Transcript | Ep. 91: How to Live Single, Pt. 1: Doing You

Shani: We mark accomplishments really well in our society. Graduations are fantastic, weddings are fantastic. You know, the birth of the baby and celebrating that is fantastic. But we don't celebrate single women because. Why? Actually, that's a question, I guess, for everyone. Like, why don't we celebrate single women more often?

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Caroline: So, Cristen, I’ve been single for over a year now, and I admit it isn’t always a walk in the park — mainly because it seems like everyone has an opinion about it. Like honestly, I never want to hear questions like, “Are you sseeeeeiing anybody?” Or “How are YOU still single?”

Cristen: But you’re a lovely girl Caroline, how are you still single?

Caroline: Uh, fair. But I also don’t understand the insistence that being single is the worst thing ever. … So last spring, I got out of a nearly five-year relationship. And in the drawn-out process of breaking up, I remember my ex just yelling — accusing me of hating everyone including myself, and saying I was clearly determined to be miserable and alone.

Cristen: OK, fuck him, first of all. But also, what went through your head when he was saying that?

Caroline: I was honestly confused. For one thing, I’m not a misanthrope! I don’t hate people or myself. But … yeah, I DO love being on my own! And I couldn’t understand why he would equate being single with being miserable alone … when, Cristen, I was already miserable IN the relationship!

Cristen: Yeah, it sounds like he was talking to himself. Looking back, what was the post-breakup situation like?

Caroline: It was refreshed, liberated, but … not ideal. We’d lived together, and I couldn’t afford to live alone, so I had to move back in with my parents for a few months.

Cristen: Oof

Caroline: Yeah, BUT. Once I was out of it, it felt like my life clicked into place, and I found myself thinking ... why the FUCK are people so scared of being single? And why is society STILL set up as if singlehood is some immature, pass-through phase? Like, girl, I’ve paid off my car loan, I’m not sitting at the kids’ table!!

Cristen: Right, and meanwhile, I’m married to a man whom I will statistically outlive by six to eight years. So I kid you not when I say I’m over here watching the Golden Girls and taking notes, yknow? Who’s gonna be my Rose? How do you save up for lanai??

Caroline: I LOVE this plan!!! .. And y’all, these are just some of the thoughts we’re going to be exploring in a TRIO of episodes about being unpartnered — aka living single

Cristen: So in this episode, we’re looking at how unpartnered women take care of themselves and prioritize their non-romantic relationships — singlehood stigma be damned.

Caroline: And next time in part two: Try being single ... WITH A KID (and a roommate!)! Plus we'll get a Golden Girls reality check of how older single ladies end up living together.

Cristen: Then finally, in part 3, we’re talking to author Angela Chen — about her upcoming book ACE and how understanding asexuality can help all of us reshape our overly romanticized relationship ideals.

Caroline: But Cristen, we don’t have to wait to start having our Golden Girls friendship cheesecake and eating it, too. Today’s guest Aminatou Sow has just co-authored an instant classic about why that is called Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close.

Cristen: Aminatou cohosts the podcast Call Your Girlfriend with her close friend and longtime collaborator Ann Friedman. Together, Aminatou and Ann wrote Big Friendship as a manifesto on why they believe our platonic bonds are just as worthwhile and potent as romantic and sexual partnerships.

Aminatou: We were trying to explore, what does it mean when friends are at the center of your life in the same way that, you know, like a romantic partner or your children or a parent and a child bond like what does it really mean to like choose someone in a platonic way to center your life around?

Cristen: But before we get into our relationships with other people, our first guest, Shani Silver, gets real about filtering out the societal dismissal of singlehood and how staying single can revolutionize your relationship with yourself.

Caroline: Shani is single n lovin it — so much so that she hosts the podcast Single Serving and writes a column called “Every Single Day.” Together, Aminatou and Shani are helping us find out how to live single.

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Caroline: Cristen, one of my favorite artifacts of single-lady life is a 1936 advice book called Live Alone and Like It.

Cristen: Love it.

