The Single Friend™
An honest reckoning with singlehood, domestic milestones, dating app despair, and not settling
I’ve had this post sitting in drafts since December. Not because I didn’t know what I wanted to say.
I felt vulnerable. I thought I might offend my married friends, friends with children, or anyone living in a very different season of life. I worried it might sound selfish, bitter, or like I was standing in the corner of someone’s baby shower muttering “what about me?” into a petit four. And truly, that isn’t the spirit in which this is written. I simply have feelings about the particular strangeness of being single in a sea of people whose lives have moved into a different domestic weather system.
If you’re single, single-adjacent, formerly single, emotionally single at the party, feeling single in your marriage, tired of pretending every life milestone requires a husband, or perhaps happily married and attempting to better understand your single friends, this one is for you too!
So here we are… a personal dispatch of sorts. Before we dive in, a tiny note to say your small gestures really do mean so much. A heart, a comment, a restack, a share… all deeply appreciated and very helpful in keeping this little corner growing. Thank you for reading!
The Single Friend™
I’ve recently come to terms with a rather startling truth: I am now, in many rooms, The Single Friend™.
Not single in the dramatic, Bridget Jones, wine-stained pajama sense, though I reserve the right to become theatrical when the mood requires it. I mean single in the practical, increasingly noticeable sense. The one in the room without a husband to reference, a toddler to wrangle, a mortgage rate to discuss, or a shared Google calendar.
I’m surrounded by friends I adore who are married, engaged, pregnant, postpartum, renovating, breastfeeding, hosting in-laws, considering backsplash tile, or saying things like “we’re trying to get him down earlier.”
Meanwhile, I’m at home lighting a candle at 3 p.m., eating dinner delivered right to my door, and enjoying a level of domestic silence that can only be described as monastic, if monasteries had reality TV and a dog who behaves like a disgruntled heiress.
There’s a very particular moment that happens at dinner in your thirties when you realize the table has split into two nations. On one side: the married republic, speaking in hushed, serious tones about schools, contractors, kitchen islands, and whether someone named Charlotte, but goes by Charlie, is “finally taking a bottle.” On the other side: me, nodding with warmth and concern while wondering whether I can order fries “for the table” when I know, in my heart, I mean “for myself.”
I love these conversations, truly. I love my friends, their children, and husbands (within reason, naturally). I love being included. But sometimes I do feel like I have wandered into the advanced-placement section of adulthood without taking the prerequisite courses. People are discussing childcare costs with the sunken eyes of war correspondents, and I’m trying to determine which new curtains to get for my bedroom.
There’s a subtle little performance of having to make your life sound equally adult. Someone says, “We’ve been dealing with the contractor all week,” and I say, “I finally returned a package that had been sitting by my door since March,” with the solemnity of a woman who has known struggle.
But this is the strange thing: I don’t feel behind in those moments, exactly. I feel separate. Adjacent. Like we’re all on different rides at the same amusement park. Some of my friends are strapped into the wooden roller coaster of marriage and children. I’m on the elegant little swings, circling above the park in a fabulous linen dress, thrilled and slightly dizzy, occasionally losing a shoe.
The thing is: I am happy.
Not fake happy. Not “please validate this choice before I collapse into my soup” happy. I mean genuinely, deeply, suspiciously content. There’s so much peace in my life. So much freedom. I don’t have to consult another person before buying a vintage chair that only sort of makes sense. I don’t have to watch a show I hate in the name of marital compromise. I don’t have to pretend anyone’s fantasy football league is “actually kind of interesting.” My time is mine. My bed is mine. My Sunday is mine. My snacks are mine, unless my dog has staged a small coup!
And still, before anyone begins embroidering “spinster” on a decorative pillow in my honor, I should be clear: I’m not anti-love. I would love partnership. I’m open to meeting someone wonderful who adds to the life I’ve built.
That, I think, is the part people sometimes miss about single women. We can want love without wanting to be rescued. We can desire partnership without despising our current lives. We can be open to romance without living every day like contestants on a private little season of The Bachelor. Being single is not a problem I’m trying to solve. It’s simply the shape of my life right now. And frankly, the shape has some very nice natural light.
The thing about being single in a sea of married friends is that you become very fluent in other people’s milestones. The engagements, showers, weddings, anniversaries, pregnancies, first homes, new kitchens, baby sprinkles, sip-and-sees, christenings, children’s birthday parties. All of it.
