The World's Most Dangerous Place For Women

On BBC3 until 06/04/10.

ebay asbo?

WHY DID MY PREVIOUS LISTING GET REMOVED?

EBAY RESPONSE: Your entire listing is a gratuitous comment about a social group

♥ single and bitter seeks same ♥

Would you write, let alone answer, a dating ad like that? No? Well how about spending most evenings saying exactly that, albeit not in so many words? There's been a bit of a strop thrown recently by some idiot over on Feminazery about the blog's supposedly unforgivable attack on some whingefest about howwid wimmins not giving poor ickle menz sex even when they've worked hard to come across as normal human beings and everything. I can't be bothered to trudge through all the blindingly obvious reasons these sorts of Nice Guys (a breed entirely distinct, as one sage commenter opined, from Good Men) don't get and don't deserve sex with their blow-up dolls let alone real women, but the whole thing's got me thinking about another pissy phenomenon; Love Hate.

I don't mean that Heathcliff/Catherine, Colleen-Rooney-melodramatically-chucking-her-ring-in-a-forest-and-then-trying-to-retrieve-it-when-they'd-made-up, thing. I mean actually hating love because you're a miserable git. I don't know if I attract more of it by mere virtue of being single myself, but I am getting increasingly puzzled sick of it.

In the interests of full disclosure, I am 24, female, straight, and single. I am single for a fairly typical variety of reasons; I'm very independent, I'm very picky, I just haven't met the right man yet, etc. Basically, I don't need a generic rent-a-boyfriend to survive so I'm happy to be single, but I would also very happily take up with a wonderful man and have joyous, riotous sex with him were such a specimen to materialise at a party any time soon. So yes, of course it would be wicked to have a great relationship in my life, as it is to have the great interests and hobbies and work and friends already in it. The only problem is, that includes all my friends - single, married, and everywhere in between - and that's apparently some kind of treason against all my fellow singletons.

It happened again last night. "Pff! Couples", muttered Rob, Anna nodding in agreement, as our flat sat down to dinner. We are a flat of four; two boys, two girls, all single, all leading perfectly normal lives - except, apparently, me. "Urgh, at the train station the other day there was this fucking couple being all lovey-dovey, I wanted to slap them!" "Yeah, it's like, 'No, I don't care that he did that really sweet thing for you, bla bla bla'." "They're so annoying, aren't they?"

And then I committed the schoolgirl error: "But why?"

Why? WHY? Was I out of my mind? Everyone knows couples are annoying, just going around looking so fucking happy all the time, kissing at bus stops and holding hands and eating out sometimes and dancing together on nights out - I mean how do those bastards have the nerve to, when you're single?!

Except, erm, I clearly didn't get that memo from the broken-hearted. I mean yes, exhibitionist chavteens dry-humping across the aisle from you on the bus are irritating, in the same way all smelly or crap-music-blaring fellow passengers are. I'm sure we've all been pissed off with friends who drop off the social radar completely as soon as a new boyfriend or girlfriend appears, and yeah it can twist a recently dumped knife to see a couple getting lovey-dovey at the traffic lights if you've just split up with someone that week. But other than that, I seem to be the only single person in London who thinks "aww" rather than "aargh!" when they pass a clearly loved-up couple with the temerity to be attached when you're not.

But the only way the latter popular attitude can possibly make sense is by genuinely believing that all couples are happy and all singletons are sad, and that all those happy couples are somehow responsible for all singletons' non-coupledom, and therefore sadness. Or, as Mr Webb put it, "There's only so much happiness in the world... and they're hoarding it all." Except, oh wait, that line in the script was a JOKE. Being single (being anything for that matter - tall, short, thin, fat, weak, strong, "foreign", "native") is not a reason to resent people that aren't.

Men and women falling in lust or love not only have no case to answer for others' failure to, but ironically also embody what most of us are hoping for ourselves somewhere along the line. So why on earth has couple-bashing (not to mention men-bashing and women-bashing) become so vociferously normal? Maybe it's singledom, and not relationships, that needs the most getting over. I mean really, where is the love?!