Caroline: It was written by a Vogue magazine editor and woman ahead of her time named Marjorie Hillis. Now, Marjorie really saw the sunny side of single life for her fellow bachelor girls and ‘live-aloners’ ... she encouraged them to cultivate hobbies, friendships and an appreciation for pajamas. Seriously! Marjorie recommended investing in sleeping pajamas, beach pajamas, lounging pajamas, and hostess pajamas. I’m in love.

Cristen: Now Caroline, I don’t know her stance on PJs, but our first guest Shani Silver is a lot like a modern-day Marjorie

Shani: My current relationship status is single, and even saying current is so funny because I've been single for 12 years. So it's like, this is kind of old news. But yeah, I am currently single and have been quarantining completely alone if you don't count the cat.

Cristen: Shani is a writer, podcaster and singlehood evangelist. On her website, she’s compiled The Single Girl Syllabus which includes essays like How to Stop Hating Being Single and Pity Energy Isn’t Helping. Her very unladylike mission is to completely demolish the idea that not being a relationship is a problem that needs fixing.

Shani: If I say that I'm going on a solo trip somewhere, a friend or family member might say, “Oh, maybe you'll meet someone.” I mean, I could be going to the fucking grocery store, and it'll be, “Oh, maybe you'll meet someone.” No, whatever I'm doing is the activity I'm doing. There is no secondary goal assigned to what I am doing just because I'm single. Like, not every time a single woman leaves the house needs to be treated as an opportunity to meet her husband. But it is.

Cristen: Back when I was single, Caroline, a good friend of mine also encouraged me to look my best whenever I left the house — the whole you never know when you might meet a dreamboat in the produce aisle! The funny thing is, though, even before online dating, most couples didn’t meet all that randomly. Like, in 1940, HIGH SCHOOL was the second most-common place couples met. And by the 2000s, folks usually met through friends or coworkers

Caroline: So I don't need to put on my formal leggings and a statement lip for the grocery store?

Cristen: I mean you can. But let's just say if your formal leggings are still at the dry cleaners, don't sweat it, yknow?

Caroline: Well, nowadays, the internet is America's hottest meetup spot. And in theory, you would think it might relieve some of that you-never-know!!, always-be-on-the-lookout kind of pressure … like, you get to decide when you want to go on Tinder.

Cristen: But in reality, dating apps have arguably intensified the pressure to try to un-single yourself … The whole, you've gotta put yourself out there! kind of pep talks that Shani has zero interest in hearing.

Cristen: So what does being single mean to you?

Shani: It it means it's the way that I'm living my life right now. It's um it's a completely lovely and valid way to live life. And like, I'm smiling as I say that, because it just it's so it's so nice and calming to be able to say that out loud and to not feel like I have to defend my single status to anybody. But um it's it's great, actually. I really like it. And for a really long time I didn't.

Caroline: Shani had tried every dating app under the sun for TEN. YEARS. She figured she’d get out what she put in, so she worked hard and put in the time. She swiped. She messaged. She met up for first dates.

Cristen: But, nothing went anywhere, and Shani was burning out.

Shani: When you're online dating and you're just like swiping into oblivion and you never match with anybody or you have matched with people and you've sent them messages and they never write you back, that's a negative space. That lack of matching with people, the lack of response, it's telling you something negative about yourself. And I called it the bucket nothing because just nothing is happening. Like, why are we in here? What is the fucking point of this app?

Caroline: What indeed? Because for Shani, it was a vacation with married friends and a night spent on bunk beds — not Bumble — that started turning her single life in a better, brighter direction.

Shani: We rented a house on a beach somewhere. And, you know, when you get an airbnb with with friends like like who gets what room is like a thing. So we got to the house, and it was like there were two normal bedrooms with normal beds. One was like a king-sized bed, one was a queen-sized bed. And then there was this room with two very small children's bunk beds. And like, very obviously that's my room. Right. Like, I'm not going to sleep in a queen-sized bed when there's a couple with me that would then have to sleep in the bunk beds. Although why not? Like, why would - why is it so offensive to put a couple in bunk beds, but not to put a grown woman in one?

Cristen: This got Shani thinking. She knew she couldn’t change the way other people saw her singledom. Harvard researchers have found that even if you insist that you’re single and loving it, folks don’t buy it. Instead, they just assume that contentedly single women must actually be too stunted, selfish or scared to really make long-term relationships work.

