I am single. Happily and deliberately so.
I’ve had a few longer relationships in my life, but at some point I came to the conclusion that having a partner simply doesn’t fit into my life. Not because I’m disappointed in relationships or because I think there is anything wrong with them. I just genuinely like my life the way it is. I don’t need a partner for it to feel complete.
And perhaps that is why I sometimes wonder whether all this talk about single women is actually taking us where we want to go.
There is still a difference in the way society looks at single men and single women. A man on his own is easily seen as independent, free, perhaps even enviably so. With a woman, the questions tend to come much sooner: Why is she single? Hasn’t she found anyone? Does she really want to be alone? Isn’t she lonely?
So yes, I understand why we need to talk about women who are happily single. Why it matters to say that there is nothing missing from their lives and that they don’t need to justify the way they live.
But I wonder whether that should really be the destination.
Recently, I came across the idea of a trip to Italy specifically for single women. And my first thought was: what a lovely idea.
My second was: why single women?
Why not simply women?
I can completely understand the appeal of travelling with a group of women for a few days. No men, no having to take into account when or what someone else wants to eat, what they feel like doing, whether somebody needs to be waited for. Just women travelling together and enjoying each other’s company.
But surely a married woman or a woman in a happy relationship might enjoy exactly the same thing. Perhaps she would particularly enjoy a few days without her husband or partner – not because anything is wrong with the relationship, but simply because she likes spending time with other women.
And ten happily single women won’t automatically make a harmonious group either.
Some will be easy-going, some complicated. Some will be completely at ease with themselves, others less so. Someone will probably rub somebody else up the wrong way. Being single doesn’t give us a particular personality, a particular outlook on life or a guarantee that we will get along.
We are just people.
A few days ago, I had a conversation on a train that brought this home to me in a completely different way.
Four strangers happened to start talking.
One was an older gentleman who had grown up in a working-class family, gone to university and had once been a professional chess player.
Another was a young gay Moroccan man studying medicine who would like to become Minister of Health one day.
The third was a young Syrian woman wearing a headscarf. She has only been in Germany for two years, speaks perfect German and is currently going through the process of having her degree and professional qualification as a pharmacist recognised.
And then there was me.
We talked about religion. About the headscarf. About politics and wars. About healthcare.
Not exactly the safest subjects for four strangers with very different backgrounds.
And yet we talked.
At some point I said that perhaps quite a few of our problems would become a little smaller if we simply talked to people more often.
Not to the woman in the headscarf.
Not to the Moroccan.
Not to the working-class man or the university graduate.
But to the person sitting in front of us.
That doesn’t mean pretending that our differences don’t exist. They do. Different cultures, religions, traditions and life experiences are part of who we are. We can respect them. We can be curious about them. We can even disagree about them.
But they don’t have to be the box we put someone into before the conversation has even begun.
And perhaps the same is true of being single.
Maybe the next step isn’t to create a better image of the single woman.
Maybe the next step is to stop seeing the single woman at all.
A trip to Italy could simply be a women’s trip. Married, divorced, partnered, widowed, single – women who want to spend a few days together.
There could even be one rule:
For these few days, we don’t talk about men or relationships.
Why not?
We have father-and-child weekends, bowling-club trips, book clubs, running groups and all sorts of occasions that bring people together for a particular reason. For a while, they share something without that one thing having to define who they are.
Perhaps that is where I would like us to get to.
A point where “single” is simply one piece of information about a person. No more important at first sight than countless other pieces of information.
Where I don’t have to defend being single.
Where nobody has to celebrate me for being single either.
Where the person opposite me doesn’t first see the single woman, the woman with the headscarf, the gay Moroccan, the working-class child or the academic.
Just a person.
And then we start talking.
Just a point of view.