"We like to think we're free in the ; that we're beyond the forces of advertising and social manipulation by market forces. But there is a new — the rise of 'the single person' as model consumer — that presents us with a paradox. What we once thought of as radical — staying single - may now be reactionary. The long-term relationship, like the job-for-life, is fast being deregulated into short term, temporary arrangements with no promise of commitment, as sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has been warning us for over a decade. It's hard for two people to be self-employed, with no promise of a stable future, together. Capitalism now wants us to be single."