Considering the lifescript tells people they are a failure if they are not paired off (and reproducing in the suburbs as a single income family, all unattainable goals these days), you do actually have to choose. It’s easier for a lot of people to have a string of bad relationships than “give up” as you put it, and nobody ever says “don’t date anymore!” Quite the opposite.

But at a certain point a person may realize the effort isn’t worth whatever nebulous “reward” supposedly comes from being paired off, because they can get all the same stuff from other social bonds. Then they choose to stop engaging, even passively, with the dating scene. (By passively, I mean they are no longer receptive to the idea of dating, even if the planets line up)

I see this as a very deliberate choice. It’s one I made for myself. It’s a harder choice for a lot of people because it means focusing on other relationships, building up the social circle you need to have your emotional needs met, and loving yourself as you are with no change needed to accommodate another. But it’s an equally valid choice all the same, especially when our species doesn’t do monogamy well at all, but does do social-support bonds very well.

It has nothing to do with learning to love yourself to be a better partner. People who have deliberately chosen to stay single don’t care if they are a good monogamy partner because that’s not what they are looking for, and they actively don’t want it if it does show up. Implying it is is like all those people who tell people that have chosen not to have kids “well you’ll change your mind!!” It’s dismissive of the decisions they made for themselves for reasons no-one else is privy to. And all those people who were told they’d change their mind about kids… didn’t change their mind, shockingly.