Flirting—the penultimate romance language—is an endangered concept in 21^st-century America.  Gone are the face-to-face conversations, where exposure to body language and tone of voice permit our pheromones to chemically determine compatibility.  “People just aren’t willing to engage in public. It’s so difficult to get someone to make eye contact…” claims Jane, a 20-something New Yorker.

A recent story about the global rise in living solo says while countries like Sweden have the most number of singletons (47 percent), the countries where single person households are growing the fastest are Brazil, China and India. Living solo has usually been regarded as something profoundly abnormal, especially in a culture where a parent’s job is not done until the children are “settled,” ergo married. We like to think we were designed to live communally even if it’s in shared misery.