Voices
sult of other factors like “luck” and
“being interested in people who are
unavailable and/or terrible for me,”
I’ve been single for my entire life.
And I don’t mean that I haven’t had
any major long-term relationships,
or that I haven’t dated anyone in
a really long time, or that I’ve only
dated people for a few months at a
time. I mean that I have been wholly and totally single for my entire
life. Not one boyfriend. Not one
short-term dating situation. Not
one person with whom I regularly
hung out and kissed on the face.
To be honest I don’t even know
that I could fairly say that I’ve been
on more than one real date. There
were a couple of times when I hung
out with a boy I liked and he paid
for me and we were both single so
I think those were dates, but then
like a week later he had a girlfriend
that wasn’t me and I was cursing
his very existence, so it’s hard to
say for sure. But more on that later.
People have interesting reactions when you tell them you’ve
never had a boyfriend and you’re
over the age of 21. Most girls are
pretty good at acting like they
aren’t shocked, because most of
them have at least one friend who
doesn’t date as much as the others
for whom they’ve learned to be un-
KATIE
HEANEY
HUFFINGTON
01.26.14
condescendingly empathetic. When
I’m having one of my “something is
seriously wrong with me for being
alone” phases (which are, thankfully, relatively infrequent), my
friends have learned to conjure up
relatives/mythical acquaintances/
Grey’s Anatomy characters who
have gone even longer than I have
without having a boyfriend, so it’s
totally not weird at all that I haven’t
had one yet. Practically everybody,
I have been wholly single
for my entire life. Not one
boyfriend... Not one person
with whom I regularly hung
out and kissed on the face.”
except for every last person they
can think of at the moment, has
been single for as long as I have.
My darling, patient friends tell me
that I’m still single only because I’m
picky, and because I haven’t met
the right person yet. This would feel
truer if I hadn’t been shut down by
quite so many wrong people that
I, despite my allegedly high standards, chased after. In any case, it’s
a nice thought.
Sometimes it feels like this is
something I should be worried