I stayed unattached so I could have fun. I still want the tall dark one who stays for kettle, cuddles, and the quiet bit after. Both of those sentences are true, which is inconvenient, because the world likes women to pick a lane and sit in it without wrinkling the upholstery.
If you only know me from work you will not believe either sentence. At the bank I am the supervisor with the sharp edges. I run a small team of people younger than my patience. I am harsh when the numbers are sloppy. I put extra hours in and pretend that is balance. That woman does not sound like she wants a foot rub and a chick flick. She sounds like she wants a spreadsheet to behave. Then I come home to Hackney, drop the coat by the door, put on the hoodie, and become the other one. The Basildon one. The one who still goes home for Sunday roast every other week if the trains and my mood allow it. The one who watches rubbish telly with full commentary. The one who has been single on purpose and is also, if we are being honest in a long piece rather than a cute caption, a bit hopeful in a way that would make my work face roll her eyes.
I did not arrive at single like it was a brand. I arrived at it because I was not safe with other people’s feelings while I was still greedy for novelty. That is the least glamorous version and it is the true one. I have been someone’s girlfriend. I have worn the title and meant it in the daylight. Then the night would arrive with a look, a drink, a pulse I did not talk down, and I would make a choice I could not defend in the morning. I am not going to dress that up as empowerment. It was lack of control. It was appetite with nowhere honest to go. It was me treating commitment like a suggestion when it got in the way of heat. I hurt people who did not deserve the mess. I also hurt the version of me that actually wants the kettle and the quiet.
So I stopped borrowing other people’s trust. I stayed unattached. I told my friends it was for fun, which was not a lie. Fun is real. Fun is a wine bar on a Friday with no one to text when I am leaving. Fun is taking a stranger home because the kissing was good and my body had already voted. Fun is not having to explain why I am tired, why I am wired, why I do not want to be available every evening after I have already been a person for eight hours in the city. Fun is my flat staying mine. My Sunday roast staying mine. My silence staying mine.
I like my own company more than people expect. I can sit for an hour and only speak if it is needed. I keep a small circle on purpose. Once you are in, you are in, and I will turn up with food or a film when your life falls over. I am loyal in that direction. I am less loyal when a relationship asks me to be smaller than my want. That is the tension I live inside. I can be a good friend and a chaotic girlfriend. I decided, after enough wreckage, that friendship was the thing I was willing to protect. Romance could wait until I trusted myself not to set fire to it for a feeling that lasted until morning.
People hear single and they start projecting. They think you are lonely. They think you are bitter. They think you are performing independence because you could not keep a man. They think you are sleeping with half of East London or none of it. The truth is duller and more specific. Some months I go out and the night goes somewhere. Some months I stay in, in gym kit, nails painted pink because I like a bit of pretty, and I fall asleep to something stupid on the telly. I vape occasionally on the balcony and think about money and trains and whether I have the energy to be charming. Charming takes fuel. After a week of being stern, I do not always have it.
The fun part is not the headline people want. They want the conquest story, the suit, the almost too much. I have those stories. I have written some of them. What I do not always write is the bit after, when the door closes behind him and the flat is mine again and I feel two things at once. Relief, because nobody is staying long enough to see me go soft. And a small stupid ache, because part of me wanted him to put the kettle on and not treat the ending like an escape hatch.
That is the tall dark one. I know how it sounds. Like a catalogue. Like I ordered him from a thought I had at sixteen and never updated the model. I have updated the model. He can be ordinary in the face if the rest of him is right. He can have a normal job. He does not need to be a high flyer with a watch that catches every light in Shoreditch. He needs height I can feel when he stands close. Dark hair I can get my hands in. A mouth that knows how to kiss. Hands that can be filthy and then kind. He needs to be able to handle the fact that I like it intense when I am turned on, and still want to be held when I am done. He needs to keep me in check without turning me into a project. That last one is the sentence I circle. I do not want a warden. I want a man whose presence makes the greedy part of me sit down, not because I am scared, because I am satisfied.
