The Unexpected Joy of Being Single

by Catherine Gray

Yet, if being single is so terrible, why are more than half of us choosing it over coupling? Simple. Because it’s not terrible. Being single for an extended period – or for life – can be incredibly empowering, fun and emancipating. Being single is a heckofalot better than panic-settling, that’s for sure.

Yes

This book is not an attempt to tear down happy couples (I love happy couples), nor is it saying that marriage is claptrap, or claiming that being single is ‘better.’ Single isn’t better. But it’s definitely not less than either. It’s equally as nourishing and joyous an existence.

people settle for, and stay in, relationships they don’t truly want.

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In other words, campaigning for single equality is as much for the coupled-up, as it is for the single. Given it means the coupled will then have a newfound freedom chute; the option to be single without sorrow.

Maybe this is you. Maybe you’re seeking an escape hatch from your socially endorsed, coupled-up form, that has begun to feel more like a cage, which is why you’ve picked up this book?

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Singledom is a choice. People aren’t single because nobody wants them. They’re single because they happen not to want the people who want them. Or maybe they’re not even looking.

Good. Yes.

Here’s the thing. We’ve been brainwashed into thinking that a happy-ever-after always involves finding a partner.

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the classic behaviours of love addiction as: ‘1. Clinging to an idealized relationship, despite a different reality. 2. Returning time and time again to an abusive and damaging relationship. 3. Placing responsibility for emotional wellbeing on others. 4. Craving attention from many different relationships and seeking new sources of attention.’

Huh

It’s similar with a relationship that becomes an addiction, he says. ‘It can stop being a pleasurable choice, and become an addictive urge.

Whenever we act completely loco in a romantic setting, it’s because our attachment system has been ‘activated’, which causes great distress, or ‘protest behaviour’. Our brains are wired to ensure psychological and physical closeness with whoever we have attached to.

Huh

And here’s the kicker: our brains do this even if the person we’ve ‘attached’ to no longer wants to go out with us.

Then, since cheaters always make the most suspicious partners, I become convinced that my boyfriend is cheating on me too. And I justify snooping on his messages, invading his privacy, in order to ensure that is not the case. My hypocrisy is unbelievable.

Familiar

I live tyrannized by the fear that my boyfriend will find out about my blackout infidelities.

The daily dread sits there, like a goblin on my shoulder, no matter how much I drink, or how sweet I am to my boyfriend in secret recompense, or how much I obscure my tracks with lies, or how often I tell m...

Then there was the time when...and the time when...it all spills out of me. It actually feels good, given I’ve never told anyone the entire fucked-up saga before. The counsellor’s face grows more and more stern. At the end of the session, he says, ‘OK, so I’m going to tick the box on this sheet that says ‘Domestic violence’. He shows me the box, and him ticking it. I’m gobsmacked. ‘But, he never hit me!’ He tells me that domestic violence is often purely psychological. And that I have definitely been subject to it. Huh. I had no idea.

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Here’s what I know. If you struggle with anything, be it singledom, disordered eating, spending beyond your means, drinking until you’re smashed or depression, learn everything you can about it. Knowledge is power.

Huh.

‘When you’re quirkyalone like me, you know that being single is not a disease. Being single doesn’t mean you are broken.’

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Over in Sweden, Stockholm’s households are 60 per cent single. In one town, there’s a commune where dozens of forties-and-up singles live in a honeycomb of single apartments, clustered around 400-square-metres of shared space, where they have communal meals and hang out on the roof terrace. Sounds dreamy.

I should retire to Sweden ...

might actually mean that properties drop in price too, so that buying a house is less like buying a bungalow made of actual gold.

Ha

Firstly, we want ‘soulmate marriages’, whereas our predecessors were willing to settle for ‘you’ll do marriages’.

Yep

And then, you begin to observe the reality of child-rearing, the seven-year cracks, the infidelities, the agony of divorce, and wonder if you want to even go there at all. Which feels a little like...freedom. Peeling off from the pack is unsettling, but also emancipating.

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spending days sunbathing and reading. I have acres of time and I can do whatever the Dickens I like with it. It’s liberating.

I chose to bounce instead, because there were bigger yeses burning inside of me, those of book-writing, travelling and freedom. And do I regret it? Not for a hot second.

the measure of a soulmate is a) feeling totally accepted by someone, b) knowing they will always be there, and c) the happiness far outweighing the angst, then these soulmates beat any boyfriend I’ve have ever had. Hands-down. They have a royal flush to his pair of jacks. I’m far from lonely, and I’m willing to wager you’re not either, if you take the time to count your soulmates. Take a look. They’re all around you.

‘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.

Ha

Now, I remember that given female life expectancy is 83 for women and 79 for men, even if it takes until age 50 to meet him (or her, if I switch sides, never say never), I will still have 29 l-o-n-g years with that guy (if we are the same age and he dies right on schedule). 29 years! I mean. The longest relationship I’ve ever managed thus far was three years, and it was hard to even keep that alit, so that 29-year hypothetical relationship is going to be a humdinger of a challenge. I can wait. Is fine. 4.