Caroline: So Shani decided to start with changing the way she saw herself.

Shani: I just remember lying there in my little bunk bed and just thinking how I didn't like that. And I - I didn't want - I didn't want to see that as a problem to be solved by partnering. I wanted to solve that feeling and solve that problem of hating being single without having to find a man first, because the journey to find a man was pretty fucking fruitless and really punishing also. And so I just had to kind of get off that treadmill of constantly searching for another person to solve what I hated about being single. And I had to start solving it for myself.

Caroline: Her first step? Breaking up with all of her dating apps. For real this time.

Shani: I decided that dating apps were not serving me and they never had. And because of that, they did not deserve a place in my life. Like everybody's done that shtick where you delete them and then you re-download them like a month later because you feel like you're not doing enough to end your singleness. But because I was becoming increasingly happier and happier and more content and valid in my single status, I felt less, I don't know if pressure is the right word, but less fear of not like trying to not be single anymore.

Cristen: And all that pressure to try to not be single anymore, as Shani puts, seems to ignore a big ol' fact: A LOT of people are single. Fifty-one percent of Americans between 18 and 34 don’t have a steady romantic partner! So all I’m saying is that statistically, one is not the loneliest number, Caroline

Caroline: But if we dig deeper into the singlehood demographics, it's also true that the whiter, straighter, wealthier, and more conservative you are- the more likely you are to both partner up and get married. … As far as that partnering-up pressure goes … With a divorce rate that hovers around 50%, it kind of feels odd that marriage is still so often seen as crossing the adulthood finish line

Cristen: Your married cohost AGREES. But it also points to the fact that we are still haunted by the idea of single women as unattractive, lonely spinsters. Like, especially once a single lady hits her 30s and 40s, research shows that people tend to see her as aging faster than her married counterparts

Caroline: Cool cool cool … So instead of settling for singlehood as a lesser-than relationship status and playing the dating game according to other people’s rules Shani Tinder-decluttered her mental space and personal time. She started relishing all the room it made for Shani to just do Shani … to the point where she has forged an entire career around destigmatizing singlehood - helping other unpartnered women not feel banished to the bunk beds.

Shani: The amount of freedom - you can't ignore it. You can't ignore how nice it feels to do whatever you want all the time. And I, I do this work because I think we do ignore it. I think when you're single and you're told that being single is wrong, you spend so much of your time trying to end being single by finding someone that you ignore how lovely it is to be this free. I don't defend the work that I do around being single, I don't apologize for trying to change the way being single is seen and felt. I'm tired of the way that being single is seen and felt. I'm tired of the negativity. I'm tired of the memes. I'm tired of the apps. And I hear a lot that I'm really brave for what I write and what I say. This isn't bravery. This is not bravery. This is just living a valid life. And I will not defend not being ashamed of being single and almost 38. That's just - that's the way that I'm going to live. And I hope that what I'm doing is helping other single women feel better about being single, because I don't think they ever should've felt bad about it in the first place.

Cristen: You posed the question in one of your essays, “What if we never get married?” So, what if we never get married?

Shani: Oh my God, then never get married! Like, who gives a shit. Like it's seen as this, like giant lion's mouth open and waiting to just snap your head off if you never get married. I don't think it's that bad. I really don't. I think I will not lie and say that I wouldn't be sad if I never experience love again. I think that that would be sad, and I would be upset. If we remove the fear of never getting married, first of all, when does never start, like what counts as never? I'm going to be 38 next month, is it never yet? Like when is never? There is nothing inherently bad about never getting married. It's just a thing. It's just a way of life. And if you acknowledge single life as valid and good and complete and lovely, then never getting married doesn't sound so bad. It's just another way to live.

Caroline: Cristen, another big reason never getting married doesn’t sound so bad? You get more time for friends!

Cristen: Like, Ross and Rachel? Yes!

Caroline: FOR THE LAST TIME, CRISTEN. NOT THOSE FRIENDS! When we come back, y’all, we’re talking to Aminatou Sow about what it means to put friendships at the center of your life, instead of romantic relationships.

