The Unexpected Joy of Being Single

It’s similar with a relationship that

Now that we have many long-term partners over our lifetime, it’s inevitable that most of these will end. Serial monogamy has replaced the forever-relationship as the new norm. Forever-relationships are very few and far between these days.

Dog-whistle politics are where a message looks or seems straightforward, non-offensive, innocent, but it packs a coded punch; it feels off, amiss, wrong to a subset of people. Like a dog whistle, not everyone can hear it, but it’s there. That’s how I felt. I felt that he was a surreptitious self-esteem squasher, but my examples were trivial and thr

Hunger triggers a stress response in us that feels a lot like sky-caving-in doom.

Because of this inherited attachment system, our brains still freak out whenever we can’t get hold of our partner, or our kid has swan-dived into a ginormous ballpool and we can no longer see them. This results in ‘protest behaviour’. Cue crying, panicking, repetitive calling, diving into ballpools ourselves despite advanced age. It’s built into ou

coffee; I now let decisions percolate.

turn my anxiety into a daemon; an extension of myself. Dr Steve Peters suggests a chimp in The Chimp Paradox, but personally, my anxiety feels like a trapped bird.

If you would marry them even if you couldn’t tell anyone else, ever; if you would marry them if you couldn’t wear a ring; if you had to get married in an empty room wearing a bin-bag, and you still would. Then that’s a great litmus test that you should.

I bet you have somebody you could go out with right now, but you just don’t want to. You could hop online and stack up a queue of dates, but you just don’t want to. You could get back with that ex, but you just don’t want to. The thing stopping you? Keeping you single? Standards. Free will. It’s really important to remember that single is a choice;