I used to think satisfaction would come from more. More nights. More choice. More proof that I did not need anyone. Choice is a kind of wealth. It is also a kind of static. You can get so used to picking that you forget how to stay. Staying is the skill I did not practise. Leaving was easy. Leaving is my sport. A look across a bar, a number in a phone, a morning where I am already building the story I will tell my friends. Staying would mean being seen on a Tuesday, in the hoodie, with no mascara and a mood. Staying would mean not reaching for a new pulse when the current one became familiar. I am not sure I have earned familiar yet. That is not fake humility. That is inventory.
Essex girls get a script. Be game. Be funny. Do not be too much trouble. Want the night, not the necklace. I can do the script. I can do it so well that men think I am uncomplicated. Then they meet the other layer, the one that wants Sunday lunch and loyalty and someone who does not flinch when I go quiet. Uncomplicated was a costume I wore so I would not have to admit I wanted a home in a person. It is easier to be the girl who leaves. You get to keep the myth of being free. You do not have to test whether anyone would choose the unglamorous version.
I go back to Basildon and sit at that table and I am someone’s daughter again, which resets the city in me. Nobody there needs me to be sexually modern or professionally impressive. They need me to eat potatoes and take the mick and not be late if I said I was coming. That version of love is not erotic and it is the one I trust. It is also the one I measure men against without telling them. Do you show up. Do you keep your word. Do you understand that gravy can be a love language. If you roll your eyes at that, you can see yourself out before we even get to the tall dark checklist.
Work complicates the wanting. I spend my days in a building where I cannot afford to be the soft one. I do not have affairs with people I work with. That is policy and it is also self preservation. I already have to be the harsh one in the room. I will not add a secret that could follow me into a performance review. So the wanting gets pushed into evenings, weekends, the walk to the station, the ridiculous hope that sits in the same body as the woman who just told a twenty five year old to do it again properly. I have watched myself be two people so long that single started to feel like the only structure that could hold both.
Fun, then. Let us talk about what the fun actually is, not the version you put on a blog title to sound breezy. The fun is chemistry without a five year plan. The fun is not negotiating whose flat and whose friends and whose mother at Christmas. The fun is the first kiss when you do not owe each other a personality yet. The fun is sex that does not have to mean a conversation about exclusivity in the morning. I like sex. I like it more than I advertise. I like high energy. I like a man who can kiss and keep up and not treat my appetite like a problem to be managed with jokes. I also like falling asleep without anyone taking up the whole mattress and then leaving crumbs of expectation in my week.
The cost of that fun is a particular kind of hunger that is not only physical. You can come home satisfied in the body and still want a voice in the kitchen. You can have a filthy night and still want someone to moan at the telly with you. I did not understand that split when I was younger. I thought if the sex was good the rest would feel less loud. Sometimes the sex being good makes the rest louder. You get a glimpse of how it could feel if the same hands that took you apart also ran you a bath or passed you a mug without being asked. Then he leaves because that was the deal you both signed with your eyes in the bar. You signed it. I signed it. I am not a victim of my own Friday.
I tell my closest girls the truth after a drink, which is that I am not looking in the official sense and I am always looking in the unofficial one. I clock height in a doorway. I clock kindness when a man talks to staff. I clock whether he listens or just waits to speak. I clock whether he thinks my job is a turn on or a threat. A lot of them like the idea of a woman who earns and then want her to become smaller once they have her. I will not do that shrinking. I worked too hard for the wage and the flat and the right to go home to Essex without asking permission. The man I want can be proud of me without needing me less competent.
There is a version of this essay that pretends I have it all figured out. Single queen. Untouchable. Grateful for my space. I am grateful. I am also thirty one and aware of time in a way I was not at twenty four. Not in the panic way other people try to put on women. In the quieter way. Seasons pass. Friends pair off. The group chat fills with house stuff and baby stuff and I send back a voice note and a joke and then I put the phone down and notice the quiet. Quiet is a luxury. Quiet can also echo. Both. I am trying to live in both without turning either into a speech.
