Well, no one else is responsible for your happiness. You, and you alone are responsible for your own happiness.

Having a partner is not a guarantee of protection against life's challenges. To think that, I feel, is very naive. My aunt abandoned her husband when he got a brain tumor.

My cousins had to fly in and arrange for his care because their mother focused on her real estate business. My dad got cancer and my mom refused to support him through that journey, even abandoning him in his last dying breaths (she wouldn't go into his hospice room to say good bye to him).

There is no financial help always, when you have a partner. My sister's husband can't hold down a job so my sister is the sole bread winner. Do you know the pressure that puts on her shoulders? Because her husband isn't reliable? They have children and a home mortgage and medical bills to pay. Do you think he contributes to that? Nope.

I will never be married but that doesn't mean my life is hopeless or lonely 24/7. I will be able to pay rent with social security when I turn 55 even as I work. I will be able to drive myself around to appointments and social events. Just because I"m alone doesn't mean my life lacks meaning or security or value.

Why are you so adamant that being single means one's quality of life is less because they don't have a partner. Just because you have a partner doesn't guarantee your life will be more stable more secure.

I feel like you have the perspective that its the partner's job to provide for your every need. Is that how you feel? Because that's just not true or fair to the other person. Just my perspective from my own life experiences.

If I develop dementia, get into a car accident, have a terminal illness thats just life. I can't control any of that from happening to me, even were I with a partner. If and when any of those things happen to me, I will just deal with it to the best of my ability and ask other people for help.

That's all you can do, married or not, is ask for help when you need it. But to think marriage solves all of your problems or that it should, well, I don't view marriage like that.