And genuinely, I’ll show up. I’ll wear the dress. I’ll buy the gift. I’ll cry during the vows, even if I’ve known the groom for six minutes. I’ll admire the baby. I’ll ask whether the nursery has a theme. I’ll say, “Oh my god, he has your eyes!”
But I do sometimes wonder why we’ve built an entire cultural infrastructure around celebrating coupledom and domesticity, while single women are expected to simply clap quietly for themselves in the corner. Because there are milestones here too. Real ones.
Paying every bill on your own. Creating a home by yourself. Getting promoted without a second income softening the edges. Launching something and watching it grow. Taking yourself to the doctor, negotiating rent, making your own emergency contacts, booking the flight, figuring out your taxes, building a life that feels beautiful without a witness built into the room. These are milestones.
Nobody throws you a shower for becoming self-sufficient. Nobody sends a formal invitation that says: Please join us in celebrating Natalie, who has successfully kept herself alive, solvent, moisturized, creatively fulfilled, and mostly emotionally regulated for another calendar year.
There’s no monogrammed cake for “paid off her credit card.” No champagne tower for “didn’t text him back.” No seating chart for “built a life she doesn’t need to be rescued from.”
Perhaps there should be.
Beneath all those uncelebrated milestones is the part people don’t talk about enough: single women do an extraordinary amount alone. Not in a tragic, violin-solo way. I’m perfectly capable of doing things on my own. Annoyingly capable, even. But capability is still labor.
Every bill is mine. Every decision is mine. Every health appointment, lease renewal, appliance break, strange sound in the night, and “is this mole weird?” WebMD spiral. Mine, mine, mine. There’s no one automatically built in to say, “I’ll handle that.” No default person to drive you home from a procedure, split the grocery bill, call the landlord, take the dog out when you are sick, or say, “Let’s make a plan,” when life suddenly gets sharp around the edges.
Which is why, while we’re here, I would like to gently submit that single people are allowed to be tired and busy too. There’s sometimes an unspoken assumption that if you don’t have a spouse or children, your time is endlessly elastic. But my life is not a blank space waiting to absorb everyone else’s overflow. My weekends are not an open field simply because I’m not coordinating soccer cleats.
Single tired is still tired. Single busy is still busy. We’re still running entire lives over here. Often alone. Often quietly. Requiring a private stamina. You become the provider, the planner, the worrier, the fixer, the soft place to land, and the person landing there.
This isn’t a complaint, exactly. It’s a recognition. Single women are often discussed as if we’re floating around in silk pajamas with endless discretionary income and nothing to do but moisturize and meet friends for margaritas. And yes, sometimes. God willing. But we’re also carrying entire lives on our own backs, often while looking pulled together enough that no one realizes how heavy it is.
So when a single friend celebrates a promotion, a paid bill, a creative milestone, a finished project, a hard decision, or one more year of holding her life together with grace and Scotch tape, it’s not small. It’s worthy of a toast. Possibly a registry. Certainly cake.
And yet, for all that I do alone, the great secret of my single life is that I’m not actually doing it by myself. I live alone, yes. But I’m not alone in the larger, truer sense. I have family. I have friends. And, most importantly, I have other single women in my building who understand the strange daily texture of this life because they’re living under the same sky. In many ways, we’re each other’s partners. Not romantically, obviously, but practically, intimately.
We talk a lot about the loneliness of being single, but not enough about the intimacy of single friendship. Not enough about the women who become your emergency contacts in all but paperwork. A man would be lovely, of course. But a woman who can be at your door in three minutes with wine, Advil, and an opinion? That is civilization. And that kind of friendship is one of the reasons single life can feel not just survivable, but deeply pleasurable.
People always talk about the freedom of being single in slightly scandalous terms, as if the greatest perk is that you can go kiss strangers in bars or run off to Europe with a man named Nico. And yes, theoretically, lovely. But the freedom I cherish most is smaller and far more domestic.
It’s eating exactly what I want for dinner, even if what I want is a loosely assembled plate of cheese, crackers, pickles, and something I insist is “protein.” It’s watching It’s Complicated for the twenty-third time without having to endure someone asking, “Haven’t you seen this already?” as if repetition is not the very foundation of a healthy routine.
It’s decorating without compromise. No one is here lobbying for a sectional. No one is suggesting a television so large it could be seen from space. No one is asking why I need another iron urn from the antique store when, spiritually, he should be asking why I don’t have more. It’s sleeping diagonally. It’s using all the pillows. It’s deciding at 6:43 p.m. that I’m done speaking for the day and then simply not speaking.
