A good friend and I were in the village pub one night last week celebrating my 64th birthday. We found ourselves surrounded by several people in pairs, all bored, sitting in dead silence, some scrolling on their phones, none of them with much to say to each other.
On the contrary, my friend Pete and I never stopped talking and laughing as we caught up on the details of each other’s lives. We took the scenic route home in his car as the light faded over the North Yorkshire Moors. It was a happy evening and he reminded me how much I am grateful in my life.
It has taken me decades of heartbreak, ups and downs to accept that I am happier and living a much better, richer life on my own, rather than in a romantic relationship.
It seems I may be in good company, given data from investment bank Morgan Stanley predicting that 45 percent of women will be single and childless by 2030. If increasing numbers of women choose to live their lives without husbands or children, it is clearly because they increasingly see it as a preferred way of being.
Mandy Applewood, 64, says it has taken her ups and downs to accept that she is happier and lives a much better, richer life on her own, rather than in a romantic relationship.
I wish I could have seen this crucial truth about myself years ago, instead of running around, people-pleasing, searching for (and failing to find) the love story I felt would fix everything. Despite my decades of trying, I never found one that did.
For many years, from the time I began to like boys at the age of 17 until I separated from my most recent partner at 57, I was in on-and-off relationships, usually with exciting, demanding and difficult men, many of them. they damaged. somehow.
Some of those relationships lasted, others crashed and burned, they all blamed me.
I made bad decisions for 40 years by falling in love with men who offered me no real chance at lasting stability. It was exhausting, and yet time and time again I failed to detect the pattern and repeated it.
I fully admit my part in this: I now realize that I was not emotionally mature or wise enough to choose stable, strong, committed men. I always fell in love with the charm, the darkness, the drama.
Maybe I kept trying to find “the right man,” albeit unsuccessfully, because I had been raised to believe that when the right man came along, my life would be complete.
I was born in 1960, so by the time I became a teenager, feminism was in full swing. However, although the young women I grew up with had a freedom that previous generations could not have dreamed of and many had successful careers, it was a fact that true success lay in having not only the salary of an executive but also the husband.
He hoped to be married and have children one day. I believed the dream that the romantic love of an engaged couple reigned.
I now know that while that kind of love is very special, love comes in many forms and from many people, and that sometimes the most lasting and important relationships are those with friends.
The men I fell in love with were very different from each other, but they all had one crucial thing in common: none of them brought me peace and satisfaction.
The die was cast with David, my first true love. I met him at university in London, dazzled by his worldliness and his intelligence. But in the six years we were together he became involved in serious drug abuse and loving him became a form of torture.
Richard was a talented musician, the life and soul of every party, but emotionally stunted.
Then there was a Czech artist, a retainer who blew hot and cold, so I never knew where he stood.
Mandy’s last relationship ended seven years ago. She went to a widower she had been friends with for decades.
It takes a lot of courage to be alone, especially in a world that always harshly judges those of us who live differently from the “norm,” says Mandy.
Philip turned out to be a serial womanizer; Drew was so damaged by the events of his childhood that he couldn’t commit to just one woman.
The South African diving instructor was wild and exciting (we lived together on a boat in California), but he had a dangerous temper that drove me away.
Steve, an enigmatic self-made entrepreneur, turned out to be more in love with himself than with me.
Chris was a wealthy alpha male, recently separated from his wife, who I discovered told easy lies. For one thing, he wasn’t separate at all.
My last relationship ended seven years ago. It was with a widower he had been friends with for decades. When we got together I thought we would be forever.
He was kind and funny, easy to get along with and always considerate. Malc ended our relationship after four years together, worn down by the fact that his daughter didn’t like him and struggled to accept me into their lives. I think that was the one that hurt the most.
It was at that point that I withdrew romantically; more a gentle drift than a conscious decision and, with it, an unexpected discovery of a way of life that I find surprisingly enriching and fortifying.
Now, in my mid-60s, the autumn of my years, I live a life of tranquility and contentment by the sea. A life centered on friends and family, on long, solitary walks with my dog on the beach every day, on my work as a celebrant at weddings and funerals, and on reading, gardening and traveling.
There is a lot of love in my life, which comes from numerous places and relationships, none of them romantic.
Perhaps I am unusual, being as self-sufficient as I am, so happy in my own company. When I was younger I was a voraciously social animal, but now I live a small, uneventful life which suits me because it feels very peaceful and stable.
I accept that, for some of us, life is best lived in a couple and/or family unit. Sure, that’s the path most traveled, but it’s not for all of us, and I wish we’d come to that conclusion (and the peace that comes with it) many decades ago. Maybe when I was younger I lacked the courage to stand out from the crowd, to be an outlier. Or maybe my goals in life have changed with age.
This isn’t some cliché about having full control of the TV remote or not having to wash someone’s socks. It’s not about being a hard-nosed career woman who selfishly spends my money on Manolo Blahnik heels and six-star vacations.
My career as a journalist (which included launching some of Britain’s best-selling magazines) has always been important to me, but I never put it before everything else in my life.
Work was never the be-all and end-all, although I’ve often been dismissed as “a career woman” because I don’t have a husband or children, as if it were one or the other.
Is it selfish to be single? I would say it is not. Quite the opposite. I think I’m more engaged with the world at large, spending more time on “good causes,” more outward-looking than many of my married friends, whose main concerns often seem narrow and domestic by comparison.
In fact, I would say that not having a husband, children and grandchildren leaves me with the energy and inclination to look at the world more broadly, and I consider that a truly positive thing.
Today, enjoying semi-retirement, I am free to travel and spend time with family and friends of both sexes.
As a mature single woman, I feel lucky to have found a calm, nurturing calm that I never found as part of a couple.
I have found the life I should have always lived, if I hadn’t gotten sidetracked and distracted by the ingrained notion that I should be with a partner. In the working class Yorkshire community where I grew up, women became wives and mothers. It took me a lifetime to learn that one size does not fit all.
For me, living a single life is not a failure or a defeat: it is a true and unexpected joy.
Of course, I am not imposing my way of life on others. We all need different levels of connection and community in our lives, and there is no doubt that love and belonging are crucial for all of us.
I am perfectly willing to accept that for those few who find sustained and lasting romantic love, there surely cannot be a happier place.
But how many of us actually find that? Even people who find strong romantic relationships will be lucky if the love lives on, if it doesn’t pale into indifference or turn into festering resentment and lingering discontent. We all know that couple.
If the most important choice of our lives comes down to feeling trapped and compromised in a stagnant marriage or being single, I would prefer to be alone.
Science backs us up: Single, childless women are the happiest subgroup of the population and are more likely to live longer than their married peers with children, according to Paul Dolan, professor of behavioral sciences at the London School of Economics. .
Professor Dolan says the latest evidence shows that traditional markers used to measure success do not correlate with happiness, particularly marriage and parenting.
So it seems there is a new way of being for women, resulting from the opportunities we now have to think beyond marriage and children, to create lives that fit who we are and not what others expect. Ours. And I think it’s worth celebrating.
It takes a lot of courage to stand alone, especially in a world always ready to judge harshly those of us who live differently from the “norm.”
Getting older is a difficult task, but it gives us courage, and if it means we can become who we were meant to be in the first place, here it is.
Some names have been changed to protect identities.
