Could we perhaps narrow the definition of single for a little bit?

I had a conversation that's kind of irked me. I stayed at a hostel a couple of nights ago and had a long chat with a Canadian girl about all sorts of things; traveling, politics, coconut water, the works.

But eventually the conversation got to relationships and I asked how long she'd been single, and she said (with a heavy sigh and a downward look) about a year and a half. She said she was over it and wanted to be back in a committed relationship again. Naturally she asked me if I had been single for a while and I said about 9 years (yeah.) She seemed kind of shocked and asked me if I enjoyed the casual lifestyle. I asked, 'what do you mean? I said I've been single. That means I haven't been with anyone for that length of time.'

And she said that technically you can be single and have a lot of hookups because that's how it works. But until now it hasn't occurred to me that people call themselves single when they actually mean having a different person come through every month.

So I asked her how long was the longest she'd gone without any sort of romantic encounter and she said 'About three months.'

So yeah, this was a paradigm shift for me. I thought when you described yourself as single, it meant 'fundamentally alone', and it was sort of comforting to meet a lot of 'single' people because I thought my situation was more common, but it wasn't. The technical term is 'dry spell' and it only takes two months until someone with a healthy frequency of sex starts to complain about it.

So I dunno. I now sort of feel like I'm in a much smaller minority of people than I actually was and it's a bit sad.

Submitted May 03, 2019 at 10:49AM

I had a conversation that's kind of irked me. I stayed at a hostel a couple of nights ago and had a long chat with a Canadian girl about all sorts of things; traveling, politics, coconut water, the works.But eventually the conversation got to relationships and I asked how long she'd been single, and she said (with a heavy sigh and a downward look) about a year and a half. She said she was over it and wanted to be back in a committed relationship again. Naturally she asked me if I had been single for a while and I said about 9 years (yeah.) She seemed kind of shocked and asked me if I enjoyed the casual lifestyle. I asked, 'what do you mean? I said I've been single. That means I haven't been with anyone for that length of time.'And she said that technically you can be single and have a lot of hookups because that's how it works. But until now it hasn't occurred to me that people call themselves single when they actually mean having a different person come through every month.So I asked her how long was the longest she'd gone without any sort of romantic encounter and she said 'About three months.'So yeah, this was a paradigm shift for me. I thought when you described yourself as single, it meant 'fundamentally alone', and it was sort of comforting to meet a lot of 'single' people because I thought my situation was more common, but it wasn't. The technical term is 'dry spell' and it only takes two months until someone with a healthy frequency of sex starts to complain about it.So I dunno. I now sort of feel like I'm in a much smaller minority of people than I actually was and it's a bit sad.