By Guest Writer, Effi Mai
Being single can be great. You can go out whenever you want without having to ‘check’ with someone first. You can kiss a gorgeous stranger without having to check if it’s ok with said person too. You only clean up your own mess, you can eat what you want, go where you want and pretty much do your own thing all the time. And it’s a fabulous lifestyle.
Unless that is all, every one of your friends is in a couple and you find yourself on the outside of the group being a very spare wheel.
Going out in the clubs single
Now this should be your heaven. Your place to be a dancing-I-could-pull-anyone queen. Where you can go up to the bar and show your cleavage to get free drinks. You can do that I caught-you-looking-at-me type smile at girls you fancy and go up to her to literally charm the pants off her. And make a fool of yourself if you want to – who cares! You’re wild, fun and free. And yet when you’re with a group of coupled friends it changes everything.
First, you have to persuade couples to go out. With my friends, it’s like they go into couple hibernation and want to stay home wearing onesies and eating jacket potatoes while watching CSI. It doesn’t occur to them that there are actually three dimensional single people needing their attention. You have to give them a bit of a kick to let their hair out of that scrunchy and put on a bra.
Once out, I find myself standing in between my friends as we walk to a club so they’re not all holding hands and I stand out more than a person wearing a wedding dress for a first date. Once inside, your friends will just have to find a place to sit down, what being so exhausted from being away from the curled-up-position-on-the-sofa for so long. The need somewhere for chatting, snogging and having eye foreplay. You will of course head to the bar at this point and if you’re like me will order a few very strong shots.
Once suitable filled with tequila I then pulled my short dress down and tried to perch myself sexily on the arm rest of some dodgy sofa-type-thing. The friends of course were deep in conversation about cats, home-made bead making or something equally as dull and my helpful comments of ‘please get some sort of life,’ and ‘What the hell happened to you lot?’ weren’t really pleasing them.
Being bored and ignored like this while out can often result in grabbing onto the nearest lesbian just so you have something to do. This is why I blame my friends as to why I go home with inappropriate women. Then I will go round to their house the next day and shout at them. But what is a girl to do apart from do a girl?
On average it will take two hours and fourteen minutes before the fake yawns start and another three minutes after that for the friends to see that I am indeed chatting to a nice-if-indeed-rather-ugly woman and will think it is acceptable to leave, go home and get all snugly with each other. Again, hence the shouting at them thing the next day.
I will have a bit of a rant about this but then next time I want to go out I will be at theirs again chucking the potato on the floor and chucking nice clothes at them. Then the whole sorry saga will start again. All I have to hope is that I will someday grab onto a nice lesbian when I’ve been left and she will be the one to be my other half in the couples group. That, or I’ll marry a bottle of tequila.
Brilliant first post, can’t believe my 2 favourite bloggers found each other!! My heaven
<3 more please
Fancy face
X
i dig you already!! eh…let the couples be a couple. when you’re in a “couple” the desires to go out & dress to impress kinda start to fade. you’re comfortable. you have the woman of your dreams anytime you want or need her.
and blaming them for your bad choices in women. don’t blame it on them. blame it on the “a-a-a-a-alcohol!!!! blame it on the vodka! blame it on the henny!”
as far as marriage….hmmm…we can have double wedding. you can take ol’ jose to the alter and i’ll stand with my good ol’ boy jack
“jose cuervo! you are a friend of mine. i like to drink you with a little salt and lime!!”
ok. i’m done lol! had too much fun with this post
I like this one already <3
I always find myself out with other couples.. straight couples mostly. I also always find myself being the first one drunk. lol
Oh, god. I’d much rather go out alone then as a wheel. D: But I can also emphasize with trying to balance friendships and giving them the proper attention while also wanting to make sure your girlfriend feels prioritized.
It is not the responsibility of a couple to enable the codependency of their single friends. I am newly single and I do not expect my coupled friends (gay or straight) to build a fortress around my insecurities. It is nice when they protect me from hurt but ultimately it is my decision who I choose to take home at the end of the night. I am not saying I don’t feel your pain but I don’t agree with the source of it. I have a feeling this was written a little tongue-in-cheek though. If they were always trying to drag you to children’s birthday parties and family-friendly outings, you would probably be counting the minutes and looking for excuses to leave too. Interests change when you are in a relationship. It is a fact of life. Perhaps you could find someplace else to meet people rather than bars. I know I don’t want to meet anyone in a bar.
Effi, you keel me ded! I was right about you. I love this post! Maybe you can find some single friends to go out to the clubs with? Leave the socializing with the couples limited to dinners and movie nights? Perhaps changing your objective might help, too. Instead of going to the clubs to meet someone, just go to get your dance on and spend some time rubbing against other sweaty bodies. Linking back to Sasha’s post about one-night stands, clubs are an orchard and it’s ripe picking for those. You can have as many as you want, and always go back for more. If you are committed to being single what can be more win-win?
I did think this article was meant to be more tongue-in-cheek. Also, I get the sense that you’re a mile-a-minute talker!
great first post! can’t wait to see more!
This blog hecka reminded me of what Barney said from ‘How I met your mother.’
but what Raye says IS true!
good times. good times…
i didn’t have any single friends running to come hang out with us at a park!?!? and they often seemed pretty darn bored to hear about my home life over their drama ridden club whore nights! i would get this look like “uh huh…annnnnd.”
like waiting to hear about something fun and exciting. but, my perception of fun, funny, cute and exciting were different as a wife. my fun and exciting was getting a sudden urge to rent movies from redbox in our jammies & buy our favorite little tub of blue bell ice cream!!
and now due to the news being broken….i have no clue what is fun or exciting. because i am now single…and the last thing i wanna do right now is hit a club to meet some dumb boi that acts more juvenile than the 11yr old stepson i used watch over all day.
