How to be on your own

For all the single ladies, and all the single gentlemen

Last week, if you recall (and even if you don’t) I wrote about loneliness. But I didn’t want that piece to end up feeling lonely. So I’m writing about it again.

The two articles can be partners, companions nestling up to one another on my homepage. And yet even this might not be enough to obviate loneliness. Sometimes, it is possible to feel incredibly alone even when you are together, as some of you wrote to me this week…

“The loneliest I ever felt was in an unhappy marriage…”

“Even in the midst of a family, it can strike…”

“As a long time depression sufferer I know what loneliness is, despite having a house full of a loving wife and 3 beautiful children…”

Nicola Slawson knows a bit about all this. Her delightful substack column is all about single life and earlier this year she published a book packed with everything she has learned about living on her own.

When we spoke this week, I was fascinated by her story. I have hardly ever lived alone, apart from a few dismal months during a gap year in Switzerland when I was 17, shy, and lonely as a crab in a nightclub. I knew then that I’d need to find a compatible human being, to stop me thinking myself inside out.

For Nicola, who endured a number of tiresome relationships in her 20s, it’s pretty much the opposite.

“I was the most lonely I’ve ever been when I was inside relationship and didn’t feel connected to the person next to me,” she says.

“So being single feels like a liberation.”

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The penny dropped during the pandemic. As the nation retreated behind 30 million front doors, Nicola moved from London back to her home town, Shrewsbury. And as isolation infected perhaps as many people as the virus did, Nicola was taking steps to keep it at bay.

She started a Facebook group called the Single Supplement which quickly grew to close on 3,000 members. Their experiences gave Nicola a rich understanding of what being single entails, in an era when it is becoming increasingly common¹.

“People think loneliness is an old person by themselves sitting in same seat, not having any visitors,” she says. “And while it can be that, people from all walks can be lonely and experience social isolation.”

More importantly still, she learned what single people who live alone have to do to avoid becoming isolated.

“When I’ve lived alone I had to make the effort to put myself out there and make sure I scheduled things in my diary. I’m good at that, but not everyone is.”

So she joined yoga workshops and craft classes; she worked an allotment and volunteered. She made friends with neighbours, joined a campaign to save a local park, and became a trustee of an arts centre.

“Studies show single people actually have higher level of social connectedness,²” she says.

I know Nicola a little from the Guardian newsroom, a busy place that can also be lonely. So I know she is the kind of person who would be good at this: affable, capable, hard working, fun to be around.

But lots of people aren’t. Nicola says that in her Single Supplement community there are people who have arranged meet-ups, theatre outings and made great friendships. But others, she says, still feel left out - by circumstance, by geography, by heartbreak, by friends disappearing into coupled life.

“For a lot of people it’s a way of life, but of course within the community there are a lot of people who would like not to be single,” she says. For these people, she says, it’s important to accept their single status while it lasts and try to remain active.

“Don’t just live half a life,” she says.

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Irony of ironies. Just when Nicola was settled and happy in her single life, it was rudely interrupted by a new arrival. She conceived a child with the help of a gay friend, Tom, and 15 months ago Stella was born.³

For now, they all live together along with a cat whose name I’ve forgotten. The oracle of living on your own is no longer living on her own.

“I’m really craving solitude at the moment, because I don’t have much of it,” Nicola confesses. “In the future we will be in separate houses, but I don’t know when that will be. For now I’m focused on Stella, and that’s enough.”

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Braindrops (10)

These (topical) phrases are spelled identically, apart from the letter shown. Can you guess them, from my twisted clues?

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _. S _ _ _ _ In court battle, make the expected points... (4,4,5)

_ _ _ _. _ _ _ _. N _ _ _ _ … and withstand the pressure (4,4,5)

Last week: These words are spelled identically. Can you guess them from the clues?

_ _ _ _ _ _ Faster (6). DIETER

_ _ _ _ _ _ First name (6). DIETER

Until next week

1. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/bulletins/familiesandhouseholds/2023

2. https://www.lisacwalsh.com/uploads/1/1/9/9/119996176/walsh_et_al._2022.pdf

3. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/06/two-single-friends-one-radical-plan-why-im-having-a-child-with-my-gay-best-mate