Emma Watson, Keanu Reeves and the Pressure to Be Partnered

Even being self-partnered is problematic

Two celeb romantic relationship events occurred recently that caused people to freak: Emma Watson declared that she is “self-partnered” and Keauu Reeves made a public appearance with his gray-haired girlfriend, Alexandra Grant, who happens to be “age-appropriate” — she’s 46, he’s 55.

While they are on opposite ends of the romantic spectrum, they both illustrate our obsession with being partnered and how age matters when it comes to being partnered.

First, Emma, who said:

“I never believed the whole ‘I’m happy single’ spiel. I was like, ‘This is totally spiel.’ It took me a long time, but I’m very happy [being single]. I call it being self-partnered.”

No partner = stress and anxiety

While everyone is debating her new term for being single, what’s being lost in the conversation is what drove her to describe herself that way. She didn’t believe she — or anyone else — could be happy as a single woman. This year has been hard, she said, because the ideas she had of what her life would be like as she slides into 30 have not come true:

“I was like, ‘Why does everyone make such a big fuss about turning 30? This is not a big deal … Cut to 29, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I feel so stressed and anxious. And I realise it’s because there is suddenly this bloody influx of subliminal messaging around. If you have not built a home, if you do not have a husband, if you do not have a baby, and you are turning 30, and you’re not in some incredibly secure, stable place in your career, or you’re still figuring things out … There’s just this incredible amount of anxiety.”

And that’s the problem. We should be dismantling the narrow, amatonormative messages and pressure women experience to be coupled by a certain age rather than debating or celebrating the coining of a new term for being single, especially a single woman (presumably because of the biological clock thing).

As singles advocate and author Belle De Paulo notes, “I don’t love the term ‘self-partnered,’ because it makes being partnered the standard against which we measure ourselves” just like calling…