Stop asking me why I'm single!

An ode to singleness / sort of a non rant, rant

Hello you lovely lot! Happy Pride Month 🏳‍🌈 !!

I hope you remember who I am on account of not gracing you with my presence for nearing a month!! The downside of having a weekly newsletter is that when you need a break, you can often feel like you’re letting people down. May had a lot happening and a lot of planned trips so I took the month off. My head is well and truly back in the game now though and boy oh boy does it feel amazing to be back!

This week’s Public Reading Circle offering is on singleness. I hope that whatever camp you’re reading this from (single camp or non single) that it helps to change your perspective a little bit on singleness. All I ask for is your grace at the parts that might feel like I’m having a go at the love birds among you. I’m not at all, I’m just trying to offer a different perspective.

Enjoy xx

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Thursday 8th June 2023

When I’m asked the question, “Where are you from?”, which I often am, I usually go off on a tangent about my dad’s side being Zambian and my mum’s side being Irish and English and how I was born in Birmingham, yadda yadda yadda. This is a well rehearsed spiel of mine by now because believe it or not people always seem to be curious about why my skin colour is what it is but my accent isn’t what they thought it would be. (I can think of another word for this but now is not the time.)

What I don’t tell them about my family history is that I come from a long line of very devout Catholics on both sides of the family. The thing that comes with Catholic families, at least in my experience, is this notion that the moment your boobs come in and you start looking more like a woman and less like a girl, the questions often turn from how school is to how the love life is… swiftly followed by the hetero-normative questions of when it will be my turn to find a husband and push out a baby.

I will say before I continue, that in recent years myself and other members of the family in my generation have definitely strayed away from appeasing this expectation.

But the questions still come. 

Last Summer, my dad celebrated a big birthday which was a big celebration with lots of family that I hadn’t seen in years being invited. A well meaning family member who I had been excited to see, embraced me with a warm hug and the niceties that come with not seeing a member of the family in almost a decade.

How grown up I’ve gotten, how tall I am (yep I still get this, you’d think they’d be done with that one by now), how well I look (whatever that means).

Then the other questions came.

“How’s the love life?” She asked. “Are you still with that chap you were with 4 years ago?” She continued. 

I grimaced. There it is.

“No, I escaped.” I said. This didn’t seem to phase her one bit. So she continued.

“So no man then?” the disappointment oozing from her voice. I chuckled sarcastically and shook my head.

She sighed at me and then shook her head before continuing, “Life is much better with a man, Vanessa.” I didn’t have the heart to cause trouble and tell her at that point that it could also be much better with a woman so I just laughed and politely headed to the bar to get myself a gin. 

The fact that she called me Vanessa should have been evidence enough that she and I were not close at all, yet I couldn’t help but feel irked off with the fact that she had seen this as an opportunity to grill me on my love life instead of using it as an opportunity to find out about the person that I had turned into since the last time I saw her.

I play this situation back in my mind all the time. I know in part that what was coming out of her mouth was a result of the culture that she had grown up in and as a mark of respect to the hierarchy that exists on the Zambian side of my family, I hadn’t snapped back at her as much as I’d have liked to. I think about what I would say if that situation was to be replayed again and I keep going back to this, what about asking me about my friends? What about asking me about my well-being? Or my career? Or the things that make me happy? 

Why does singleness often equate to being less than? And why are people so obsessed with asking us why we’re single?!

Funnily enough, it’s one of the things that is an instant turn off for me when I have these rare moments where I decide to “put myself out there.” People are obsessed with asking someone why they’re single. I’m sure they’re well meaning and trying to use it as some form of easy compliment but I’d rather it wasn’t said at all.

I grew up thinking that if I wasn’t married with kids by the time I was 25 then something was seriously wrong with me.

When 25 came and went and the serious relationship I was in crashed and burned, I had to relearn so much about myself and who I was and it was in part because I’d grown up with this notion that part of life’s success was having the fairy tale marriage and pushing out loads of babies! 

I have many friends who have married young and have started having children and this isn’t me slating their choices at all. What I am slating however, is the notion that this is the ideal trajectory for everyone. 

One day…

The next day…

I’ve been single for nearing 5 years now. Sometimes it’s lonely and sometimes I’ll see cute pictures on Instagram of my gorgeous, loved up friends and comparison and feeling a lack in my life will be all I can think about for the next little while. Then some days I wake up and I don’t think about it at all. Those are the days that are filled with friends, memories and hobbies that I enjoy doing without having to compromise.

Being single means that I have time for things that non-single people don’t have the time for. It means I have more time to connect with myself, to figure out who I am without the influence of a significant other. Whilst I don’t plan on being single forever and there have been dates along the way, for right now I’m quite content in it.

This time of singleness has been needed for me to figure out who I am without masking that to impress someone else. I know that if and when I get into another relationship, there will be things that I will have to compromise on because that’s how relationships work. But relationships are also about communication, honesty and loving someone even when you disagree with them. I am glad that I have had time to be single to work on my communication, to get confident in my identity, to work on my people pleasy trait and to figure out how I love people + how I like to be loved. 

To my coupled up, married and parenty friends & family, I love you. I love that I get to see how you love your spouse(s) and your kids. I love that I get to learn from you every darn day about what makes a happy, successful relationship - though it does freak me out that some of you are out there making mini yous, especially when I think about how I met some of you 🤣. Please be mindful about how you speak to your single friends about their singleness. You may not mean to do it but you might be making your pal feel inadequate about themselves. You don’t have to play Cupid for us, pop your feet up instead and pop open a cold one.

To my single friends, your time is as precious as the breastfeeding mother, the parent needing to leave early for childcare reasons or the engaged couple stressed out with marriage plans etc etc etc. You matter as a person and you are enough whether you’re single short term or long term. Learn who you are before you let someone else become a part of who you are and take your sweet ass time to do that. Lastly, learn to have fun and enjoy the people who are around you now, that includes yourself. You’re not lacking and you haven’t failed.

To everyone, we are all valid in how we choose to live, be it single or otherwise.

Love, Ness xox

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