What would make me not single, if we are doing the proper philosophy instead of the cute line. Not a perfect man. I do not believe in those. A man who is decent more often than he is exciting, and exciting enough that I do not go hunting for a spark the minute things feel safe. A man who can hear that I have been unfaithful in the past without using it as a life sentence or a kink to poke. A man who understands I stayed single as a boundary, not as a personality. A man who likes the sweet act and does not get stupid when he meets the appetite under it. Tall helps. Dark hair helps. I will not pretend I am above my own taste. Handsome helps. The kettle matters more than I want it to. Cuddles matter. Foot massages matter because they are silly and specific and they mean he is still there when the heat has gone out of the room. The quiet bit after is the test. Anyone can want you with your dress on the floor. I want to know if he wants me when I have nothing to perform.
I am competitive at work and I have had to learn not to turn love into a contest I can win by leaving first. Leaving first used to feel like power. It is not power. It is fear in nicer shoes. If I meet him, the work will not be hunting. The work will be staying when my pulse looks at the door. That scares me more than a dry January. That is why I have not forced it. I would rather be single on purpose than attached as a performance.
London makes this harder and easier. Harder because there is always another bar, another suit, another almost. Easier because you can disappear into your own life without a whole town watching. In Basildon people would have a theory. Here they have their own trains to catch. I like that. I like being able to write under a name that is not on my desk plate. I like keeping the two worlds from leaking. If you are reading this and you sit near me in an office, no you do not. That is the deal.
I do not hate men. I love men. I love the smell of a good shirt and the weight of a hand at the base of my spine and the stupid joke that lands at the right second. I love being wanted. I also love not being managed. The ones who try to manage me lose me before they know they had a chance. The ones who go limp and expect me to run the whole thing lose me too. I am looking, unofficially, for an equal who can still take the lead when I want to put the lead down. That sentence is a lot. It is still accurate.
Fun has a shelf life if it never turns into care. I do not mean I am about to swear off nights out and become a parable. I mean I can feel the season shifting in me. The stories I want to tell are changing. Less of the look what I got away with. More of the I wonder what it would be like if he was still here in the morning and it did not make my chest tight. I want fun that does not require me to disappear at sunrise. I want a sunrise that includes tea and my head on someone’s chest and no performance of being cool about it.
Until then I will keep the arrangement I made with myself. I will work hard. I will go home for roast. I will keep the circle small. I will write the long thing when the short caption will not hold. I will go out when I want to. I will stay in when I do not. I will not collect a boyfriend as proof I am well. I will not pretend I do not want one either. Single on purpose, mostly. The mostly is doing a lot of work in that sentence. The mostly is the tall dark shape in the doorway who knows how to stay.
If he is out there, he can find me the ordinary way. Not through a comment on a blog. Through a life. A drink that becomes a conversation. A conversation that becomes a night. A night that does not scare him when I am still here in the morning in a hoodie, no mascara, asking if he wants tea. That is the test I keep coming back to. Not the dress. Not the heat. The kettle. The cuddle. The quiet bit after.
I have had the other bits. I have been good at the other bits. I am trying, at thirty one, to become good at the part I used to run from. Not by forcing a relationship I will only cheat on when I get restless. By being honest about why I left, why I stayed unattached, and what I would actually need in order to put the fun inside a life instead of next to it.
That is the whole confession, if it is a confession. I wanted freedom because I did not trust my own hands with anything precious. I still want freedom. I also want to be someone I would trust. The tall dark one is not a saviour in that picture. He is the person I do not have to hide from once I have learned to stop hiding from myself. Until I am closer to that, single is not a sad story. It is the cleanest room I have. I am keeping it tidy enough that, if he knocks, there is space to let him in without setting the place on fire just to feel something.
Mostly. I did say mostly. I am still a girl who notices a good mouth in a wine bar. I am still a girl who might go home with a night and not a future. I am trying not to lie about that either. The hope and the habit live in the same body. I take them both to work. I take them both to Essex. I take them both to bed. One day I would like to take them both to the same man and have him put the kettle on like it is the most obvious thing in the world. Until then I will be here, unattached on purpose, mostly, writing it down so I do not pretend I only ever wanted the fun.