There’s a kind of peace in single living that’s hard to explain without sounding smug or like you’re trying to convince yourself. But it IS real. It’s not the absence of love. It’s not the absence of desire. It’s not the absence of ambition or romance or hope. It’s the presence of space. And space, once you’ve lived inside it, becomes hard to give up for someone who doesn’t make the room feel larger.
Which brings me to the age of it all. I’m 36, which is a very specific age to be single because people are no longer casual about it.
In your twenties, singlehood is understood as part of the general carnival. Everyone is making bad choices in different outfits. Being single isn’t as alarming; it’s simply one of the available conditions, like having bangs. But at my age, people begin to look at your singleness as if it’s a candle left burning in another room.
They don’t always say anything directly. Sometimes it’s just the pause. The small sympathetic head tilt. The way someone asks, “Are you dating anyone?” with the vocal softness usually reserved for medical updates. And I just want to scream: I’m not terminal!
Now, before anyone worries that I’ve taken a vow of romantic abstinence and am preparing to move into a lighthouse with a loom, let me be clear: I’m open to love. I’m not, however, actively online dating at the moment because I have a will to live.
Dating apps are often described as convenient, which is technically true in the same way that a self-checkout machine is convenient until it starts screaming that there’s an unexpected item in the bagging area and the unexpected item is… your dignity.
The apps require an amount of administrative labor I simply cannot romanticize. You have to select photos that say “beautiful but approachable,” “interesting but not chaotic,” “fun but not exhausting,” and “has friends but isn’t always holding a drink.” You have to write prompts that make you sound charming but not try-hard, open but not desperate, discerning but not terrifying. Then you match with someone who says “hey” with the erotic energy of a damp paper towel.
Should you survive the messaging portion of the apps, there’s the first date…
The first date is its own ancient punishment. You leave your peaceful apartment, put on mascara, select a flattering outfit, pay for transportation, and sit across from a man who may or may not ask you a single follow-up question. DEAR GOD.
Sometimes he tells you about his job in a level of detail that suggests you’re being onboarded. Sometimes he mentions his ex with the haunted reverence of a Civil War widow. Sometimes he says he’s “still figuring out what he wants.” And then people wonder why I’m not racing back to Hinge like it’s a meadow full of eligible dukes.
I’m not against dating. I’m against turning my life into a part-time unpaid internship in heterosexual hope. And even when you step away from the apps, the commentary follows. There’s the phrase. The old classic. The heirloom casserole dish of single-woman commentary: “You’ll find someone when you least expect it.”
People say this with kindness. I know they do. They mean well. But after a certain number of repetitions, it begins to sound less like encouragement and more like a threat from the universe.
When I least expect it? What does that even mean? At the dentist? In a parking garage? While buying toilet paper? Am I supposed to cultivate a state of permanent romantic oblivion? Should I wander through life with the vacant serenity of a woodland animal, hoping an emotionally available man drops from a tree?
Also, I’ve tried least expecting it. I HAVE LITERALLY EXPECTED NOTHING… in multiple fabulous outfits mind you. I’ve least expected it at weddings, airports, dinner parties, coffee shops, bookstores, dog walks. And still, no thunderclap.
The truth is, love isn’t always something you can manifest by relaxing and pretending not to care. Sometimes it happens. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you’re open, warm, emotionally available, wearing a hot dress, and the universe sends you a man who says he’s “bad at texting.”
Still, I understand the impulse behind the phrase. What people mean is: don’t despair. Don’t grip so tightly. Don’t turn your life into a search party. And that part I can accept. I’m not expecting love around every corner, but I’m not barricading the corners either.
The real plot twist of being single at this age is that I’m not less romantic than I used to be. I’m more romantic. When you’re younger, you mistake drama for depth. You confuse inconsistency for chemistry. You lose whole years to men whose greatest contribution to your life was making you fluent in ~anxiety~. But peace has ruined me in the best possible way.
Once you’ve built a life that feels good, you become far less willing to let someone wander in and start moving the furniture around emotionally. A man cannot simply arrive with cheekbones and expect me to hand over the keys. He has to be kind. Steady. Funny. Or at least deeply appreciative of how funny I am. He has to feel like an exhale.