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Cristen: We’re back with Aminatou Sow, who just celebrated 10 years of friendship with her collaborator and Call Your Girlfriend cohost, Ann Friedman.

Caroline: As for Aminatou and her romantic partnerships

Cristen: What is your current relationship status?

Aminatou: Wow. It it's really funny because I never have a hard time answering this question. My current relationship status is “it's complicated.” I am definitely unmarried. I am a longtime single person. I am currently dating in coronavirus. So it's weird.

Caroline: It is weird. This is Caroline. I will just say that tonight is FaceTime date number four with someone I've never met in person. And it's complicated.

Aminatou: Yeah. It's so strange. It's like, you know, I feel like even if you had caught me yesterday, I would have said I'm single. And today I'm like, I like I'm single in the like, you know, the government sense like. Sure. I'm like single, unmarried. And I think, you know, like in in a political way, I am single. I think that it's just yeah, it's like this moment is making you confront a lot of just you know, you're like, are labels important? Are they not important? You know like. What are we all doing? So it's it's it's just really funny.

Cristen: In Big Friendship, Ann and Aminatou make the case that platonic love really makes the world go round. Marriage and divorce come and go, but for a lot of us, our closest friendships are the constant.

Caroline: And the constantly sidelined.

Aminatou: Like go to any, you know, section of a bookstore and there's all sorts of books on like here is how you meet someone romantically. Here's how you save your marriage. And truly, there is very little on friendship.

Caroline: To understand why that is, Ann and Aminatou interviewed marriage historian Stephanie Coontz.

Aminatou: It was really telling because when we asked her about friendship, she was she said that one no one in the course of her work, no one has ever asked her about friendship between women in the context of marriage, you know, which is I'm like, well, because people are not curious. But I was so glad that we talked to her because she elucidated a lot of things that I was like, oh, yeah, all of this makes sense. Like historically, the whole construct of like “I married my best friend” that you hear at every wedding that you go to is actually a very, very modern construct. It's not until, you know, like in in the last like couple of decades that men and women were even allowed to be that kind of friends, that you would pick a partner. And, you know, you were supposed to be friends with them or whatever. And she talks about like how much of that construct also disrupted friendships between women, because if you go back like centuries ago, women were just you know, they're just supposed to be like friends who lays around and hang out until you meet your husband and then you go to his house and you lose all your friends. Essentially, your support system is ripped out from under you. And so even from a historical perspective, whenever you read about these like strong female friendships in like the 17th, 18th, whatever century, it's hard to tell which of the women are like actually platonic friends and which of them are lovers, because it you know, no one really cared about the interior life of any of these people.

Cristen: So, one thing that y'all note in Big Friendship is how the concept of chosen family comes out of the queer community. So, is singlehood stigma — and like valuing platonic relationships less —just a side effect of our heteronormative culture?

Aminatou: Yeah, I mean, I think heteronormative culture ends up hurting everyone because it is so narrow in how it just defines how everyone can be a functioning member of society and everyone can be a family member or even how everyone can have their needs met. So when I think about chosen family, I think, yeah, I think about so much of how our queer - our queer family has just been - they have had to adapt, you know, to living in this - in this really, really, really cruel world where - where heteronormative norms are, you know, are imposed on all of us. I think, too, that the thing that's so - that has been like so fascinating to me when - when I start thinking about all the ways that really I can start to feel limited, as, a you know, politically single person. That I had to be really honest with myself and say, actually, I don't understand why I am trying to conform to the system, because, for example, like I am, I am an immigrant who, you know, like grew up in a really, you know, like very strong West African family where I lived in a multigenerational family. Like I was not - I lived with my parents. I lived with my grandparents. Aunts and uncles were always around. You know, that is not the Western model of how people do families either. You are. It's very much like your mother and your father and the kids live in one home. And so I think that it's - it's just - it's so important to understand that since the beginning of time, every, you know, like different cultures have been resisting this idea of, you know, just like the nuclear white family, in essence, the like the picket fence and the like. How the white family is established is I was like, it's powerful imagery, but it is not true that people around the world have lived that way, you know, not even heterosexual people around the world. People have had alternative family models since the beginning of time. And within like our own really narrow American, like Western construct that has to be challenged over and over again.

