Being Single/Alone

[Livelifelaughter]

The Times just published an article about "Being Alone". In the comments section many people wrote about how they enjoyed a morning walk, coffee even holidays alone. The writer explained her love for doing things alone (although was in a relationship at the time she wrote the article).
There's a real difference to doing things alone and having a partner/husband even children to come back to...one of my friends talks about her holidays alone not mentioning her 25 year old daughter is with her. In fact I find it really exciting being alone and notching up the things I would tell my boyfriend.
But there's a massive difference in having exciting experiences alone, going to a fancy restaurant alone while other tables are full of chattering couples and I would rather have a partner with me.
I am not talking about it's better to be alone than in a rubbish relationship, that's obvious...but do people really want to be alone ?

But your statement that people in relationships are "smugly coupled up" betrays your worldview and it's completely misleading. You are assuming that people who are in a relationship are automatically happier than people who aren't. And it's just not true. A lot of people in relationships are miserable, and a lot of people who are singler are happy.

Being in a relationship isn't a determinant of your happiness.

And to answer your question: I didn't say most couples have no love. What I said is that a lot of relationships are underpinned by factors other than love. There is or there should be affection and friendship. But the notion that being in a relationship automatically means you're walking around in a cloud of infatuated love is just childish.

I'm in a relationship with someone who I like, who I'm attracted to and who enhances my life. I prefer being with him to being single. But if I wasn't with him I'd far prefer to be single than to grab someone for the sake of being in a couple.

Of course, people who are desperate for a relationship will find one, and keep going and infinitum.

Not sure if this was meant for me.
Like, yeah, good for you, no need to rub it my face!

The worst kind of lonely is being trapped in a relationship/marriage with children and a husband who is cruising, doesn’t engage, it is mind numbingly awful. I do
have friends who have been married 40 years, still happy with each other, still affectionate, still have a glow. It’s lovely to see.
For those of us who ignored the many many red flags and suffered, being lonesome occasionally is a by product of being alone, which means we have
full agency
independence
autonomy
privacy
executive decision making
asked head on one side puerile questions regarding love life occasionally
but we are tough, resilient, cynical,
Self love is never having to ask permission for anything

However in life we do not get everything, some ladies are better suited to marriage than others, good luck to them, I only wish I had married well or better, I cannot say I didn’t have my doubts.

riiiiiight...and you assumed desperation because?

@NameChangedSoYouDontKnowHowBrokenMyHeartIs absolutely not meant as a jab at you! more my perspective as to why I think people who are in relationships should not really talk about being single - I could write about "talking walks alone" but it's not the same as someone who is single talking about it. Their perspective is different. I am so sorry I came across this way!

The idea of regular sex (in theory) until the novelty wears off or you go off each other is appealing to many when wanting a relationship.

The worst kind of lonely is being trapped in a relationship/marriage with children and a husband who is cruising, doesn’t engage, it is mind numbingly awful.

This. This is a million times worse than being single.

A few words of wisdom, on marriage, from my grandma, which you may have heard, “men are like puppies, you have to get them young and train them”

then from my other grandma when I was 19, boyfriend same age, “ don’t be in too much of a rush to marry as you won’t know how he is going to turn out”

Somewhere in the middle is Blind Faith

@PaintedEgg

Okey, I misread the tone.
My bad!

reading back I admit I sounded like twat, honestly sorry!

All I meant was that there is a difference between being alone and lonely.

A single person doesn't need to feel lonely, a person in a relationship can feel very lonely.

But talking about value of "alone" time and how good it is to be single while not being single to me sounds like the journalist had a deadline they had to meet and just pulled something out of their butt.

I would rather be in a committed relationship but not living together until after a long while.
I have been divorced and had relationships. Of course I wouldn't want to be in a poor relationship.
But I really miss knowing that there's someone there for me, someone who will prioritise me when times get tough for me. The feeling of being protected and cared for. In my 30s and 40s I really enjoyed being single but now I don't.
Also frankly I just think people in relationships just slightly pity older single people. When I started dating someone after many years single my friends were really happy that I had met someone, no one feels or expresses that when you introduce a new friend. It's like being part of some club.

