobiology. Hypervigilance, disrupted sleep, and chronic inflammation become default settings. Women in abusive relationships show cortisol patterns similar to combat veterans. The phrase “walking on eggshells” is not metaphorical; the body literally learns to anticipate the next strike, pumping out stress hormones that erode immunity, heart health, and memory.
Contrast that with the physiological benefits documented in happily single women: lower cortisol, better sleep quality, and higher reported satisfaction with social networks built on choice rather than necessity. Independence is not absence; it is presence—being fully present in one’s own body without flinching at the sound of a partner’s key turning in the lock.
For decades, the American Time Use Survey has shown that married or cohabiting women shoulder more unpaid housework and childcare hours than their male partners, even when both work full-time. That imbalance is not merely inconvenient; it is a structural stressor linked to higher rates of anxiety and depression. Add the threat of violence to the ledger and the “marriage premium” women are promised—better health, longer life, greater wealth—clatters like a snake-oil bottle.
Consider these comparisons:
Risk of homicide: A single woman’s likelihood of being murdered by a romantic partner is virtually zero if she has none. A batterer cannot shoot a girlfriend he does not have.
Economic vulnerability: Single-income households run by women without children show lower rates of poverty than single-mother or abusive-partnered households, owing to fewer work disruptions and less sabotage of finances.
Mental health: Surveys reveal that single women report levels of happiness comparable to, and often higher than, their married counterparts—once domestic labor hours are controlled for.
The numbers do not argue that relationships are universally harmful. They prove that one particular social assumption—that any relationship is better than none—is empirically wrong.
If singlehood is statistically safer, why don’t more women exit at the first sign of danger? Because patriarchy constructs an elaborate maze around the exit door. Financial dependence, custody laws, cultural stigma, and real threats of escalated violence upon leaving form a trap. Up to 75 percent of domestic homicides occur during or shortly after separation. When a woman is economically entangled—joint leases, shared credit cards, children—walking out is less like turning a doorknob and more like dismantling a bomb.
Even institutions tasked with protection often falter. Restraining orders can be violated within hours. Shelters overflow. Police too frequently dismiss “domestic disputes” as private quarrels until blood is shed. In rural communities, the nearest safe house might be a three-hour bus ride away—if the abuser hasn’t already destroyed the woman’s phone or confiscated her wallet.
Redrawing the Map of Independence
Accepting that single life can be the safer life means reshaping social policy, media narratives, and community priorities.
Economic parachutes: Universal childcare and paid leave don’t just help working moms; they help potential survivors hoard the resources needed to flee.
Housing first: Affordable short-term housing for women and children escaping violence should be viewed as critical infrastructure, like bridges or power grids.
Firearm restrictions: States that enforce mandatory removal of firearms during restraining-order periods see up to a 25 percent drop in intimate-partner homicides.
Cultural detox: Schools teach tornado drills and cybersecurity; they must also teach emotional-abuse recognition and consent literacy before dating begins.
Data transparency: Law-enforcement agencies should publish domestic-violence call-out and homicide stats the way cities report COVID numbers—regularly and publicly—so communities cannot hide behind anecdote.
Imagine a culture that congratulates a woman for choosing singlehood the way it does for acquiring a fiancé. Picture registries for graduate degrees, house down-payments, or “divorce showers” that treat self-preservation as an occasion for KitchenAid mixers and crisp bedding. That may sound flippant, but ritual matters; it engrains what we value.
When media produce rom-coms where the heroine realizes her strength in solitude rather than in the arms of a reformed bachelor, audiences absorb a different lesson: the prize is not the partner—it’s the peace. Feminine fulfillment stops being synonymous with relationship status and becomes aligned with safety, autonomy, and self-defined joy.
Singlehood is not a default waiting room for real life; it can be the design of a life in which a woman reads in bed without fear of slammed doors, budgets without sabotage, and decorates her living room in colors no one critiques. In a world where 35 percent of women have survived stalking and nearly half have faced psychological aggression from a partner, autonomy is armor.
To be single is, for many, the statisticians’ safest choice—and framing it as such does not vilify all men or all relationships. It simply removes the shame from a woman’s decision to prioritize her heartbeat over a Hallmark card. The next time someone asks why she’s “still single,” the honest reply might be: Because statistically, it’s the healthiest decision I can make.
Love can be sublime, partnerships can be sanctuaries, and children can bloom in stable homes. But these outcomes hinge on mutual respect, non-violence, and the rejection of patriarchal entitlement. Until those conditions are a guarantee rather than a gamble, the most radical, life-saving revolution for many women remains the simplest: their own front door, closing behind them, and locking the world’s assumptions out for good.