Single = half a person?

I'm not single now, but it felt like I was single for forever before I finally found my very first boyfriend, at the (not so tender) age of 23. At this point I had already become an established spinster, without any real prospects of ever meeting anybody. I was this genderless half-person who lived life on the outskirts of society. I existed on the fringes of my friend's relationships. I was the loner. The perpetual third wheel. All of my friends had relationships. When I was in junior high I hung with some friends who weren't that popular with the opposite sex either, but they all managed to find boyfriends fairly soon after, or during, high school. Only I remained the secluded virgin, sequestered in my childhood room where I could only dream of love. That room became my universe, my haven, the place where I dream of something more. I nurtured my budding need for romance with elaborate fantasies about celebrities that I thought were hot and watched a lot of T.V and movies. I never went out dancing or did much of the things that people my own age usually did because reality could never quite measure up to fiction. And there is something shameful attached to being over 20 and never having had a boyfriend. It makes you an abnormality. You're like something that you could have found in the freak show in Vaudeville in the 1920's. There's the bearded lady, the dwarfs, and then there's you - the girl who's 21 and has never been kissed. The perpetual virgin. The boyfriend of a friend once asked my friend, when they were talking about me and my lack of a love life, "Does it grow shut?" You can guess what he was referring to. See, so in a way, if you're over 20 and still single, people begin to view you as not quite a whole person. You're someone to be pitied, joked about, whispered about behind your back, fretted over, but you are not a fully functioning human being. I was like a ghost. I existed but I didn't live. I hovered around my attached friends. I lingered in the background. Hung out at their houses with them and their boyfriends because I had nothing better to do with my time. I was that freak of nature. I could be almost as gruff as I wanted and say almost anything without people getting angry with me because I was like that eccentric old spinster aunt in the family, who says whatever pops into her head and people won't take her seriously anyway because 'Oh...that's just old Ada's way". The funny part is, I was only in my early twenties. Young in general terms but old when it comes to matters of the heart. Ancient according the society's standards for how old you should be when you have your first boyfriend. How bizarre it is, when you think about it.

The world caters to couples. If you're an adult and not in a relationship or at least dating, there must be something missing. Especially for women. Women who are single are looked at as slightly desperate and pathetic, as if they're not really complete without a man. It doesn't matter if he's ugly or a total loser, as long as it's a relationship.
For men it's different. They don't have such stigma as "spinster" attached to them. They're just bachelors and that's okay since they're sowing their wild oats as men should. Mothers want their sons to find someone however since they need somebody to take care of them. I find that's very common, not only with mothers but with women in general. The most important criteria in a girlfriend is "Does she cook for you?"

Since I've been a genderless "freak", I would like for all the single women out there who have never had boyfriends and who are down on themselves to stop putting themselves down. I know what it's like to wish for love to come along but you're not half the undesirable freak that you may think you are. It just feels that way.