Amy Roullier is The Authentic Optimist. Part time writer, full time pro at oversharing. With a no BS approach to conversations around single life, mental health and wellbeing
However, no-one is going to applaud you for being single, nor celebrate your wins in a way they do for others. Yep, you heard me right. All in all, it’s fair to say that society can be extremely fixated on conventional accomplishments, specific expectations and mainstream milestones. Ones often intertwined with some aspect of partnership. Milestones like weddings, moving in with a partner, getting engaged, starting a family, or beginning …
Why am I still single?. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve asked myself this question. Often accompanied with the following: Am I not a nice person? Deserving of love? Have I not endured and suffered enough frogs? Am I too bossy? Too confident? Should I be less opinionated? Is it the way I look? Where I live? Am I not pretty enough? Perhaps I should be more …
It wasn’t until I went single no mingle, that I realized how much dating had become an important part of my conversations with people. And by making who I was dating a highly discussed topic, I had inadvertently sent the message to myself that nothing else was more conversation worthy than this.
And if nothing else was as interesting, then nothing I had to say that wasn’t about when or who the next date was lined up with, mattered much.
I used to see single as a situation to survive. It’s taken me years to get to a point of being able to say, ‘I love being single,’ and really mean it.
It’s not been easy to trek for sure. However, it has been a lifechanging one. Which all started the moment I began to look at single as something other than a status I needed to do everything in my power, to change. I embraced being single, and in doing so worked my towards thrive rather than survive.
You wake up early, to sunlight seeping in through your bedroom window and the sound of chirping birds outside. You’re in no rush, enjoying the peacefulness of the moment. Lazily unfolding yourself from the duvet in your own time. You fancy scrambled eggs and coffee so you make them both. Just the way you like them. It’s a blue sky morning, so you sit outside to enjoy the sunshine and …
Rewind back to 2016, where I was 31 and going through a divorce, so newly single. I didn’t plan to be single in my 30s of course, but there it was. Singledom. Suddenly feeling so much more permeable than it had in my teens or 20s. Would I be single forever? Who knew. But what I did learn, is that people don’t understand single at all and there is a …
Situationships. It’s that whole ‘we’ve been sleeping together for a while, may have romantic feelings towards one another, but definitely aren’t, ‘together’.’ It’s the relationship that isn’t a relationship at all. They’ve become a dating trend for me over the past seven years and I’ve found it a destructive situation. But apparently these situations are also a post covid dating trend. Dating app Hinge, found that a third of all …
A slightly belated blog I’ve been sat on for a while, but hear me out … For the first time in my life, I’m really over dating. Not just slightly deterred, a little pessimistic but still a tiny bit hopeful. Totally, resolutely out. Earlier this year an Ex from two and a half years ago knocked on my door. Yep, no pre-warning text message. Actually turned up on the doorstep …
For the last 10 months I’ve been trying to show myself a little more love by working on some serious (-ly lacking) boundaries, prioritizing self-care and pushing myself out of my comfort zone. Part of that journey has been getting really comfortable spending some alone with myself. So far I’ve tackled solo cinema outings, unaccompanied gigs, coffee and dinners by myself, solitary UK weekends away, and a whole load of …
Socially, being a single woman in her 30s is a weird place to be. There’s like a pariah status that comes with the territory. It’s for this very reason I’ve sometimes struggled myself with the concept of being single. People have made my single status feel like a curse at times. Other people. Because a single woman, especially an older single woman, is just hella kinds of crazy! The single …
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