Single women get a pretty bad rep. In romantic comedies, the main character is always a harried career woman, rushing around and doing a million things at once. She’s bitter, she’s convinced that love doesn’t exist… and then, of course, Prince Charming comes into the picture. Those of us that are single in real life know it doesn’t exactly work like that. True love takes time, unfortunately, and it’s not so simple to meet people these days. We may love our careers (as we should – we spend enough time working in this crazy busy world) but we’re a lot nicer than the movies would want you to believe. But there are still some common things that happen if you’ve been seriously single for a long time (longer than you want to admit, probably). Here are 13 ways to tell if you’ve been single forever.
13 Pizza is Your BFF
Whether you absolutely adore cooking or use your kitchen for storage, it’s no secret that cooking for one is kind of depressing. Every recipe states that it makes enough for four people and that’s just another harsh reminder that it’s just you, about to eat dinner alone. Enter pizza. It’s everyone’s favorite food but if you’ve been single for a while, it’s your best friend in the entire world. According to experts, those crazy millennials claim they want healthy food but in the end, they like the low cost of fast food or junk food. So it’s no wonder that single women are eating tons of pizza – junk food is so much cheaper than buying ingredients for a healthy home-cooked meal.
12 Your Couch is Your Favorite Place in the World
Raise your hand if you’re single and you go out seven days a week. Your hand is definitely not raised because we’re all pretty exhausted at the end of a busy day at the office. All we want to do is head to our couch and stay there for the next several hours. We’re watching more TV than ever before, thanks to that little trend called binge-watching – almost 50 percent of those living in Canada binge TV – and it makes sense that if you’re not in a relationship, you have a lot of free nights to spend with your TV.
11 You’ve Tried Every Single Dating app
If you’re interested in meeting someone and finding love, chances are you’re online dating. It’s a super popular way to date these days, since meeting a handsome stranger in line at your local Starbucks is basically out of the question. You know you’ve been single for ages if you, not only have an account with a dating site like OkCupid, but your iPhone boasts every single dating app. Tinder, Hinge, Bumble – you’ve tried them all. They haven’t worked yet since you’re still unattached but hey, you’re optimistic. You can’t wait to see what new dating apps 2016 will bring.
10 First Dates Scare you
Okay, maybe they don’t scare you the way that a Halloween haunted house would. But you’ve gone on so many first dates that were either totally boring or totally creepy, and that’s enough for anyone to get bored of the dating scene. At first, dating when you’re single is pretty exciting. You feel a sense of hope in the air and feel your next boyfriend is just another date away. But once you start feeling like going on dates is more trouble than it’s worth, you know you’re really single. You’d rather stay home than put on make-up and a nice dress just to sit across from a dull stranger.
9 Your Friends Have Stopped Asking
When you broke up with your last boyfriend, your BFFs were super enthusiastic after every new date you went on. They wanted to know all the details – what he looked like, what his job was, what restaurant you went to, if he walked you home. Now you mention you had a date and they just shrug, figuring it was probably not all that great. It’s not that your best friends don’t hope you’ll meet someone, but they’ve been down this road before. You all know how rare good first dates are. Unfortunate, yet so true.
8 Your mom has Accepted Your Fate
Your poor mom. She wanted grandkids by now or at least an engagement. But nope, you’ve got nothing. At first she was upset, telling anyone who would listen at family dinners and Christmas celebrations that she wished you would meet a nice young man already. Now she’s accepted that this is the way it is and doesn’t even talk about your love life. Your annoying relatives, on the other hand – well, they never stop asking whether you’re getting a ring on your finger anytime soon. Can’t help you there. That’s what relatives are for, right?
7 You Adore Your Routine
Sure, couples have routines – Friday night dinners at the neighborhood Italian place, Sunday morning walks to get coffee and bagels. But you’re definitely single when you’ve created the perfect routine for yourself. It may only revolve around how much TV you can watch in a single sitting, but that’s totally fine. You enjoy coming home to a clean apartment after a long day (or, you know, cleaning the apartment immediately if you have roomies) and you’re starting to like not having to share your space with anyone. You don’t have to fight about how much you really don’t want to watch sports and you can basically do whatever you want.
6 You don’t Want to get Married Anymore
Every little girl dreams of a beautiful white wedding. You’re totally lying if you claim that you didn’t. When you’re young, it seems so obvious that you’re going to get married as soon as humanly possible. You’ll wear a pretty veil and there will be a chocolate fountain and everyone will oooh and ahhh over how lovely and amazing you and your soon-to-be-husband are. Now, you’ve been alone for so long that you can’t imagine ever getting married. You swear to yourself and your best friends that you don’t even want to, even though everyone knows you still do. At least you’re kind of normal since Gen Y is taking way longer to get married.
5 You’re no Longer a Hopeless Romantic
It’s pretty difficult to keep believing in true love and romance when you can’t even go on a second date (whether it’s your choice or not). You figure that love probably still exists since you know at least a few people who seem blissfully in love. Maybe your best friend has the best boyfriend ever, or your parents have been together since the stone ages and aren’t splitting up anytime soon. And there wouldn’t be so many books and movies and songs and TV shows about love if it wasn’t possible. But you no longer care about getting red roses and chocolate on Valentine’s Day or even having a guy open a door for you. Romance is totally dead, as far as you’re concerned.
4 You Never Take off Your Sweats
Why would you? Sweatpants and leggings are so much more comfy than jeans. They’re basically made for lying around watching too many movies in a single evening, and they don’t expect anything of you. You don’t have to do your hair or put on mascara that takes ages to wash off. Sure, sometimes you forget that sweatpants aren’t technically acceptable pants to wear outside your apartment and when you show up to Friday night drinks, your friends wonder if you’ve totally let yourself go. You've also been known to wear your workout clothes when you're not working out at all. But that’s just another glorious side-effect of the single life.
3 You’ve Become a Planner
In the early days of our single life, we figure that we should wait to make the really big decisions –we should move across the country, should we invest in a condo or keep renting, etc. – until we’ve met our soulmate. Now you’ve been on your own long enough that you know you shouldn’t put off until tomorrow what can be done today. Why wait? You love to plan now. You’ve got the next five to ten years all mapped out (at least in your head, if not on paper somewhere) and aren’t going to wait a second longer to live the life that you want.
2 You’re Proud
At a certain point, you realize that hey, you’ve been doing all this on your own for months (maybe even years) and you’re not doing that badly. You can fix your own toilet, buy groceries, clean your bathroom, learn new recipes, workout on a regular basis, do an amazing job at your full-time gig, etc. You even start to impress yourself a little. This is a great part of the single life – the feeling of complete and utter independence that you get after a while. It’s priceless. And you know you won’t stop being so independent once you do enter into a new relationship.
1 You’re Happy This way
Not to get all cheesy, but in the end, your happiness is all that matters. You can be miserable in a relationship and you can be depressed when you’re alone, but hopefully you’ll feel peace and joy either way. You know you’ve been single for practically forever if you’ve realized that you don’t need someone to complete you. You’ve moved on from wondering what’s wrong with you (nothing, obviously) and you’ve figured out a way to feel calm despite the uncertainty. You’re okay being you, sweatpants and Netflix on a Friday night and all. But would it kill Prince Charming to show up sometime soon?
Sources: businessinsider.com, marketingmag.ca, telegraph.co.uk
