Maria Thattil: ‘Please don’t ask why I am single’

After the recent breakup of her relationship made headlines, former Miss Universe Australia Maria Thattil fires back at people who constantly ask her why “someone as smart, pretty and successful as you has not yet found The One.”

“It’s not that I haven’t found “the one”. I’ll be frank, my priority is my career,” writes Maria Thattil. Picture: Adam Yip

“Why is it that someone as smart, pretty and successful as you has not yet found ‘the one’?” It’s a question I received in my inbox two weeks ago, but my single status is questioned very often. And as someone who is newly single, it jars, suggesting that despite all that I have and am, not finding “the one” means something is wrong. It’s a notion born of conditioning that teaches people – mostly women – that being “smart, pretty and successful” is validated only when you’re coupled up.

When you’re single you get asked: “Why aren’t you with someone?” Then it’s “Why aren’t you engaged?” “When are you getting married?” “When are you having kids?”

Whose blueprint am I being held to? It’s not mine. And my failing to follow it is often challenged because it rejects outdated gendered concepts – concepts that once injected shame in me for being queer, and for choosing to be child-free, to have an abortion for my own personhood and to question whether I want to be married.

Instead of feeling shameful, I launched a podcast where nothing is off the table, to help listeners celebrate their differences and exercise agency over their lives. But when I polled my Instagram audience on what they wanted to hear about, it was my single status that stood out in the sea of responses.

***Read Maria Thattil’s column inside this weekend’s issue of Stellar.

It’s not that I haven’t found “the one”. I’ll be frank, my priority is my career. It’s me. It’s my future. I don’t have the capacity to put a relationship before myself or my aspirations right now – nor do I want to. But once upon a time, I thought I needed to. I remember learning self-sacrifice and servitude through gendered roles as early as pre-school. I’d play with toy cooking sets, role-play weddings between “mummies and daddies”, and shove my baby doll under my shirt to emulate being pregnant.

Children are indoctrinated into gendered ideas. Little girls, in particular, are taught to aspire to happily-ever-after with another, far more than they’re taught that happily-ever-after by themselves is also a beautiful possibility.

What constitutes a fulfilling life is subjective. So instead of committing to someone else, I commit to myself. Instead of carrying out expected duties as a wife or mother, my only duty is to me. And I choose to channel all of me into a future where I’m happy, secure and enjoying life.

As a healthy, content and financially secure 30-year-old home owner, author and self-employed businesswoman who has plenty of sex that makes my soul sing, spends time doing what I like and has all the love I already need, I don’t need validation through a partner. If I choose a relationship, it’s because I want it – not because I need it.

The world so often views us through a lens of parenthood or marriage. However, being unmarried and childless is just a fact of my existence, not a goal post to be measured against. And because I’m “smart, pretty and successful”, I’m free to lovingly part

from unfulfilling relationships. I don’t ask myself why I haven’t found “the one”. I ask, “What more can I do with my big, powerful life?”

You don’t have to find “the one”. You are THE ONE. And the bar? Keep it high for all the other ones. There’s peace in looking within yourself for things we’ve been taught to seek in another. You’re enough. As am I.

The Maria Thattil Show is available wherever you get your podcasts.

Read the full interview inside The Sunday Telegraph (NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (VIC), The Sunday Mail (QLD), and Sunday Mail (SA) this weekend.

Originally published as Maria Thattil: ‘Please don’t ask why I am single’