Some Things That Happen The First Year of Being Single in 10 Years

Posted on by Kate Louise
  1.  Your maturity level will digress.  All through out college, I was “the girl with the boyfriend.”  Of course I partied.  I wasn’t a psychopath.  I didn’t sit at home with a Zima and write “Mrs. Future Ex-Husband” five hundred times accompanied by doodles of tiny hearts.   I did always tend to go home earlier than most of my friends.  While they were in and out of relationships, I stuck with one guy for ten years.  I was the youngest of my friends to get married so I was dusting closets, baking casseroles and choppin’ broccoli while they were going to shows and hitting up the casino on a random Tuesday night.  Fast forward to becoming a new born singleton and I rebelled, hard.  I went out all the time.  I stopped cooking completely and started the healthy diet of chips, dips and Bud Light beer.  I also decided cleaning my room was stupid, so I am not gonna do it anymore and NO ONE CAN MAKE ME! ha!
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I do what I want.

2.  You will do some very strange things while living alone.  When you aren’t used to living alone, it can be a little rough.  I love being alone, but I get bored.  I had to find ways to entertain myself.  I bought “Harmonica for Dummies” and started to play the acoustic guitar a lot.  I wrote some weird songs; Weird in a bad way, not like “Bjork weird.”  I frequently perform Fiddler on The Roof while sweeping and it is not for cleaning sake (see the previous passage).  In fact, I sing and dance A LOT when I am by myself.  I talk to myself a lot too.  In the winter months, I tend to get a little more creative with the way I spend my recreational time alone.   I made up this game called “Duck.”  The objective is to knock over as many water bottles that I can with a plastic rubber ducky.  Loser buys herself a shot…

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“Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match!  Find me a find, catch me a catch!”

3.  You will finally understand why your single friends didn’t want to be the 3rd, 5th or 7th wheel when you were in a couple.  Most of these previous, single friends will now be in a serious relationship.  They will invite you to things, probably out of pity, but won’t seem to understand why you don’t want to go to dinner by yourself with four couples to a trendy Italian pizza place that happens to only serve 12 inch pizzas and wine by the bottle.  You will go anyway and sit at the end of the table alone.  You will end up chugging an entire bottle of wine and eating a whole pizza out of spite and boredom.  They will act confused when you want to leave early, and you will realize that you were probably the same way when you were coupled up.  (Trust me, I have been there).

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“Just the three of us…again…yay??”

4.  You will change your style, your weight and you will most likely buy something ridiculous that you don’t need, like a boat.  I wish I could say that I bought a boat after my divorce.  Unfortunately, I did not. If I had the means to, I probably would have because “Life is too short,” right?  That was my attitude towards many purchases, but on a smaller level.  I bought extremely bell-bottomed jeans, a leather jacket with beads and fringe, tickets to every show and music festival, headbands and countless pieces of cheap jewelry from head shops that I wore all at once.  I was born in the 1980s, but in my mind it was 1969 for awhile.  I also probably gained about ten pounds.  My ex lost about 30;  And if you are recently single after a long term relationship, you will do one or the other.

Hmm…maybe I could lose those ten pounds if I stopped eating nothing but chips, dip and beer?  Nah, at this point it seems hardly worth giving up something that brings me so much joy…

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I am more of a beer and whiskey girl, but you get the idea…

5.  You will be an emotional rollercoaster.  One minute you are happy, feeling free and singing Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone” in your underwear.  The next minute, you are naked on the floor, wailing and throwing yourself one hell of a pity party.  Time is the only thing that calms the waves, but to you the only time is now.  So, when someone says “give it time,” you kind of what to punch them in the face;  Even though they are totally correct.  Ugh, I hate time.

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“When will this ride be over, so I can feel normal?!”

6.  You will find comfort in the little things…like BATHS!  Taking a bath was the only thing that could make me feel at peace.  I took very long baths too, sometimes staying in the tub until my skin felt like it was going to fall apart AND for the the first few days I was taking 2-3 baths a day.  Now, I am down to just one. Thankfully, my epidermis did not experience any long term damage.