Ha

You are handcuffing yourself to someone for life, emotionally, financially and timetable-managing-wise, when you make babies with them. You will live with them, sleep next to them, make house with them. Assuming they stick around to see out the child-raising. It’s the one partnership you really, really want to get right. Make your choice a good one.

It’s rough when you feel like single has been thrust upon you without your say-so, by an infidelity, or cooled ardour, or somesuch shock. I know; it’s happened to me several times. However, choosing to remain single is generally your choice.

Our viewing habits, living situation, meals and sporting activities tend to mesh with whoever we’re going out with. I think you only truly discover who you actually are and what you actually like, once you’re alone.

True

We need physical touch, so much so that psychologists call the lack of it ‘skin hunger.’ It’s why the recent trend for ‘cuddle parties’ or a ‘cuddle buddy’ is not as crackers as it sounds. One study found that ‘skin hunger’ results in higher levels of anxiety and depression.

Huh

There’s only been one guy I’ve ever come close to wanting to marry, and when we split he said ‘I know we’ll get married if we stay together, because I do love you, but I don’t think we’ll be happy.’ And he was bang on the money.

Don’t play it safe, in your imaginings. Write a list of things you long for, that don’t include any kind of romantic entanglement, and then go after them with all of the caution and trepidation of a comet.

‘The truth is, there are happy single men, lonely single men, happy married/partnered men, and lonely married/partnered men. I have been all four of those men, at some point. Ironically, I’m probably more ready for a serious relationship now than I’ve ever been, simply because I don’t need one and am genuinely happy.’

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The feeling of failure over being single is created by a thousand paper cuts of the sympathetic ‘Oh wells’, or the ‘You’ll meet someone’ reassurers, or the ‘Have you tried?’ fixers. People can’t seem to let single people just be.

There’s a peculiar social quirk to being single, much the same as when you don’t drink. When you’re single or alcohol-free, people feel like they deserve some sort of explanation. Single people are fair game for questioning, just as sober people are. It’s odd.

Huh

They say: ‘Why are you single?’ I want to say: ‘Oh, I dunno. While we’re asking probing, very personal questions within a few minutes of meeting, why did you get married? Were you guys ready? Do you think either of you will ever cheat? I hear you have separate bedrooms, why is that? Let’s lay this all bare, shall we.’

So, why do they do it? Ask ‘Why are you single?’ I think simply because we like it when people make the same choices as us, and find it tricky to wrap our heads around those who aren’t the same. Myself, I find it really hard to comprehend people who don’t like to travel, or who don’t like animals, and I try to talk them into travelling/liking animals, when actually, they’re entitled to their own choices and opinions.

Good point

‘People who like being single, who choose to be single, are threatening cherished world views about what people should want.’

Learning is not linear. It’s best described as circular, even loopy.

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Turns out that dating sensibly, is a lot like trying to drink sensibly. It’s easier to not date – or drink – at all.

Yes

It’s not just me. I have a friend who has stayed in a job that bores her for more than a decade, rather than seek a more interesting role elsewhere, because of the ‘excellent maternity leave’. The longer she stays, the better the maternity leave pay gets. Except, my mate is currently single and not remotely pregnant. The Waiting Place is no place to live. It’s a half-life.

Falling in love with a city is much safer. I’m smitten by Bruges and, like a person, it may change or get bigger, but unlike a person, it will never leave or cheat.

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am looking for kindness, personality and wit, as well as physical chemistry. A friend first, and a lover second. I get it.

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It’s never anybody’s fault, other than the one who cheated.

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You can’t begin to heal until you cease all communication. Using communication with your ex to try to mend yourself is exactly like drinking wine to cure a hangover. Using the thing that hurt you, to try and heal you. Put the thing down.

This

Similarly, a divorce does not equal a failure, and anyone who thinks it does is to be completely ignored. Did you make some beautiful children? Or have eight good years out of eleven? Well then, that’s a winner overall.

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My gut is normally spot-on these days. Now that I don’t do any drinking, I’m better at thinking. And at listening to the Spidey senses that babies and toddlers seem to have about people’s characters (‘Waaaaah! Get this heinous person away from me! WAHHHHHH’). The

We don’t always mimic, says Hilda. ‘When we create romantic relationships that are the exact opposite of our parents’, that can be unhealthy too. It’s about making your own choices, irrespective of what your parents did.’

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a quarter of coupled-up people said that nothing would make them happier than finding another partner. A quarter! Ticked that. These people should clearly be single. Which makes me really, really sad. Fear of singledom keeps so many people stuck.

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‘Alone’ and ‘lonely’ are very different things. Alone is a place I go where I can truly relax, exhale, and do whatever the heck I want. I need to be alone to work; unless it’s quiet, I can’t hear what I need to write. I very rarely feel ‘lonely’. I can do three solid days of that, until I start to crave company, and am liable to draw a face on a volleyball and call it Wilson.

Exactly