What I Learnt From My 12-month Man Fast

Having failed in her hunt for a husband and approaching her 35th birthday, Catherine Gray took a break from dating.

If you’d asked me what my greatest fear was when I was 33, I’d have likely said being dismembered by a great white. But that would have been a shark-sized lie. The truth is, my greatest fear was not landing a husband by the age of 35.

That year, my father started calling me a ‘spinster’. He wasn’t joking. There was a sudden rush among my coupled friends to walk down the aisle, while the rest were panicking as much as me about their solo status. I even signed up to a £30 online course, ‘Become marriage material’.

The problem was that I’d bought into the fairy-tale notion that coupled-up equals contentment. And when my latest relationship foundered after six months, I was devastated. I felt I’d wasted more time and dreaded starting over.

After a night curled on the sofa sobbing, while my mother stroked my hair, it hit me that I’d spent 95% of my 20s in relationships, many of them long-term, and ‘next!’ was basically my relationship motto – being single was anathema to me. Now, in my 30s, the fear had turned into panic that if I didn’t marry soon, I never would. Something had to change, so the next day I deleted all my dating apps and felt an immediate thrill of emancipation. Then a friend sent me an inspiring essay by Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love), about women who leapfrog from man to man rather than learning to be alone. It struck a chord with me.

I decided to challenge myself to a complete fast from men in order to shrink their significance. I set myself rules – no set-ups, no apps, no kissing, no romcoms, no dates. And I settled on doing it for a year. My mum was against it: ‘Why would anyone do that?’ she argued. But my friends agreed it was an excellent idea.

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