Stop all that moaning! Being single means adventurous nights out and time to work out what really matters, says Hilary Hazard
I’ve been single for nearly four years now. My last relationship was all consuming, my first love, my one serious relationship, but since that I’ve been a terminal singleton, I associate love with pain and so have built up an unwitting defence against it. In the meantime I’ve done plenty, I’ve got mine, I’ve started and seen projects through, travelled, made friends, got a degree and got the job done.
My brain is accustomed to having complete control, and it’s that control I can’t relinquish to love. I found being in love completely overwhelming, suddenly I couldn’t think about anything else. All my conversations revolved around him, and when they didn’t I would either lose interest and stop listening or change the subject, back to him. I would go to parties, either because I knew he’d be there, or because I’d know telling him might impress him, or make him jealous. And at the parties I didn’t have a good time, because he wasn’t there, and I didn’t care about the people who were because they weren’t him. In short, I was dull, and apart from the bits with him in it, so was life. Fuck that.
I can’t afford it, I don’t have time for dwelling on some chump who will probably think me obsessive (and have a point), disappoint and eventually hurt me. Instead I focus my energies on life, on friends and fun and working hard and playing harder, and occasionally have minor crushes on utterly inappropriate/unavailable and ridiculous men, or boys, depends on the time of year. Love songs don’t make me cry, or grin inanely, I don’t do jealousy, and every night out is an adventure, a possibility, an unknown. I’m out of the relationship loop and I’ve filled the extra brain space with things that are easier, more entertaining and more important.
I have enlisted my most handsome friend (out of my league and emotionally unavailable) for drunken rambling and the occasional ego-boosting kiss on the lips. I have a free spirited 21-year-old for nights when it’s all go. I have an approachable ex for missing terribly and lusting after, and my gay boyfriend (a double negative - he’s not gay, and he’s not my boyfriend), for sparks of inspiration, intelligent conversation and occasional male comforting
When I’ve had relationships where I thought I might actually care about this guy and maybe I could be in love again, they run a mile, and I breathe a vaguely forlorn sigh of relief. I haven’t given up on the concept of love, but I’m in my twenties and I’m busy, love can wait. I hope.
Obviously I would like a boyfriend, being loved and in love is still one of my ultimate goals, I still consider love to be integral to happiness and contentment. But I regard it in the same way that I regard wealth and success; as something I’m working towards, that won’t happen overnight but that will happen, one day. Sometimes it’s hard to not take it personally and think ‘Why don’t I have a boyfriend? What’s wrong with me? WHY DON’T YOU LOVE ME?’ But I pass it off as low self-esteem, and remember that loneliness is not exclusive to single people, and that the loneliness you feel in relationships can be just as crippling, and just as dark. I talk to the women I’m surrounded by who are also single, and who are incredibly kind, and clever and cool, and I think maybe it’s the men we meet who should be insulted, because they are never entirely up to scratch.
Right now I am still too protective of my own happiness to entrust it to the care of someone else, it’s too important that I can concentrate, that I stay on form, that I’m confident and enthusiastic. I learned the hard way how easy it is to hand all that to a boy and have him leave it in a cab on London Bridge, or dash it away on a harsh word, missed arrangement, or a badly phrased text. The men I’ve seen are all too willing to mess about with my happiness, but I’m not. Not anymore.
Hilary Hazard is sub-editor for Knockback magazine.