For the record, I remain open to being set up. I love a set-up in theory, like Victorian calling cards or someone’s aunt knowing a divorcee with a boat. But “he’s nice” is not enough. Nice is not a personality. Nice is what we hope for from a pharmacist. And “he’s single too” is the romantic equivalent of saying two people should open a restaurant because they both own forks.
Does he ask questions? Is he curious? Does he like to travel? Does he genuinely like women as full people? Can he handle someone with opinions, dry humor, strong decorative preferences, and a highly developed sense of the absurd?
Most importantly, would he make my life better than it already is? Because that’s the bar now. Not perfect. Not cinematic. Just additive. Bring me someone who adds. And who is, obviously, handsome. Rich wouldn’t hurt either… you know what I mean.
There’s this assumption that if you’re single in your mid-thirties, you must either be devastated, impossible, avoidant, secretly seeing someone terrible, or in possession of standards so unreasonable they should be brought before a committee. People love to tell single women our standards are too high, which I’ve always found strange, because most of my standards are things I already meet myself.
I pay my own bills. I keep a home. I make plans. I remember birthdays. I communicate. I own sheets. I can apologize. I can sit across from someone and ask them questions. Perhaps some of the accusation is true. I do have standards. I would also prefer he not own a mattress on the floor, follow too many Instagram models, or say “let’s circle back” in a romantic context.
When someone implies my standards are too high, I want to ask: too high compared to what? The floor? My standards are no longer a theoretical exercise. They’re a border-control system. I know what peace feels like now. I know what my life sounds like without someone’s chaos clanging through it. I know the particular luxury of waking up in a quiet apartment and not immediately absorbing another person’s mood. This doesn’t make me closed off. It makes me appropriately difficult to impress!
I’m not asking for a prince. I’m asking for a man with emotional range, clean towels, follow-through, and a working relationship with… let’s say it together… empathy. This shouldn’t require a search party and a subcommittee. These are not high standards. These are just standards.
And after all these years of becoming myself, I’m no longer interested in shrinking them to make someone else feel tall. I know what I want. I know the difference between chemistry and chaos, between charm and character, between a man who is available and a man who simply likes attention. I like to think this makes me less likely to end up divorced. Not because I’m magically wise or immune to mistakes, but because I’ve spent enough time alone to know that alone is not the worst outcome. The wrong person is.
And that knowledge is a gift. It makes love less frantic. It makes partnership something chosen, not clung to. It means that if I do marry someday, it won’t be because I needed someone to rescue me from my life. It’ll be because I found someone worthy of entering it.
Despite all of this, I remain hopeful. Not in the vision-board, red-string, “he’s coming any day now” way. Not in the way that makes every errand feel like a scene in a rom-com… though I remain available to meet a handsome widower near the heirloom tomatoes. I’m hopeful in a quieter way.
I believe love can still happen. I believe lives can change quickly. I believe there are good men out there. I believe in timing, in surprise, in the friend-of-a-friend, in the dinner party, in the slow unfolding of something that doesn’t require me to abandon myself in order to be chosen.
But until then, I don’t want to treat my single life like a hallway outside the grand ballroom of real adulthood. This is the ballroom, baby.
There are bills, yes, and occasional spiders, and no one else to blame when the vegetables go bad. But there’s also peace. Beauty. There’s work I care about, friends I love, a dog with a theatrical inner life, a home that feels like mine, and the great daily luxury of belonging entirely to myself. There’s music.
So yes, I am The Single Friend™.
But I’m also the one going home to a life that is not unfinished. A life that’s soft, full, quiet, funny, expensive, occasionally inconvenient, and entirely my own.
And should love arrive, wonderful. I hope it does. I hope he’s generous and warm and emotionally literate. I hope he has good shoes, good timing, and the good sense to understand that he’s not rescuing me. He’s being invited into my peace.
And peace, at 36, is not something I’m willing to casually hand over to a man who thinks “planning a date” means saying “we should do something sometime” and then disappearing into the fog.
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The read I didn't know I needed this week!! I think this is the best thing I've read on Substack to date. As a fellow Single Friend, this resonated so much with me. 🤎 Thank you so much for taking the time to write this, I can tell so much care went into it. You're sentiments are so thoughtfully shared and with the perfect amount of humor!
Natalie, I absolutely was enraptured by your writing in this one. You have yet again reminded me of all the things in life worth celebrating that aren’t attached to a registry; we must not forget to raise a toast to them, too.