In 2023, I thought a lot about the friend who’s sad I’m single

Published on 7 December 2023

Hello love,

How are you getting on? How are the kids? I know it must be a bit overwhelming now that you’ve got two and I hope you know you can always come to me for hugs/mugs of tea/holding the baby whilst you nap or have a relaxed poo. Nobody should rush that shit. Literally! And as to your parents-in-law and their helpful ‘tips’ I say fuck ‘em mate, I think you’re smashing it.

So, I wanted to say something that’s a little bit delicate and I hope there is enough love and trust between us for me to say it and you to hear it. 

I know how much being a mother means to you and how fiercely you love those children. It has been wonderful watching you grow into this period of your life with so much bravery and grace. But I also feel that, somehow, in the intervening years between womanhood and parenthood, a belief has taken root in your mind that partnership and family life is a ‘happier’ life. 

You’re sensitive enough never to say anything so crass outright. But it makes itself known in the gently probing look you give when you ask how I am.

You always seem so crestfallen when I break up with someone, gingerly tiptoeing through the conversation as if it’s news that needs long, heartfelt conversations through tears when actually it needs getting dressed up in feathers and drinking rum punch until 3 in the morning. I’ve noticed you rarely try and shift my perspective on my grief, rarely try to spin it into a story about how courageous or uncompromising I am. Good for you! It hurts now but you’ll be better off in the long run. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. You’re so brave and I’m proud of you. Instead your responses are all framed around reassuring me that I’ll get there because, I suppose, my situation is pitiable and I must surely want to be getting somewhere. Your sadness makes me feel my situation must be sad and that is a hard identity to shake.

It’s not just you, of course. In countless ways, people both known and unknown to me have insinuated that partnership or children are what I should be striving for. In their minds to be single and childfree is only ever meant to be a temporary state, a holding cell, before you can transition to a ‘better' life. I feel acutely the heft of their fears weighing me down. That I’ll have a baby on my own and it will be lonely. That I’ll adopt and it will be hard. That I won’t have them at all and something will always be ‘missing’. 

Often their fears about me are the fears they once held for themselves as they entered their mid-thirties. Do you remember a few years back you wrote a list of friends who had children and friends who hadn’t? You held it up to me on a Zoom call, petrified by the idea that you might end up on the wrong list. Sometimes I have to remind myself that the same woman is the woman who is counselling me now.

Over time, the negative voices of others have muddled with my own, amplified them, until they have, at times, become the subtitles to my life. I am a failure. I am going to wind up alone. I’ve let my family down. My nieces will never have cousins to play with at Christmas. My mum will never get to see me wed. In these dark moments the voices are an assault on my self worth, a drum beat that steals upon me in the early hours running out, running out, running out of time for happiness…

The thing that frustrates me is that I have a lot to show for the last 5 years but very little that translates to the traditional markers of success. Self-knowledge. Self-confidence. Hacking out the misogyny that squatted troll-like in my brain for years. Finding my voice. Finding my feet. Not relying on a man. Not giving a fuck that someone doesn’t like me. Not apologising all the time. Being selective about the people I have in my life. Learning about my body. Learning how I want to be touched. Learning how I want to be treated. Learning how to say no. Freeing myself from shame. Everything I should have learnt as a young person but didn’t growing up under the patriarchy.

But no one celebrates you for that, do they? There’s no diploma for self-development, no masters for living a life of courage and authenticity. There are no parties, no cards, no presents, no one holding you up as an inspiration to others. It is ironic, really, because I myself am so inspired by people who have defied the status quo yet somehow I cannot own even a whisper of that pride for myself.

So to you, dear friend, you asked me what I want for Christmas. I want you to be my pride. To be the counterpoint to a world that makes me feel lesser every day. To consciously choose not to be one of the negative voices that dog all women over a certain age. To recognise that some people get happily ever afters and some do not because history has made a judgement about who gets to be happy.

I want you to challenge the fears you once had for yourself, which have become the fears you now hold for me. I want you to recognise the power your words have to shape how other people feel about themselves. And I want you to use that power consciously and conscientiously in ways that uplift the diversity of the human experience. 

Okay, that’s it. Phew, my eyes are getting a bit watery. I’m not crying, you’re crying! Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. I know these conversations aren’t always easy but if anyone has the compassion and wisdom to hear me, it’s you.  

Love you ❤️ x