When you've never been in love

What is it they say about a woman alone? She’s got a few cats, a vibrator or two in her beside table, and she’s miserable. Not me!

It’s my 27th birthday today, so let’s talk about how I’ve never been in love!! This is an excerpt from our debut book ‘Make It Make Sense’ which is out now!!! It would make my heart so fucking happy if you got yourself a copy, I love you so much x

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When you’ve never been in love

By Lucy

What is it they say about a woman alone? She’s got a few cats, a vibrator or two in her bedside table, and she’s miserable. She’s too free-spirited to hold down a relationship, or too obsessed with climbing the corporate ladder to find the time, and she’s sitting at home on Saturday nights yearning. Has she tried lowering her expectations? Tried going to therapy? Has she tried the apps?

I’ve never been in proper love, and let me tell you: me and my sinful bedside table are just fine.

Do I need to reassure you here that I’m not a total spinster? I’ve had flings with people whom I’ve become best friends with, boyfriends who were around for a season and not exactly a reason, and people I’ve tried to love, maybe even should have loved, but couldn’t. Therapists have asked me about the relationships I saw growing up, and I’ve told them that as a kid I never saw one that I’d want for myself. Instead, I saw couples who were indifferent to each other, who hated each other, or who wanted to leave but being alone seemed a fear too big to face. At best, I saw the type of relationship you have with the jeans that stopped fitting you four years ago but that you hold onto anyway, hoping one day they’ll fit like they used to again. It could be that these couples all just got married too young and that they were products of the age they grew up in, where you met at a pub, connected over a phone line, got married, and popped out a few kids who soon become the only thing you had in common. I’m sure relationships are different these days; I’m just not sure I want one. Sue me!

Am I doing my twenties wrong though?

We’re told that in your twenties, you’re supposed to be out all the time, being distracted by dates and anniversaries, disappointments and star-crossed lovers. I love nothing more than helping my friends navigate all of that. We’ve always been different – they’re on apps where you swipe to find someone you might be moderately compatible with, I’m on apps burning auto-captions on videos. They’re going out to chic wine bars and meeting people who talk about fishing and Pulp Fiction. I’m going out to chic wine bars and meeting people who want to help me migrate to the best newsletter platform for a small-scale start-up. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

Maybe this is just how I justify my intermittent loneliness, but looking back at my proudest moments, I can’t help but wonder if they would have happened if I had been busy being in love. If I had had a partner when I was bored in that lecture theatre, would Shit You Should Care About exist, or would I have texted them and asked if they wanted to go and get ramen for dinner? If I hadn’t spent all my free time over those next few years sharing parts of myself online or responding to DMs, emails, and comments, would I have been on stage in New York City talking to people from The New York Times or The Atlantic about the platform and community we’d built at SYSCA, giving those publications tips for how they could do the same? If I was off having brunch with my ‘better half ’ every Sunday morning instead of catching up on emails and world events, would I be getting brunch with my idols today? I know some people choose both: I’m just not one of them. I was intoxicated by freedom, knowing that if I wanted to do something extraordinary I had to choose a different adventure. So I did.

Sunday mornings are for sex, loneliness or your passions

When you choose the latter, you’re choosing yourself. Your friends might not get it. You’ll catch yourself on another group holiday, in another designated single bed, spending another night listening to your couple friends ask each other if they’d like to ‘get a few things and split them’ for dinner. These moments make you think about the single tax and how your life is more expensive when you’ve got no one to split rent with and no wedding registry to furnish your home. How you’ll attend expensive hen weekends at wineries and buy uncomfortable shoes to attend ‘destination’ weddings, knowing these may be sunk costs that your friends will never return. Your friends say things like, ‘One day you’re going to meet someone who changes the way you feel about all of this!’ and they’ll genuinely believe it. You’ll humour them, and wake up early the next day to go and find a spot to write a newsletter or stay up late researching something for a podcast and thank god you didn’t have anyone in bed beside you asking you to be quiet or turn down the brightness on your phone.

When your ambition takes the spot in the bed next to you, there are sacrifices. Of course there are. Do I feel like I’m left out of a secret club that you’re only allowed into after you’ve posted something with a caption like: ‘three laps around the sun with this one!’? Sure I do. But I’m kinda obsessed with that for me. Your twenties might be about finding someone who loves you deeply, shows you the world and holds your hand because they want to. I’m obsessed with that for you.

I’ve heard love is a drug

Never being in love is how I imagine people might feel if they’ve never experimented with drugs – you don’t know what you’re missing, but you always wonder if your life might be fuller if you tried it. There is always wondering. What would it be like to relate to most of Taylor Swift’s discography? To have someone to put your bags into the plane’s overhead compartment? Would you understand poetry better? Would you care about Shakespeare more? Since you can’t roll over and ask the love of your life, you have to ask yourself. The empty space beside you becomes filled with the businesswoman, the writer, the joke teller, the sibling, the friend, and all the other things you choose to be when you’re not waiting for someone else to choose you. An empty space is not loneliness. It gives you room to build out your life. To let people come and go when they need it. To fill it with whatever you want, whenever you want. Plus, an empty space means no one is snoring.

When you’ve never received a good morning text, or had someone to finish your sentences, you learn to have a good morning on your own and to write your own stories. You stop blaming the timing, the planets, or bad luck and instead choose to focus on the little things that remind you that even without a lover, you are loved. There is love in every ‘this reminded me of you’ or ‘text me when you get home’ message you receive. There is love in every song you’re sent or book you’re recommended. There is love in everyone who listens to the things that excite you. There is love in the people who accompany you to the bathroom or help you move house or tell you they’re proud of you when you’re off chasing some new dream.

Even if you’ve never been in it, there is still love. The romance can come later, if you want.