I think they react like that because it validates their own choices and it's part of social conditioning. People in relationships most of the time do look down on people who are single (anectodal experience) because it isn't seen as the "norm". The "norm" is to be partnered up, and if you're single, it's meant to be a transitory stage not something to aspire to, and to quickly fall back into the status quo which is to be partnered up.

Completely agree. I have been for many years with my best friend to a restaurant and always asked for a table in a certain part, never got it. When I was dating we were given the table without even asking. I honestly think you have a different status.

@Goatbilly

I think they react like that because it validates their own choices and it's part of social conditioning. People in relationships most of the time do look down on people who are single (anectodal experience) because it isn't seen as the "norm". The "norm" is to be partnered up, and if you're single, it's meant to be a transitory stage not something to aspire to, and to quickly fall back into the status quo which is to be partnered up.

Exactly. Being in a relationship is the default position. Largely for historical reasons more to do with finances and morality than “love”. Historically there have been many religious and societal reasons why people were afraid of single women in particular and although the moral framework behind this had weakened many of the attitudes remain.

A lot of people are frightened of the idea of being single because of this bedrock of suspicion of single people in society and they mistake that for loneliness.

Hence people like the poster upthread who assumes that people in couples are automatically happier

The trick is train yourself to ignore the noise.

@Thepeopleversuswork are people in relationships automatically happier though? I've said in my first post here that while I think a lot of people want positive aspects of relationships, most relationships in my opinion kind of suck. Especially for women.

When I first divorce a lot of people were definitely concerned with me being lonely - while I fantasied about being on my own for a long time while I was in the relationship.

Many people in real life won't admit to being unhappy in their relationships, it is to a certain extent a social status to be in a relationship, so the fact you don't "see" their unhappiness, it doesn't mean unhappiness doesn't exist , just being theoretical. Divorce is still stigmatising. And being partnered is revered, rightfully or not

Honestly, I think the big reason people don’t leave is financial, especially if they have kids. Moat couples can afford a house between them. Having to afford a family home as a single person, is just out of reach for so many. Houses to buy are terrifyingly expensive, the private rented market is expensive, insecure and many landlords don’t want kids in the property, and the social rented sector is tiny and out of reach for most. That leaves staying together.

I think this is why anecdotally I hear of so many people leaving, or wanting to leave, when the kids are grown. You can buy a smaller place then.

Yes, learning to ignore the noise is absolutely key.

You're often being shamed for not having things that, if you're honest with yourself, you don't really want anyway.

I have been in long-term relationships, one of them was a really good one with someone I still like and get along with well - it still wasn't perfect and there were many times I longed to be single.

I don't want to enmesh my life with someone else's in the way we are all expected to default to doing; it makes me a worse person, honestly. I'm far more interesting, interested, engaged, outgoing, etc when I'm single and have the time and freedom to do what I want to do. I won't live with a partner again, and I feel very lucky that (at the moment, at least) I can afford not to.

Not all people are happier of course...I would say when I am in a good relationship it's better than the best of times when I have been single. As I have said above, my perspective on being single changed a lot in my 50s when things became quite hard and I had a bereavement and redundancy in a few weeks; it made a massive difference having a very supportive boyfriend. I don't have close family but I do have very close friends who were supportive too but still had their own lives and I had to "ask" for help.
I don't think it's weak to want to be in a relationship or social conditioning, I think there's something that a relationship brings that I want. Honestly, I know some people are happy reading a book in a restaurant and I have done that but I would rather share that experience.

@PaintedEgg

are people in relationships automatically happier though? I've said in my first post here that while I think a lot of people want positive aspects of relationships, most relationships in my opinion kind of suck. Especially for women.

