Musings of an Inappropriate Woman: Because the truth is, in retrospect, being single actually was kind of fantastic. And while I didn’t always enjoy it at the time, I can see now that it actually shaped my life in all sorts of beneficial ways.   Being single gave me the time and space to cultivate all manner of amazing friendships – the kind of friendships people write stories about. It meant that when Mr Musings (someone with a similar ratio of single to not single time as myself) and I got married a few months ago, we were able to do so in the room filled with friends. Not just people we had passed the time with, but people with whom we had shared our lives and true intimacies, in a manner that is frankly difficult to do when you’re investing all your intimacy into one person.  Being single meant I had the freedom (and again, the time – this one is so important, I think) to throw myself into my interests, enmesh myself in my community(s), to try new things out and, yes, to ultimately discard them if I found they didn’t work for me. It meant I could hold down a job, freelance, do a PhD and still have time to go out three or four nights a week. In temporarily forgoing one facet of the richness of life, I was able to experience more of so many others. Having spent so much of my life single means that I will never (I hope, at least), be one of “those” coupled people who organises exclusive “couples weekends”, feels awkward about inviting single friends to dinner, or tells their single friends, “you know, maybe you’re just too picky”. Being single gave me a foundation: of friends, of genuine intimacies, of what I was passionate about. It meant that when I did end up in a relationship with someone I wanted to stay with, I knew what I wanted from life, and to choose someone who wanted basically the same things.  That’s not to say that serial monogamists can’t have these things, too – I know plenty who have – but I do think that having that wealth of time to myself in the earlier part of my 20s helped me to achieve them. A few weeks ago, a good friend of mine – a friend whose ratio of single time to coupled time is even higher than mine is – wrote an emailed wondering if, as a “perpetual bachelorette”, she was destined for a future of boredom and loneliness. The irony is that this particular friend leads one of the most vital, inspiring lives of anyone I know, filled with tight knit friendships, passions and projects.   The point isn’t that the grass is greener on the other side. The point is that both sides of the proverbial meadow are green… even if we don’t always appreciate that.

Because the truth is, in retrospect, being single actually was kind of fantastic. And while I didn’t always enjoy it at the time, I can see now that it actually shaped my life in all sorts of beneficial ways.  

Being single gave me the time and space to cultivate all manner of amazing friendships – the kind of friendships people write stories about. It meant that when Mr Musings (someone with a similar ratio of single to not single time as myself) and I got married a few months ago, we were able to do so in the room filled with friends. Not just people we had passed the time with, but people with whom we had shared our lives and true intimacies, in a manner that is frankly difficult to do when you’re investing all your intimacy into one person. 

Being single meant I had the freedom (and again, the time – this one is so important, I think) to throw myself into my interests, enmesh myself in my community(s), to try new things out and, yes, to ultimately discard them if I found they didn’t work for me. It meant I could hold down a job, freelance, do a PhD and still have time to go out three or four nights a week. In temporarily forgoing one facet of the richness of life, I was able to experience more of so many others.

Having spent so much of my life single means that I will never (I hope, at least), be one of “those” coupled people who organises exclusive “couples weekends”, feels awkward about inviting single friends to dinner, or tells their single friends, “you know, maybe you’re just too picky”.

Being single gave me a foundation: of friends, of genuine intimacies, of what I was passionate about. It meant that when I did end up in a relationship with someone I wanted to stay with, I knew what I wanted from life, and to choose someone who wanted basically the same things. 

That’s not to say that serial monogamists can’t have these things, too – I know plenty who have – but I do think that having that wealth of time to myself in the earlier part of my 20s helped me to achieve them.

A few weeks ago, a good friend of mine – a friend whose ratio of single time to coupled time is even higher than mine is – wrote an emailed wondering if, as a “perpetual bachelorette”, she was destined for a future of boredom and loneliness. The irony is that this particular friend leads one of the most vital, inspiring lives of anyone I know, filled with tight knit friendships, passions and projects.  

The point isn’t that the grass is greener on the other side. The point is that both sides of the proverbial meadow are green… even if we don’t always appreciate that.