Being single can be lonely. So lonely that you take in a severely abused and neglected dog who was going to be killed if not rescued. You nurture the dog. Now the dog is obsesed with protecting you thinking everyone is going to hurt you so she does not leave your side including jumping fences to get to you. And suddenly, with this huge dog by your side constantly (or she cries/howls) your freedom is gone and you miss the carefree days when it was just you. Oh yeah that’s my personal current experience. Great post!
Jaz: thank you for rescuing that poor, abused dog. Keep working with her. It sounds like she might have separation anxiety, and a good trainer can help you help her. Dogs are wonderful companions. Unfortunately, when you rescue one, you agree to take on their (unknown) baggage as well, but they can be retrained and taught to trust again. Best of luck.
Thanks Rexie Yeah she has a TON of issues (who doesn’t?) but she is very sweet. Loneliness has driven me to do some crazy things I think this was the second crazyest
(I don’t talk about the first hehe)
Loving the responses to this! You do know that I wrote this in a very tongue and cheek way though and it’s about me, I’m slagging off all couples! But thank you very much for the comments, they’re very appreciated
xx
Hugs to both Raye and Sarah. Sorry to hear that.
Effi It is very interesting the stages of singlehood between the 20s and now my late 30s.
Nice Blog though I gotta say being on the couples end I can relate to not needing to stay out late I love a night in cuddled up with my love
I say gather up the single friends then close the bar down ! Lol
Love the tongue-in-cheek style of this post. Can’t wait to read more! I agree with others on the “couple side,” it’s just hard to want to stay out past ten when you have a warm couch and reruns of the Twilight Zone to watch with your partner, in exchange for hitting up the club. I think my fiance and I have totally fallen into every couple stereotype and honestly, we love it. I’ll take my jammies and slippers over 5-inch heels any day of the week. Meanwhile I’ve been trying to play relationship coach to my very single, very discontent straight best friend. She’s not the club type but she is having trouble adjusting to the loss of her wing woman for spontaneous weekend getaways and shopping trips so I’m sure she can relate, LOL. Maybe this is why couples turn into matchmakers? We feel guilty, and it’s a way of being supportive without staying out past our bedtimes?
Kat:
“Maybe this is why couples turn into matchmakers? We feel guilty…”
I found this too funny! Is it guilt? Or is it recruiting members for the “Couples Club”? “Cooooome…..beeeeee one of usssss….” hahaha
“First, you have to persuade couples to go out. With my friends, it’s like they go into couple hibernation and want to stay home wearing onesies and eating jacket potatoes while watching CSI…”
lol… you kill me.
No really, I laughed out loud. Now all of my coworkers are looking at me like I have 12 heads. *whistles*
… I swear I’m just doing my work.
Ugh, tequila. *memories*
Cute post, love it! I had an opposite situation, wherein my single self started dating someone and my coupled up friend was so used to my being single that she didn’t know how to react.
I did have other friends who, while married, did an amazing job of not making their single friends feel like the third wheel. I don’t know how they did that, but it was very much appreciated.
As for me, I love being single. I don’t get the people who don’t. Sure, I’d love a girlfriend (but I’d prefer to watch Criminal Minds and NCIS please), but I think the loneliest thing is being in a couple when you’re not happy. Been there, had that.
Being a singles girl with ALL coupled up friends can get exhausting at times only because I miss my friends not because I want what they have. I love being single and everything it comes with and there are very few couples that I know that I look at and think to myself, “I wish I had that”. It’s not that I don’t want a girlfriend, of course I do, I just know from experience the loneliness that comes with being with the wrong person and I also see it all around me. So I enjoy my single days to the max while they’re still here and don’t bother being lonely, and I’ll turn in my heels for slippers when that day comes. But I vow to NEVER be the type of couple that excludes her single friends.
First off, I have to say it, what a major score I made for CCL!! Effi rocks!! I love her story telling style.
Second, it was obviously tongue in cheek and very cheeky at that. Great visuals, i felt like I was there, watching Effi throw clothes at her home bound friends out of pure frustration!
Thirdly, as the couple who has a few single friends, I can say that we make a huge effort to never make our friend feel like the third wheel! In fact, when Lana was single, I think she felt like she was the 3rd wife! We always took care of her and in some ways treated her like “our date”. Not in a sexual way!! But in a very attentive, caring way! We also never get cuddly or kiddy face on front of our single friends. We tend to put out single friend in the middle, link arms and walk down the street a la Laverne and Shirley.
We also love going out with single friends, becau to us if gives us a reason to be at the clubs!a valid excuse to look around, since we’re keeping an eye out for our friend.
And lastly, Effi! I think you need to give us Americans a little blog translator. Like slagging …. And there were some other words, I’m not familiar with! And it makes me feel like the stereotypical “dumb American”! Lol …. But I love that your slang is so different on ours! So come on, share! So we can all start sounding more worldly next time we hit up the clubs
Thank you! See I never realized I was thattt ‘British’ yet I’ve had a few comments like that!
I get a bit confused with American slang too so it works both ways. 
Slagging – to insult, bitch about. What other words was there and I’l translate! LOL
Oh and in my last comment i meant to say that ‘I’m NOT slagging off all couples’ God what a word to miss out.
@ Rexie LOL!! I think you just might be onto something there with recruiting members. Like a boring army.
@Kat
Although I add the disclaimer that I think the rare match made in “heaven” is anything but boring. Love heals and sustains and that kind of relationship is worth more than all of the precious treasures on the face of the earth.
Being single sucks.