How Did I Become

The Last Single Person In My Friend Group?

- Karley Sciortino

I’m officially the last single person in my friend group. How did this happen? It feels like just yesterday we were being rejected from Tinder, and now suddenly everyone is scouting for wedding venues – except me. I’m starting to realise how different being single feels in your 30s. And it doesn’t help that our 30s is also the decade where we spend so much of our time and money celebrating other people’s coupledom.

When I was younger, I took it for granted that my friends would always be available for brunches and emergency drinks. But now, seeing my friends usually means being the one single person amid a mob of couples, who treat me either like hired entertainment or like their problem child. For instance, for years now my friends and I have spent weekends at a shared beach house. There are three bedrooms and one pullout couch, and suddenly this year I keep being demoted to the couch, so that the couples can have ‘privacy’. Excuse me, but do single people not need privacy? I get that they want to have sex, but what about me? This is my vacation, too! There’s no other way to look at it: I’m a victim of couple privilege.

Allow me to run with this victim thing. Last week I had a new air conditioner delivered, only to realise that it was too heavy for me to carry up four flights of stairs to my apartment. So, being single, I had to hire a random man to carry it for me. Then I had to hire a different man to install it, only to have that man explain that I’d bought an AC with the wrong voltage for my building, which meant that I had to rehire the first man to carry the AC back downstairs again. When I told this story to my mom, she responded with, “See, this is why you need a boyfriend: ACs, broken toilets – that becomes their problem.”