When I teach about gender, I make a big deal about 1Corinthians 11:11:
Nevertheless, in the Lord,
woman is not independent of man
nor man of woman.
As the Apostle Paul draws a balance (with “nevertheless”) between the marital authority in the verses right before (vv7-10) and the marital mutuality in this verse, he issues his penultimate statement about the meaning of gender. (The ultimate statement comes in verse 12, followed by his conclusion in vv13-16.) I point out how, in this central verse 11, the underlying sparse Greek is literally:
…
Woman, without man, is not.
Man, without woman, is not.
Thus, Paul’s encapsulation of one of Scripture’s seven key principles of gender—that it is about relationship. Manhood is found and defined in relationship to Woman, and vice-versa.
When I bring this out, there are, without fail, two reactions in an audience. If he accepts what I am teaching, the married person starts to think about how his marriage has shaped him. She starts to reflect on the role her spouse has played in the person she has become. He thinks about how much less he would be as a man without her. She thinks about how much she depends upon him to understand who she is. They begin to glory in each other.
The single listener has a very different reaction. The question leaps to mind—and is often then voiced—Where does that leave me, a single person? Am I not gendered? Am I not a whole person? Wondering whether they are whole 
people is something many single people are prone to do anyway, being very sensitive to any suggestion by family or church that they are somehow less than complete in being single. So, this teaching, as I have noted before, can just add fuel to that fire of exclusion.
I then rush to reassure. Because I really do not believe that single people are less than complete, or that everyone should get married, or that the single life is somehow lacking, I clarify how the principle is still true for them. They have other close relationships where gender comes into play, I say. They have relationship with their God, with their families, with their churches and friends, where 
their gender is to be defined and enjoyed. There are brothers and sisters (like those in all the pictures on this page). Indeed, even married folks are liable to spend a good portion of their lives as single, before and after marriage, so singleness is a part of all our human experience. Regarding times and persons, I say, not all are for marriage, but all are for relationship.
But my grand reassurances are often met with an uncomfortable stare. My pedantic brilliance does not satisfy. My single listeners still look forlorn, as if my answer lacks meaning.
Why is this so?
One big reason we react against this principle is because contemporary living truly suffers from a paucity of community. Friendship and fraternity increasingly fray as modern conventions increasingly distance us from one another. American wealth and technology allow us to separate from our families and communities to such a degree that the category of brother-sister, visualized on this page, feels less than meaningful, if not downright damaging.
Of course, the answer for a rich single life is bigger than simply having community. Singles possess a special grace of intimacy with the Lord, as Paul emphasizes earlier in his letter (chapter 7). They enjoy a unique freedom for the kingdom. They skip the metaphor which marriage is and move right to the real thing, before the eschatological climax. And all this helps.
But what is meant to be a substantial ingredient to the single life, community, is largely lost. I recognize my own impoverishment here as well, even though I am not single. I am isolated and it takes real work to not live so. The structures of separation from family sometimes feel impossible to overcome.
So I try to tell stories of moments in church or family when gender shines through. But I understand why those other venues of gender operation, the ones beside marriage, do not feel so accessible.
It is the spirit of the age.