The Unexpected Joy of Being Single

by Catherine Gray

Single isn’t better. But it’s definitely not less than either. It’s equally as nourishing and joyous an existence.

Singles are often treated as Peter Pans, overgrown adolescents, grownups in training, but actually, they’re the ones who should be given Advanced Adulting awards, since solo life is often no cakewalk.

Being single should be just as validated and respected by society as being in a couple.

However, even though it is that way, it doesn’t feel that way. It still feels rebellious, like trend-bucking, to be single later in life. Why? Because we are still living in the shadow of the nuclear-shaped family and groaning under the weight of our parents’ expectations.

‘Oh, the dream. The goddammed man + baby dream. Written by the High Commission on Heterosexual Love and Sexual Reproduction and practised by couples across the land, the dream’s a bitch if you’re a maternally inclined straight female and not living it by the age of thirty-seven.’

Peeling off from the pack is unsettling, but also emancipating.

As a psychologist, Dr Rick Hanson, famously said, ‘The brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones.’

‘Il vaut mieux être seule que mal accompagné’ – FRENCH PEOPLE The French make everything sound better, non? Sexy feckers. This, roughly translated, means ‘It is better to be alone than poorly accompanied’. RIGHT?! Mais oui! Certainement. Somebody put that on a fridge magnet, pronto.

Incidentally, there’s a brilliant function on the free Happy Not Perfect app called ‘Letting Go’, whereby you can write a ‘Fuck You’ letter, and then use your finger to raze it with fire. So satisfying.

Heartbreak is an energy source. You can harness it to do things you never thought possible.

‘Some people have one partner for life, but most don’t – and each of our loves is crucial and unique.’

Single people need privacy and a grown-up bed just as much as an adult couple do. If there really is no room at the inn for a different bed, and I’m not down with the sleeping sitch, then I consider booking a B&B.

‘When you choose a life partner, you’re choosing a lot of things, including your parenting partner...your eating companion for about 20,000 meals, your travel companion for about 100 vacations...and someone whose day you’ll hear about 18,000 times’. Right? So, picky is good.

I love my husband immensely, but I loved him just as much before our wedding. The ceremony didn’t make our relationship any stronger. We make our relationship stronger.

Mostly, I love being married. But I also mostly loved being single too. One situation isn’t inherently better than the other. There are pros and cons. As with anything – it is what you make of it, so try to make the absolute most of whatever you have, while you still have it.

Meanwhile, some of my most excruciatingly lonely times have been in relationships where I feel unheard, uncherished, unappreciated. You can be lonely in a roomful of people. In a bed with someone 6cm away. In a wedding gown about to get married. ‘Lonely’ is a state of mind, while ‘alone’ is merely circumstantial.

It’s so restful to come home, shut the door and have my own little nook. With no one to tell me that there are too many candles or cushions,

Paulo Coelho once wrote, ‘Stress, anxiety and depression are caused when we are living to please others.’

I please myself. I decide when I want to leave a party, I decide what I want to do this weekend and who I want to see, without having to consult anyone else. It’s wondrous.

We don’t have to find a partner, unlike an income or a roof. It’s an extra, not a necessity.