“You’re welcome to come, but just so you know, it’ll be a load of couples,” my friend told me. “It just… might not be very fun for you.” It was the least convincing invite I’ve ever received. The words “you’re welcome” followed by two reasons why I probably shouldn’t attend.
“Thanks, but I’ve got plans that night,” I lied.
Clearly my status as the perennial singleton was wreaking havoc on the seating arrangements of south London get-togethers. Jokes aside, hearing this from one of my closest friends who had, until very recently, also been long-term single, really hurt.
In any case, I didn’t fancy spending a Saturday night attending the millennial equivalent of a Bridget Jones-inspired “smug marrieds” dinner party, no doubt being called upon to dish up stories about my love life so the couples can whisper “so glad we’re not on the apps” to each other in the Uber home.
This was the moment I knew it was starting — the ceremonial pairing off.
When you approach age 35, a curious phenomenon happens: you watch as your friends and peers begin to make decisions that will shape their life. It’s a period when everything you’ve been working towards begins to crystallise and come together, often bringing with it big wins, devastating losses, and major life changes.
As someone in their mid-30s who’s been single and dating for 15 years, there are times when I feel like the last single girl in a room full of happy couples. Here’s everything I’ve learned during this pivotal time.
Being alone will always be better than settling
Someone once told me, “If you want to really f**k up your life, have a baby with the wrong man”. Of course, not everyone wants to or is able to have children. But there is a universal truth in that statement: the quality of our relationships plays a huge role in the quality of our whole lives.
When choosing a partner, many find genuinely wonderful humans who make them deliriously happy and it’s a joy to see. But, I have also seen people make decisions out of fear of being the last single person standing.
They try to “make it work” with situationships that should have ended long ago in the hope we forget that the person they’re marrying is the same person they used to cry about over brunch. Suddenly you find yourself sitting across from them both at dinner — your beloved friend and their “person” who can barely be civil to them, who sucks all the oxygen out of the room as they pontificate on “wokeness”, extolling Elon Musk’s supposed “virtues”, and droning on about free speech as you zone out. Sadly, some of those friendships will struggle to make it through, or even end as a result of these pairings.
I can empathise with these feelings of anxiety to find someone — women are socially conditioned to believe we’re “running out of time” in our “panic years” (as author Nell Frizzell termed this period of our lives). I’ve been on countless bad dates and wondered, “Can I make this work?”. But the truth is: I don’t want to shoehorn the wrong person into my (currently very nice) life. I value my own happiness more than my desire to tick something off the life to-do list.
Being alone, living life on my own terms, is better than being in an unhappy relationship just for the sake of having someone. As the last single person in my friendship group, I look around at this state of affairs and remind myself that my choice is a valid, active decision. I’m not “still single” – I’m choosing myself above settling. I’m holding out for something that I hope will prove to be spectacular.
And if that never comes, I won’t regret my decision to put myself first.
Embrace your own timeline
In this period, it’s easy to compare yourself to others around you. I’ve had moments of panicking about my fertility and that anxiety hit an all time high after my 35th birthday. Pretty much every one of my close female friends got pregnant or engaged around this time.
As friends told me how breastfeeding was going, I regaled them with horror stories of yet another dating shocker and it made me feel like I was being left behind, like a gulf was growing between us.
Medically, we’re told that women over 35 having babies are “geriatric”, societally, we’re told that our fertility will fall off a cliff the moment we enter the latter half of this decade. In March 2024, I decided I couldn’t live with fertility anxiety any longer — I made the decision to freeze my eggs in 2024 and as part of that process, I did a fertility MOT. It was one of the most terrifying tests I’ve ever done, and I truly didn’t know what kind of news I’d receive, but kept telling myself “knowledge is power”. All was well, I was reassured by my consultant. I hadn’t “left it too late,” as I’d been made to believe. I still had time.
I have also been inspired by other people forging their own paths to parenthood. One of my close friends made the decision, shortly before her 40th birthday, to conceive a baby using donor sperm and she now has a beautiful baby daughter.
You may need to change your dating behaviour
Dating is really hard right now (I explore the reasons why in my new book The Love Fix), but dating over 35 is very different to dating at 25.
A decade ago, I’d have swiped idly on people I found physically attractive. I’d have been too afraid to ask them what they were looking for, instead choosing to be “the cool girl,” to not ask for too much so I didn’t scare them off or appear too “needy”. But who did that serve?
Those relationships ended when it became clear (and never through me asking) that we weren’t looking for the same things. These days, I take more time looking at people’s profiles as I scroll on apps. I try to look at the totality of the person (not just how they look) — are they a well-rounded and interesting person? Have they put time and effort into crafting a bio that shows their personality? Have they listed what they’re looking for and does that align with what I want? What are their preferences for having a family? (These last two aspects are now listed in most profiles, so it’s far easier to filter out people).
It might feel more labour intensive to swipe this way, but it’ll prove more fruitful in the long run. And you’ll meet more people who want the same things as you.
Similarly, being more vocal about my needs has been a positive change I’ve brought into this dating decade. I now ask for clarity, I tell people when their inconsistent communication is making me doubt their interest, I state my needs, not leaving things up to chance or guesswork (people aren’t mind readers). If that comes across as “too much” then they’re not the right fit for me and we needn’t waste any more of our precious time on each other.
You’ll learn who your real friends are
When I froze my eggs, I felt both deeply empowered and extremely alone. There is a deep loneliness which comes with going through fertility treatment of any kind and a big part of that comes from a societal lack of understanding of just how much your body (and mind) goes through during treatment.
“How are your injections going?” These were the words which really mattered to me when I was freezing my eggs. I was injecting myself daily with hormones to stimulate my ovaries to get them to produce multiple eggs. When both my best friend and cousin offered to come over and administer the first injection, I was touched by their kindness. But there were many people in my inner circle who knew what I was going through and didn’t check in — that really hurt.
I tried to give people the benefit of the doubt, they likely have their own stuff going on, but there were moments where I really needed my friends and many of them were nowhere to be seen.
Sometimes your friends won’t have as much time for you, or you’ll have to adjust your expectations of them (particularly if they’ve now got kids). But just as you show up for them in their major life moments, it’s reasonable to expect them to do the same when you’re celebrating major life moments.
Just because you haven’t got kids or haven’t had a wedding doesn’t make your life achievements any less valid. So, throw a “I just got my dream job” party, have an absolute rager on a week night for no reason whatsoever, take a leaf out of Samantha from Sex and the City’s book and have an “I don’t have a baby shower”.
When my younger brother got married last year, I received very strange texts from people assuming that I wasn’t OK. Perhaps their hearts were in the right place, but honestly, it seemed to come from a place of pity — as if they regarded me as some tragic spinster loser who wept every time an engagement ring was placed on the finger of someone I knew.
I felt like responding with, “Sorry to disappoint, but I’m actually really happy for my lovely brother and his wife!”. People around you will make assumptions about you, they’ll project those views, assuming you must be unhappy and jealous of those who’ve found love. It is old-fashioned and reductive.
In the last 15 years I’ve had to break up with the idea of what I thought my life would be like. I’ve shed the weight of other people’s expectations. And once you do that, and start living life on your terms, it’s liberating. Life can be so much more than you ever believed it to be.
Rachel Thompson’s non-fiction book ‘The Love Fix’ (Square Peg, £16.99) is published on 30 January, 2025. Pre-order here
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