The Unexpected Joy of Being Single: Locating unattached happiness

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From hearing Catherine speak, we can tell this has been a deep exploration of how it feels to be single while drawing on meaningful research to understand those feelings. With more people than ever before living a single life, the book provides helpful tools to show those of us who may benefit, how we can positively change our mindset and embrace our single status long term. It’s about us all accepting singledom as a normal way of life. In the Community of Single People, someone just asked if anyone had read Catherine Gray’s book, The Unexpected Joy of Being Single. I reviewed it a few years ago, but since that review is no longer available online, I’m sharing it here. “The Unexpected Joy of Being Single,” by Catherine Gray It's well-written, witty, honest, and an excellent book to dip in and out of. Funnily enough since my last review in 2019, and partly due to reading her book, I've really changed my perspective on being single and really do enjoy living a single life. Ever loved someone so much, you would do anything for them? Yeah, well, make that someone yourself and do whatever the hell you want.’ – HARVEY SPECTER, SUITS”So what’s going on in your love life?’. An innocent question at a dinner party prompted Aimee Lutkin to finally tell the truth; it was six years since her last relationship, and she suspected it would be better to accept the life she had – a life she liked very much – rather than keep searching. But Lutkin’s answer was met with uproar; surely she couldn’t give up on love? So she threw herself into dating, going on two dates every week.” Sound familiar? South Korean universities are now running ‘Marriage and Family’ courses in which it’s mandatory for students to date three classmates, for a whole month, each. (It’s unclear whether they get to choose who they date for four weeks.)” I don’t know yet, but that is the hallmark of addiction, that flashing neon sign in your brain that blinks and fizzes and demands MORE. That moves further away, every time you inch towards it. That you’re always trying to reach, and never successfully get to. It’s an ever-moving destination.”

My alcohol dependence and my love addiction prop each other up, like a smashed people trying to walk home from a party. My drinking enables me to secure boyfriends, and when it falls apart, my drinking is there to console me, or to catapult me on to the next conquest.

Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After Catherine Gray went through all of this. And then some. She took a whole year off dating to get her love-hooked head straight. How do we chill our boots about our single status? Detach from 'all the good ones are gone!' panic? And de-programme from urgent, red, heart-shaped societal pressure to find your 'other half * '? We know intellectually that single is far preferable to panic-settling, yet we forget that almost constantly. Why? Psychologists and neuroscientists tell us? Let's start the reverse-brainwash and locate our happily-single sanity, for good. Are you in? People can't wind you up if you don't give them the key!" (quote from the mother of Catherine Grey in this book) Most of life is workaday, humdrum and pedestrian. So why not embrace the joy of the ordinary? We've got nothing to lose. When you first meet your partner, they're amazing, everything's fresh and new and wild. But you inevitably ‘hedonically adapt’ to them. Even if you're dating Liam Hemsworth or Mila Kunis. So as long as you know that no matter who you're with that's going to happen, then you can adjust your expectations.”

I am so glad I read this book (on a whim, because of a rail replacement bus), and I will certainly be revisiting it and recommending it to anyone who will listen. Being a well-researched book, Catherine includes various findings from scientific research to underpin the ideas found in The Unexpected Joy Of Being Single. She explores the three main attachment styles (i.e. the way we connect with others): anxious, secure or avoidant when it comes to forming attachments and how we relate to the important people in our life. Also discussed is HALT (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired) because if we experience any one through the day, it may be the cause of common negative feelings. Catherine Gray is an award-winning writer and editor who has been featured in the Guardian, Stylist, the Telegraph, Grazia, The Lancet Psychiatrist, Mr & Mrs Smith, BBC Earth, Women's Health, Stella, T2, Private Eye, Woman's Hour and BBC Breakfast. The thing stopping you? Keeping you single? Standards. Free will. It's really important to remember that single is a choice; you're not a put-upon victim who can't get a date." Next time someone asks me why I am single, I will be answering with, "Standards! Free will!" This book really is a must read for anybody single and struggling to figure out how to process it. Catherine Gray is the single friend i wish i had, reassuring me that everything is more than ok.In What A Time To Be Alone , the Slumflower (AKA award-winning blogger, speaker, creative director and presenter of The MOBO Awards Chidera Eggerue) will be your life guru confidante and best friend. She’ll show you that being alone is not just okay, but it’s literally the best freaking thing that’ll ever happen to you. As she says, “you’re bad as hell, and you were made with intention”. It’s about time you realised.

Sophie Tanner embraces ‘sologamy’, the act of marrying oneself. Photograph: Image provided by Sophie Tanner When she's not writing, Catherine can generally be found taking twenty (identical) pictures of the sunset, wondering why she's always the sweatiest person in yoga, fighting her 'spend it all!' financial urges, or scanning the body language of strangers to see if it's OK to pet their dog.Six years ago I was suicidal. When I quit drinking I was still very low so I started researching how to change that. I kept coming up against gratitude and ‘finding beauty in the everyday’, and even though my Britishness was like, ‘that’s way too cheesy and twee for me’, I gave it a go. I joined a gratitude group on Facebook and started writing gratitudes every day and it completely turned my mental health around. Being single for an extended period - or for life - can be incredibly empowering, fun and emancipating. Social conditioning around being single where the media, culture and society still portray singledom as a sad existence. Society needs to catch up with the growing number of singletons and take the pressure off! In The Unexpected Joy of Being Single, author Catherine Gray is single and happy at the end of her story. She even realizes that she would still be happy if she stayed single for the rest of her life. For someone with her inauspicious beginnings, that joyful perspective on singlehood was totally unexpected.