You get to the office and there’s not so much as an aphid on
your desk, let alone a bunch of roses from a smitten co-worker. By the time
you’ve struggled home on the bus, the only intimate encounter you’ve had has
been with a violin case, when the kid carrying it grudgingly gets up to offer
you their seat as the bags you are carrying under your eyes look so heavy. As
you open the front door, the last optimistic brain cell you have winks out of
existence as the door slides over the top of the day’s post without getting
wedged on the way. Despite the tone of longing in the correspondence, neither
the phone bill nor the credit card statement are written in the sort of red ink
you had hoped for.
Yep – it’s Valentine’s Day, and the like the majority of single
people over the age of 32 your romantic prospects are looking rather poorer
than Kim Jong Un’s chances of winning the Liberal Free Thinker of the Year
contest.
You could turn around, head down to the pub and let four
pints of Wibbly’s Old Peculiar simultaneously lower the romantic bar and your
standards or just appreciate that you’re on the pointy end of societal chance.
In 2017, around one third of people in the UK are living on
their own. In 2013 this amounted to 7.7 million people and was growing rapidly.
This signposts a huge change in our social fabric towards the comfortable
fleecy end. What’s more, they aren’t all dating site die-hards with a face only
an adventurous plastic surgeon could love or people who are one tin of Whiskas
away from being a cat-snack.
The fact is that living on your own – or at least without another
grown-up biped – is actually pretty cool. Here are some reasons why you, as a solo
inhabitant of your space should take pity on those romantic fools that embrace
the schmaltz of Valentines Day.
Self-indulgence
Living alone gives you complete freedom to be you –
free-spirited and self-indulgent. Your
bad habits are not something that you have to try and curb – you can simply get
better at them. Take an existential approach. If you give free rein to
flatulence in your lounge and no-one is there to experience it, is it really
bad? Only if it causes the paint to peel off the walls, in my book.
Housework
This becomes purely optional. Dust bunnies can make
surprisingly good pets that thrive on a lack of attention and provide
energy-efficient insulation. They make no demands of their owner in terms of
exercise and will breed prolifically in the right environment as long as they
are not startled by loud noises such as vacuum cleaners.
Food
Eat what you want, when you want. The concept of a balanced
diet takes on a whole new meaning when the fridge light reveals a scene from a
science fiction movie. An isolated wasteland punctuated by the occasional
menacing alien life form blinking in the unaccustomed light. Or your fridge
might be so full of superfoods that it has to be restrained from sprinting
around your kitchen. The point is, it’s up to you.
Mornings
In the first flush of a new relationship, it may be quite
charming to roll over in the morning and see the object of your affections
lying there in peaceful slumber. (Unless the relationship is less than 12 hours
old, in which case you might be a bit startled and hard-pushed to remember
their name.)
But you know that as time goes on, this charming vision will
lose its appeal, like a bag of prawns left on a sunny window ledge. The cute
snuffling will turn into a snore that can be measured on the Richter Scale. The
alluringly ruffled hair will, day by day, start to look more like an over-used
toilet brush. And that’s just the girls.
No compromise
A partner can
be a hand brake who stops you attempting things that are ambitious, ill-advised
or just illegal, for their own selfish reasons. But for the solo traveller
through life, the only limitations are self-imposed (if you don’t count
imprisonment or possible death) so once you ram raid your way through those,
you’re free to find out what you’re really capable of.
This is just
the tip of the iceberg in terms of the upside of being alone. It’s a movement
that’s growing in size and we need to give it a voice. Remember, you’re never
alone when you’re alone! OK – the slogan may need a little work, but you know
what I mean.
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