You know what? If being single were an illegal drug, I'd probably do it anyway. I just need the high, man. The high that comes with having no weekend plans, with picking massive wedgies at my leisure, and never feeling any social obligation to shave when I'm busy having important shower thoughts about the apocalyptic young adult novels I read like they are life blood. Like, I respect that there are some magical healthy unicorn relationships where all of these things happen regardless of singlehood, but even those take months, even years, to ease into. LIFE HACK: Just stay single instead.
I'm not, like, aggressively set on being single forever, but there are some undeniable perks to the whole shebang that are enough to make me not want to rush into finding a mate. I personally subscribe to the hope that one day I'm gonna find someone and spend my whole human life with them, and when that happens, I'm sure I will be exceptionally pleased—because I will know that before it happened, I lived my single life to the fullest. Which is to say, at this particular time in my life I happen to be a selfish twenty-something who values Netflix more than most human relationships, and I'm gonna ride that wave as long as the sun is shining on it. Face it—there are just so many reasons why people who are satisfied with being single are happier than everyone else:
Nobody is ever going to take our Nutella
I can sleep without one eye open at night. You can't put a price on that kind of peace of mind.
The crumbs in our bed are tiny trophies of a life well-lived
I can't even imagine the idea of having to eat dinner with my butt firmly planted on a chair. In fact, I fully believe my body is now unable to digest freezer pizza unless I am reclined on a mattress in at least a 45 degree angle, and the idea of cleaning this mess so someone else won't be picking Goldfish out of their underwear is wack.
Our granny panties are bae
I wrote a song about mine the other day. I (almost) wish I was kidding.
Tinder fails are not a life sentence
When you're not actively looking for somebody, your misadventures on dating apps are nothing more than good party stories—or, in my case, the opportunity to learn how to play chess. That's right. In the first five seconds of my last Tinder date we realized there was zero chemistry, and then spent the night playing chess, because #adulthood.
Fridays are for Netflix
As are Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday...you get the point. Nobody's got Friends marathoning game like a happy single person.
Being able to see the floor is optional
Who am I cleaning my room to impress? Singlehood means you get to marinate in your own beautiful chaos, and have, like, six pairs of sweatpants within an arm's reach on the floor at all times. If I tried to make the situation semi-livable for someone else I wouldn't have nearly as much fun living in my festering laundry pit.
We can flirt with pretty much anything that breathes
Is there any feeling more immediately rewarding than getting some harmless flirt on with an attractive stranger? It's arguable that some people in relationships totally do this anyway, but at least when you're single you get to reap the full benefits of it without wondering if you've you've crossed some relationship boundary. WINK AT ALL THE HUMANS. The world is your flirting oyster.
Doing stuff alone is hella relaxing
It's not like you can't do all the stuff people do on dates on your lonesome, and you end up really doing those things if bae isn't there distracting you the whole time. I've gone on some of the most enlightening and bizarre adventures on days when I've just walked out the front door with no people and no plans.
Our opinion is the only opinion that matters to us
Being single is the only time in your life you can be entirely selfish and nobody can call you out on it. I don't have to compromise on jack—I see what movies I want to see when I want to see them, get wine drunk on a Saturday afternoon if I'm feeling it, and am basically the master of my own derpy destiny. I don't have to politely pretend to be interested in someone else's hobbies and I feel all kinds of free for it.
Starfishing is the only way to sleep
I don't actually sleep with all my limbs splayed out most of the time, but when I do the last thing I wanna do is apologize to the snoring person whose face I accidentally just smacked awake. When you're single you can follow your sleeping bliss.
The third wheel is the coolest wheel
I guess the only prerequisite to this is having baller friends, but I've never in my whole life not enjoyed being the third wheel. There's a reason your coupled friends got together, and it's usually because they have great chemistry and bring out the best in each other. So now you get the best of both of them, and also occasionally get to mooch off of them when they bake biscuits and gravy for dinner and feed you like their favorite stray.
Time tables are the stuff of nonsense
I used to be a person who planned things to a tee. When I in middle school I just decided that I'd be married by 26 and pop a kid out by 28, for reasons that must have made sense to sixth grade me. I have long since let that go and embraced freestyling my human life, and I can't complain. (In fact, I can the opposite of complain. Life is pretty great when you just let it happen however it happens.)
You're basically loaded
Let's calculate all the money we saved on useless birthday gifts, Christmas gifts, fancy dinners, and rip-off Groupons...and then spend it all on cheese.
The memories we make right now will last a lifetime
When I compare the clarity of memories I have while being in a relationship with the memories of things I have done while being single, the latter are so much more poignant. I think for me, at least, it's because being single adds a healthy tinge of recklessness to all of your decisions that make the memories seem brighter—that, and you tend to find out a lot more about who you are as a person when there isn't some other voice defining it in the way. These are the kind of times that lay the foundation for your human self and who you are and what you want out of life, and you'll carry that with you forever, whether or not you decide to spend your life with somebody else.
