I hate this video so much that I'm actively resisting the urge to sephirothpost in this comment. If someone doesn't want to have a spouse or kids, cool, whatever. The individualist, solipsistic, treatlerite mindset she proposes as an alternative is extremely harmful. People are supposed to live and die for the collective, not for their own individual selves.

Sometimes I'm reminded in what kind of horror relationships people seem to be in because I don't feel like agreeing with anything in this vid lol. My partner doesn't bother me in the slightest, luckily.

Kids, though, idk. Maybe later or something but right now not really feeling down for that.

To each their own. I think everyone needs some form of community and family, even if it's not people you are directly related to. No one is an island and living isolated from others means you are more vulnerable and more easily exploitable. Everyone needs someone they can depend on when they are going through a difficult time. Alienation and hyper-individualism under capitalism is not something to glamorize, it is something that must be fought with any means one has, if only for the sake of one's own mental well-being. Oftentimes it is that very same culture of hyper-individualism that makes it difficult to live with other people because the society around us does not encourage co-operation but conditions us to egoism and competition.

It also makes it much harder to mobilize people for collective action, or to teach them solidarity and a mentality compatible with socialism if they are too used to living in their little isolated bubble and only ever thinking about their own wants and needs. It is no coincidence that the nuclear family has been so heavily pushed by capital in the last century to replace the more communal lifestyles of the past. And now people are being broken down into even smaller and even more isolated units. Divide and rule has always been an effective strategy for the ruling class to maintain control, as is distracting people with material treats and entertainment.

What also has to be taken into account is that more and more people might be having to convince themselves that they never wanted a family in the first place when perhaps the reality is that they simply can't afford one. Costs of living are so out of control in many western countries that having children and being able to give them a good life has become a privilege for the wealthy, and telling yourself that you never wanted them is a sort of a coping mechanism to deal with that powerlessness. "The grapes were sour anyway." Of course i don't want to generalize. It is perfectly legitimate to decide that you don't want kids or a partner, but at the very least the option should be materially available to everyone so that a truly free choice can be made.

being alone is my greatest fear and romanticising it like this would do nothing for me as a coping mechanism

Seems very individualist, ngl. To be clear, I don't think being single is inherently a bad or good thing; I think it's more of a relative thing and it's perfectly fine if some people want to be single. But this comes across as the perspective of being single in a hyper individualistic society, which can be very lonely and isolating, on top of the other lonely and isolating problems such a society has.

Like is the best one can come up with really things like eating ice cream for dinner? It sounds like what a person dreams of when they're a kid who is sick of parent rules. Eating ice cream for dinner will make you feel good for maybe 5-10 minutes until you feel like shit after because you need nutrients. If you get sick from repeatedly neglecting to eat what you need, no one will be there to help you because you're living alone. If the argument is that your friends are right there next door or something, so you can easily hang out or get help that way, that seems more like having roommates but you want more physical space ownership. Which I'm not judging as "bad", I'm just saying like, what is the actual desire? Is the desire to be a hermit? To have no one to tell you what to do? To have more physical space to yourself? If dealing with other people regularly is painful, is it because you need lots of space for some reason or because you're dealing with people who are either shitty or incompatible with who you are?

What do you want out of it, in other words. The same can be said for chasing having a partner or kids, if you don't have a strong reason other than "it's what other people do."

Gender plays a huge role in how one experiences the single life. Women are often deeply enculturated towards "having a man" and are judged accordingly. Doubly so for choosing to be childfree.

Women are often seen as "individualistic" or selfish for choosing alternatives to romantic partners, whereas men often get much less criticism regardless of their social arrangement