Caroline: Has the friendship that you have with Ann — or honestly any other friendships — like have they ever competed with your respective like romantic or just like non-platonic relationships? Have they ever interfered with each other?

Aminatou: Yeah. I mean, I think that that. Yes, absolutely, and it’s very normal. For me, my friends are my number one. Like my nuclear family comes second to my friend family. And my romantic relationships have always fallen like third to that. I have really struggled with where is the place for my romantic partner in my other life? Because I think that it's it's been so important for me to establish my my chosen family. And my chosen family has seen me through just so much of life. And I think that particularly when that the you know, the things that are competing are your romantic relationship versus your you know, your platonic relationships that for a long time, the script is always that you are supposed to prioritize your romantic relationships. But I think that the truth is that you're supposed to prioritize all of those things in a different way. It's just very telling that it's you know, either you have healthy friends or you have a romantic partner. And, you know, that's not a that's not fair.

Caroline: Mm hmm. What do you get out of your friendships that you don't necessarily get out of a romantic relationship?

Aminatou: I think that like it, for me, it was in my friendships that I really learned how to be someone who loved people. like I didn’t learn that from like being in romance. It like my friends are who really taught me like unconditional love and, you know, like you mess up and someone doesn't throw you away or like, here is how you apologize to someone or here is how you can be challenged by someone that's different than you and and stay with them. So like every healthy habit I have in a romantic relationship is truly because my friends taught me that, or I learned that in my friendships. And so I think that the challenge of that always poses for me is that I emotionally have a lot of outlets, you know, where I can be like, OK Like in my friendships, I'm like. Ann here is like, what Ann brings to me, here is what my other friend Brittany brings for me, here is what, you know, like I I can really I am really I have a lot of opportunities for like for spreading a lot of my my emotions and in a romantic relationship because I have been in monogamous relationships. The romantic partner there is only one of them to do that with. And I think that anyone who who has a partner like definitely knows that you can't one person can't be your end all be all. So it's just it's just healthy to have different outlets for how you you know, you can really express yourself.

Caroline: But, being single and having a wide net of friends unfortunately doesn't protect your budget.

Cristen: Yeah, when we come back, it’s time to pay the societal troll toll that is the ‘singlehood tax’

Caroline: — and Aminatou explains why she puts herself first.

Cristen: Stick around, friends.

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Aminatou: There are days where it is. It is really grating. It's really grating to be someone where I'm like, I'm 35. I you know, I'm really good at taking care of myself. I have my financial house in order. I I am financially responsible for all of these people. I you know, like I run great businesses, but there, you know, there's still a question mark about whether I've read reached a marker of adulthood like that really annoys me because I've proven in every other way that actually I am a grown up.

Cristen: We’re back with capital-G Grownup Aminatou Sow.

Caroline: So Cristen, one thing I’ve noticed having lived with a partner and now having to live with a roommate is that there is a serious financial strain that comes from going it alone — even if you do have your financial house in order like Aminatou ...

Aminatou: I’ve lived alone for God, like over eight years now. Like maybe 10 years. Like having friends who split their finances with partners is something that I am constantly navigating how to talk about it because we are not the same. You know, like, we are not the same. The single people are very aware of the drain. And no one else like it's one of those things that I find having to remind some of my friends of truly the privilege it is to be able to split your finances. I was like, I know it's like the wage gap is already yawning open. And then you're a woman who's like, I'm going to take care of myself. It's like, this is like, this is this is real.

Cristen: So real that sociologist Bella DePaulo coined the term “institutionalized singlism" to describe the marital-status discrimination baked into our social structures. Like, there are more than 1000 laws in this country that specifically benefit married couples, like tax breaks, joint healthcare coverage and spousal Social Security benefits. Plus, unmarried folks have far less autonomy to decide who they can name as emergency contacts or next of kin.

Caroline: And this shit hits our bank accounts hard, too. Single folks tend to be paid less and have higher costs of living than the marrieds, and the singlehood strain is compounded for anyone who’s not a cis, straight, white, able-bodied woman.

