bachelor

a single aspect of a person's life becomes the whole of the person when "bachelor" is used. If a reference to marital status is necessary (it rarely is), use single. "Unmarried" and "unwed" perpetuate a marriage-as-norm attitude and don't include the divorced. We write and speak as if marriage and parenthood somehow grant validity to a person when in fact the married and unmarried often have more in common than not. Note the nonparallel connotations of the supposedly parallel "bachelor" and "spinster." Women go from bachelor girl to spinster to old maid but men are bachelors forever.