Why people think you're not "complete" without a partner?

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I do get irritated when some people especially some people in my family whom I love like my dad who have sometimes nagged me about finding someone and I feel like it just reinforces the over awareness of being single in my 30s and makes me feel bad. I know he maybe saying it from his perspective because through his 20s and 30s, he was in a relationship and married to my mum and never really been single and so it makes me look bad and that's why sometimes I feel I "shouldn't" be single at this stage of life. It doesn't help either when I have seen and know others in their early, middle and late 30s who are married and have kids.

I don’t know anyone who believes that.

There aren't any "shoulds" in each of our personal lives. We make up our lives as best we can and we sometimes don't have the things that we want, but that doesn't mean we "should" have them, and it's not helpful to feel badly about it. It's not easy, if it's something we want that we don't have, and sometimes other people are making us feel even worse when we are already disappointed. There isn't anything you should or shouldn't be doing. Just try to make the best of what you have and what you can accomplish, trying not to beat yourself up for the things you don't have.

I don't believe that and I dont know anyone who does.

People who believe that are probably projecting their own needs onto others.

I think it's just expected. And not without reason. The vast majority of people couple up, whether they do so within some kind of legal or religious framework or just because. We're kind of hard-wired to do it, since the perpetuation of our species depends on it. Animals do it too.

I don't know if Christianity expressly refers to the woman completing the man in that sense, but since in Christian theology, woman was created from a man's body part, man is by definition incomplete and returning her to him (I think it does say they become 'one flesh') is an act of completing him.

It's been a part of the romantic myth for ages too though. "You complete me." This idea that there's someone out there who is a perfect fit for you, like two jigsaw pieces. It's bs, of course. But it's enduring because it gives meaning and purpose to something that is chaotic and random. As fnord points out it's cultural too. In the west in latter years we've had this cult of individuality developing and the idea that another person is necessary to complete you is falling, I believe, out of favour.

But I don't think it's strange for your parents to want to see you in a relationship, as annoying as that probably is. That probably goes quite deep psychologically. Part of parenting, maybe all of parenting, is about giving your child everything they need to be able to live without you at some point. Perhaps your parents see your lack of progress in the relationship department as their own personal failure to prepare you for that.

For myself, I don't think of it in an oppressive patriarchal way but I am not complete without a partner. I need someone to share my life with. Without someone I feel lonely and distraught and it's very difficult for me to cope. I have a partner now and he's wonderful but it's still relatively new and we're not as close as I would like and I don't spend as much time with him as I would like. It's great but it's also hard.

I don't have any solutions, but I'm dealing with the exact same thing. So I can commiserate

Last year I was the same age my mother was when she was pregnant with me. So she spent the whole year harping about how I should be married and pregnant by now. This year it's about how she was married with a baby by now and how come you haven't found anyone and started a family yet? I know she means well, but it's grating. Especially the biological clock stuff.

My sons can choose to be coupled or single or something in between. It's their life, not mine.

^^^someone seems to have a defective G44PIC gene.... That's the one responsible for parental interference compulsive disorder.
You may require professional help to learn how to fake effective interference.