This month I started new job and most of the women in my office are partnered. They’ve started asking about my love life and here’s how the conversations usually go.

“So, do you have a boyfriend?”

“No! I don’t.”

*Cue eyebrow raise

“Oh okay. But you’re like dating right? You’re in the casual dating scene?”

“Mmm No, actually, not really.”

*Cue awkward silence.

It’s usually at this point that I get the urge to explain how I got out of a long term relationship last year or how, I’m actually too busy to date rn or how I love being single and have no interest in dating.

But I’ve start to just bite my tongue and allow them to relish in their own uncomfortableness with my singleness. And I know it’s there because they always follow up with:

“Oh well I was single before I started dating my Nigel so don’t worry, your time will come!” - Actual quote.

Or “Well you know what they say, you fall in love when you least expect it, so it’s actually good you’re not looking!!” - another actual quote.

And I sit there, again, fighting the urge to justify my singleness or explain how actually no, me not dating is not some secret agenda to fall in love with another scrote.

As an attractive, social woman, decentering men and making no apologies or explanations for it has been quite the experience. Most of my adult life has been in long term relationships, so I never realized how much me “having a boyfriend” defused other women. Now that I’m single and not dating, I’m baffled by how shocked and unaccepting of it other women are.

It’s also like if you’re single, they’re desperate to hear all of your dating escapades to run home to tell their partners about. It’s not to knock these women either; it’s happened so frequently now that I’m realizing how socially conditioned we are to be obsessed with partnering and validating ourselves with relationships.

Anyone experience anything similar?