All by myself

As I get older I find the idea of wanting to be in a couple more and more bizarre. I’m not talking about sex — which anyway often becomes less frequent after years of familiarity — or marrying for financial security. No, I’m puzzled about people’s obsession with getting a permanent companion. There are all sorts of websites and advice columns purported to help us reach this goal. I used to receive ‘taster’ emails from Rori Raye, a bubbly American lady with blonde curls, author of How to Have the Relationship You Want. She offered to show us, for a fee, how to be the woman men always fell for. Our ultimate aim should be to ‘get the ring on the finger’ — basically, to entrap the elusive male.

I became rather fond of Rori, who would empathetically relate her own failures — and her ultimate success. But is ‘being in a relationship’ as wonderful as it’s touted to be? We have all met women who think they’re superior simply because they have a husband. There’s a hilarious bit in the film Airplane when the lurching plane seems about to crash and one passenger says sympathetically of one young woman: ‘She hasn’t even got a husband!’ Then a few minutes later another terrified passenger boasts: ‘I’ve got a husband!’

Some women like to list their mate’s frightful habits or rules as though they were intrinsically interesting, or as if they were proud of taming a wild animal. ‘Michael never notices when the rubbish is full’, ‘Paul insists on a holiday house with at least five bedrooms.’ ‘Bob won’t let me wear red nail polish.’ Surely this is simply another version of proclaiming: ‘I’ve got a husband!’

Since being single for nearly 30 years — I was married for nine — my intolerance level towards possible longterm mates has shot up, but so has my enjoyment of my single state.