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“Not gonna cry…nope, I am NOT gonna cry…”

7.  Dating will feel like trying to play the arcade version of Mortal Kombat after a long night of partying.  You will have no idea what you are doing.  You’ll be swiping and pressing buttons blindly, hoping for the best.  Sometimes you will be able to take out your opponent without even knowing how you did it.  Other times, you will have your heart ripped from your chest out of no where.  If you’re a woman, dating might save you a little money.  Dating is expensive on the modern man, I’m sure.  I root for you guys, I really do.  Thanks for all those free beers and fried calamari.  I just spent over an over getting ready, while you threw on a buttoned-down shirt and jeans which took you about 10 minutes (you aren’t used to buttons normally, so you had to redo it a couple of times. Thank you for trying to make an impression).  Time is money, fellas.  Products and make-up cost money too, so it really does all even out in the end.

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“FINISH HIM!!!”

8.  You won’t understand why some aloof guy doesn’t want to date you and you won’t understand YOURSELF when you ignore a really great guy who DOES want to date you, but I guarantee YOU WILL ALWAYS WANT THE ONE THAT DOESN’T WANT YOU. 

Son of a bitch…right?

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“What Ken?  I don’t really care what YOU have to say…I am waiting for this guy named Jabba to come and chain me to his Hutt.”

-Lou

 

27 thoughts on “Some Things That Happen The First Year of Being Single in 10 Years”

  1. Funny as well as perceptive! I was married most my adult life … well, you already know that because you read my slam on Match.com. For a writer, every experience is grist for the mill. I’m going to work on a more fully-developed online dating opinion piece over the next three months. Actually — and I’m sure it’s being done and maybe overdone — coming out of the safety of the married harbor and using dating sites has got to be a great bit for many stand-up comedians. Would love to see the next seven steps here. And, thanks for dropping by my online writing studio.

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  2. This is fantastic! Really! Quite witty and humorous and all too relatable I’m sure. I mean I’m not divorced yet but I feel like I already know what my life will look like when I am. Looking forward to more.

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  5. I had to laugh, as I recognize myself in many of these items. ( YAY retail therapy! A corset? Sure! Why not! But seriously? I didn’t buy a boat, but I bought those two corsets on an impulse buy for way too much money and haven’t worn them once. They look pretty awesome though.)

    Thanks for sharing!

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      1. Butterflyfrillies.Com

        (And now after sharing that, and feeling like a minion with a pitchfork on one shoulder, I will toss that aside and don my crooked halo… saying “Resist! Resist!”

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  7. Haha! Good to know I’m normal! Haha! Mine was 23 yrs! Yikes….my whole adult life. I am in my second adolescence. Finally settling into it after 2 years apart. Still confused about the whole dating thing though. 🙂

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  8. That’s funny! I find they make for grand writing material if nothing else! Haha! No actually I look at everything in life as my teacher, a learning experience. Some more pleasant than others.
    Look forward to reading more of your writing. I’m enjoying it. Shoot me a comment sometime if you read some more of my posts on dating, divorce, relationships, love, heartache….I have waaaay too many categories! : )

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  9. In the midst of laughing, I also took notes to remind you to be in charge of bringing your “Harmonica of Dummies” book, a 6-pack of Zima, and facilitating a game of Duck when we are all together again. That will make for a fabulous night. ❤

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  11. This resonates with me. 9 years in a relationship. 3 years single now. 3 years of sorry babe, ive got a boyfriend or i am not really looking for that right now. But it has also been 3 years of finding my self, who i am and who i want to be. Im back in the game now in a big way.

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  15. This is hilarious, and all the more so because it is true. The odd and interesting part of that is that it is still true. It was true thirty+ years ago when I was divorced and dating, and it appears to still be true. Proof that the human condition is the human condition, across time. While my experience then was not exactly like yours, it was similar enough. I married young (19). So while everyone else was doing the typical college things in college, I was studying hard and going home. No crazy nights out. What I missed could be considered a developmental stage. When I was divorcing, I learned, much to my surprise, that I had to go back and live through that developmental stage. But at thirty, I burned through it fast–like in six months. Now a widow and dating at the age of sixty-seven, I can confirm that rule #8 holds true for me too. Argh!

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    1. Oh no! I thought maybe in time #8 would be a distant dating memory, but as you said, “the human condition is the human condition,” despite years lived. Maybe we all just get a little more self aware. I know I have, but that doesn’t mean I actually changed any behaviors…yet, but at least I’m in good company:). Thank you for reading and commenting!

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