Here is my story. At the office, everyone was sharing weekend plans with their families. They turned to me, I shrugged and said, \u201cI\u2019m single, happy, and I plan to stay that way.\u201d The smiles faded, and suddenly the chat went flat. Days later, I was stunned when HR called me to say there had been \u201cconcerns about my hostile attitude toward marriage and family.\u201d I laughed because I thought it was a joke. Nope. Someone had actually filed a complaint saying I was \u201ccreating an uncomfortable environment\u201d by dismissing family values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then HR hit me with this wild suggestion: maybe I should \u201capologize to the team for being dismissive.\u201d I refused. I said, \u201cI didn\u2019t insult anyone, I just said I\u2019m single. That\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now some coworkers are giving me the cold shoulder, acting like I attacked their lifestyle choices. One of them started a rumor that I\u2019m bitter because I got divorced and lost custody of my kids, which is completely made up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So now I\u2019m sitting here wondering if I should actually apologize just to smooth things over, or if I should keep standing my ground. Like, is it not okay to say I\u2019m single and not sugarcoat it? Why can\u2019t I be happy if I don\u2019t have anyone beside me?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here is my story. At the office, everyone was sharing weekend plans with their families. They turned to me, I shrugged and said, \u201cI\u2019m single, happy, and… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8784,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"views":333,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8782"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8785,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8782\/revisions\/8785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}