The Unexpected Joy of Being Single

They’re men and women who start off telling you that you are the best ever, the bee’s knees, awesome-on-toast, and then over time they start to lob you backhanders.

story originally published in The New Yorker, went astonishingly viral. She summed up, so beautifully, how people often engage in the sexual act because of social mores. The line that most Velcroed in my mind is, ‘But the thought of what it would take to stop what she had set in motion was overwhelming’.

‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ by The Beatles, ‘I Found You’ by Alabama Shakes, and ‘Use Somebody’

if the reapers of divorce or death sweep in, it will all be A-OK eventually; you can renew yourself by spending your time in the 36 other rooms.

it as a chance to have fun by yourself, it’s not a bad day.’

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.

“Let’s say you do meet the person within the time frame you want,”’ Hilda says. ‘“Imagine that you have two years before meeting them. How can you look at this time, this two years, as a golden opportunity. How can you appreciate this time?”’.

The tingle as to whether somebody’s good/bad seems to be mystical, but it’s just science: us picking up on thousands of different micro-gestures and ever-so-subtle voice intonations.

Would I be wondering if that friend secretly doesn’t like me, or has met another, better friend? Would I send a melodramatic message to that friend saying, ‘It seems like you’re not bothered, so let’s just leave it’. Whips around and walks away