No they're absolutely not, that's exactly my point. In a good, sustaining relationship you can be happier but in my view those relationships are probably in the minority. But once you're in a relationship the infrastructure that grows up around it (children, mortgages, joint friends) makes it difficult to leave so a lot of people justify their inertia by maintaining that they are happier even if they are not. And those people (whether deliberately or not) stigmatise people who are single by suggesting that coupling up should be their goal.

But one particular poster upthread was talking about "smug couples" etc with the implication being that if you're in a relationship you are automatically happier than you would be single. In my view it's a massive misreading of the situation but it's fairly common for people to see it like this because of millenia of social and religious pressure that tells you that people who are not in relationships are weird, abnormal or unwanted.

You're right also that LTRs tend to benefit men far more than they benefit women over time. Yet women tend to feel the pressure to rush to find a partner more than men do. It's the world's greatest confidence trick in my view.

I would agree that there's a stigma around single women, especially around 40s upwards...weird, abnormal etc. Even if you look at the language "spinster" Vs "bachelor".. although thankfully the former doesn't seem to be used..

it is also interesting because single women tend to build and maintain network of extended family and friends - so even in the "dreaded old and lonely age" they are normally not actually lonely.

Single men on the other hand tend to complain about loneliness

its mostly my anecdotal observation - by elderly widows tend to be way more socially active then elderly widowers

Not sure I would agree about the friendship point. Most of the single and not single men I know seem to comfortably go to wine bars and pubs on their own and meet and make friends there. And also seem to have a tradition of holidays with male friends such as golf breaks a few times a year.

@FellPuck

You're often being shamed for not having things that, if you're honest with yourself, you don't really want anyway.

Totally this.

I spent the first 20 years of my adult life single more than I was in relationships. And there was a good reason for that although I didn't really understand it at the time it: because young women in my view are usually exploited by men in relationships, they settle far too young and fall over themselves to adapt themselves to what a man wants from them because they want kids and because they think that's what is expected of them. All my instincts screamed at me to avoid being in a relationship but society was telling me this made me a freak so I often felt inadequate because I didn't jump from one LTR to the next.

I did finally succumb to this nonsense in my early 30s and married a man who was thoroughly wrong for me and the marriage didn't last, of course. I have emerged from it fine because (thank God) I had my own job and money so I don't really regret it but it was basically ten unhappy and unfulfilled years of my life I won't get back and I wish I'd listened to my instincts more.

Many women (maybe even most) emerge from this socially brainwashed state in their 30s, 40s or 50s and realise they've been sold a big deception and often its too late to do anything about it. And it's only when you see the scale of the deception that you can admit to yourself what you basically knew all along, which is that relationships only improve your life if you're happy with yourself in the first place.

I'm not saying relationships can't make you happy, that all marriages are bad or that people are always happier single. Relationships can be very life-enhancing. But a lot of them are not. Assuming that a relationship is the missing jigsaw piece which will complete your life is a fast road to disappointment and potentially much worse. But there are still an awful lot of people (some posting on this thread) who assume that a relationship will always make your life better. And it's a dangerous delusion.

I think it goes back to "lonely vs alone" again - there are some studies that look into the depth of male friendships and apparently (self reported) most are not that close...and if it is lack of close relationships (not only romantic) that makes people feel lonely then men complaining about loneliness makes sense

or to put it in my most cynical and blunt terms: their buddies won't take on the emotional load of dealing with their emotional needs the same way a potential wife would

I don’t think it’s a man/woman thing.
Being the only single one is hard, I say that as a woman.
A lot of women dive into a relationship bubble and then when kids enter to the picture, you barely ever see them.

Not to mention, they often want to use me as a free labour: childcare, elderly care, pet sitting when families are on holidays together.
You do get left behind when you’re not like the rest of them.
And to add insult to injury, people like to remind you of it. Passive aggressive comments how I must got so much time since I’m on my own.

I don’t think many people truly grasp what singlehood is actually like.
Even more so the older you get and everyone else barricade into their bubbles.
And you’re outside, having to celebrate them, and never getting anything in return + loneliness.