Single in a Land of Couples
Charting an Unreliable Feeling
♥ ♡❦
In one moment, you and your friends had stumbled into good jobs, lived in one of the most exciting cities in the world, and had the decade laid out before you like fruits ripe for the picking. In the next, three-quarters of you had left the city and the invitations started arriving in the mail: 5 weddings, 2 bachelor parties, 2 engagements, all in one Summer. You knew it was coming. You’d been told countless times by people a few years older: it happens quick. The part they didn’t warn you about was how similarly you’d feel between those early days in the city and today, a decade later. How a pandemic and hundreds of bad decisions and just as many good ones would make you wiser, sure, but would not change the fact that you still felt like you were at the start of your life, despite everyone else seemingly embarking on new ones.
Surrounded by couples, the once-glamorous qualities of your single life started to feel a bit self-indulgent. Stories that used to be pure romance — a summer fling, solo travel, a reckless weekend — seemed frivolous compared to the sacrifice your friend made for their partner, or the green tea ordered at the bar by your old drinking buddy because she’s three months pregnant. Coupled friends would tell you how jealous they were of your independence, but you’d never believe them. You analyzed their words until you felt certain they were said out of pity, even though you knew they hadn’t thought about their words, or your life, nearly as much as you had. You surrounded yourself with more singles and analyzed their words, too. Their claims about loving the single life felt declared as if in protest, as if challenging someone to question them. What a pity, you thought, to have to pretend. But then you went out with them and saw their genuine enjoyment, no evidence of your inner torment. You started to wonder whether you just pitied yourself.
Weirdly, these spells of insecurity only came in response to external pressures. Like when your friend asked if you needed a +1 invitation to their wedding. Or when a relative asked you if you had any “exciting news”, with their eyebrows raised, without first thinking to ask how you were doing. Or when someone said, you’re so great — I don’t understand how you’re still single, as if having a partner was the only possible outcome of being a great person. When those expectations were out of the picture, in other words, 90%+ of the time, there was so little to complain about. You had a manageable schedule, dollars to spend, gratifying work, an active social life. Every morning you woke up with a healthy brain and body. It would shock you how quickly this pure, simple satisfaction could be dismantled by a well-meaning inquiry about your love life. You couldn’t tell whether your insecurity was a result of failing to meet other people’s expectations or failing to meet yours.
You began to fear that everything you claimed to enjoy about being single was a shield against your disappointment. So, you started dating with less whimsy, more intention, asking questions you normally saved for the fourth or fifth date on the second or third. Questions that used to make you recoil. Dating, predictably, became more of a chore than a desire. You even added a little reminder in your phone, alongside your meditation reminder, to use the apps for some minutes, to cast out a few baited lines each day. When you asked ChatGPT how many single people there were between 25 and 35 in New York City, it told you roughly 500,000. Somehow, this number felt small. You blamed your city, the apps, your sedentary friends, the pandemic, your upbringing. And then, like magic, your hopelessness vanished in a brief moment of interaction at a café. The person’s face lingered in your thoughts for days after, each appearance making your thirty-something self feel twenty-something all over again, reminding you of the stupidity in assigning feelings to a number.
The anxious moments were inevitable — a product of age, culture, social media, the movies, whatever else taught you that by now you shouldn’t be single. Also inevitable, though, was the rush of sensation that emerged in response to worrying yourself numb. The reminder that you were still living a life, right then, at that second. And all the things you had done, and ignored, while fretting about the pace your life was moving. The person you reached out to and became so close with because you wanted more single friends. The tens of books you read on your so-called “lonely” nights, a few of which changed your life. The countless catastrophic dates (now hilarious stories), the quietly hopeful ones, and all the awkward moments in between. You flipped through pictures from the soul-searching trip you went on, thinking what a stupid cliché, but knew deep-down, in a way you wouldn’t say aloud, that you got in touch with unknown parts of yourself there. You remembered the one or two instances that you reached out with real love and found it reciprocated, and how you’d never be willing to trade away those memories. And instead of shouting these wonders to the world, I’m single and proud, you hold them close to your chest in quiet confidence, always there to remind you how much wonder lies ahead.
But only if you let yourself feel it.
♥ ♡❦
Written and contributed with love, by: Rishi Midha