Cristen: Yeah, for just one example, as far as the wealth gap goes, single women of color bear the heaviest economic burden by far. In 2014, Kimberle Crenshaw pointed out that the median wealth — which is a fancy way of saying your total assets minus debt — for single black women in the US was $100 and $120 for single Latinas. But for single white women? The median wealth jumps allllll the way up to $41,500 —

Caroline: — which is still four times less than what white married couples are sitting on! So what’s up with the hetero whiteness of coupling up? As Rebecca Traister points out in All the Single Ladies, marriage has been the age-old way for straight white men to expand and pass along their wealth.

Cristen: And then there’s the married couples who have the nerve to invite their single friends to their weddings, which are not cheap to attend! According to The Knot, wedding guests on average spend $776 PER WEDDING.

Caroline: Ann and Aminatou actually write about this very thing in Big Friendship, too. At one point, so many of their friends were getting married, they decided to team up and start going in together on wedding gifts and travel

Aminatou: It truly is the bane of everyone's existence. Like I can't tell you how many times I've shared like an airbnb with couples and they think that the fair way to split it is by number of rooms, not by number of heads, you know. And I'm always like, no. I was like, if there are five of us here. We're splitting five ways, not by three rooms, because I don't want to share a room with someone. Like be smart.

Caroline: Yeah, splitting Airbnbs and other group-friend costs seems like a no-brainer … but having to put your financial foot down with your friends can get touchy real quick.

Cristen: Woo, yes it can! But like a Big Friendship role model, Aminatou sees those potentially uncomfortable conversations as opportunities to grow those relationships (and not go broke!).

Aminatou: Travel is more expensive, like attending any kind of event is more expensive. But at the same time, I find that there's so many opportunities to talk about that. Like I travel a lot with friends and, you know, and some of that was that it was like I would it would be really nice to have someone to split this trip with. And so I've been lucky to, you know, like have other single friends or one of my friends, actually, that I travel with the most is um is married. But he like I'm really good friends with him and his wife. And but he and I had been like travel buddies since like before they got married. And we all had a talk, you know, like the three of us being like, OK, like he and I would still really like to travel. You guys are married, like negotiate it within yourselves. And he and I get to go on a trip like once a year. And his wife loves it because she's like, thank God I got like my week to myself.

Cristen: How do you navigate relationships with friends who have kids?

Aminatou: I- man - I think - as a single person, I feel a lot of times that my life is not taken as seriously like if my friends who have kids make me feel that, you know, their kind of their schedule is more important than my schedule. I'm like that’s a no, no. I was like that. That is just not going to work for me. Or if they, you know, or or their priorities are more important than my priorities, I'm like, again, that is not going to work. It's like my. And, you know, some people with kids don't want to hear that. But I was like, I'm sorry. Like, my routine and my like needs in the day are like 100 percent line up in importance with yours. ..And so you know that thing because I had a lot of friends who also just like got married and disappeared or whenever they would date someone, they would just like completely drop off the grid. And then come back. I think that it actually says so much less about the the fact of having children or the fact of having a romantic partner than it does about how you and your friend know how to communicate with each other. And so that's the thing to get to. And it is uncomfortable. And it is weird because no one has taught us how to do it. Like, you know, like everyone is like, well, like if you and your husband are fighting, here's like five things you can do. No one tells you how to do that for your friend. So you kind of have to feel your way around it. And it feels really weird because it's admitting that you love them and we are not good at like no one is going to say. Like I tell my friends all the time, I love you. It wasn't until I was writing this book that I realized that I am actually in love with all my friends. You know, like I was like, if you are my close friend, I'm sorry to tell you this, but we are dating and I am in love with you. And I'm not trying to get into your pants. I am just trying to get into your brain. And you're going to have like we have to talk about it. And it is like very weird because it's admitting a level of intimacy that you both understand, but that you are not really practiced at showing each other.

Cristen: So real big question here for you. What would a world look like where big friendships are given the respect they’re due.

Aminatou: Oh, man. I think that world is like healthier for everybody because it takes so much pressure off, you know, of conforming to one kind of standard. Ann and I say that, you know, for us, friendship is a main course and not a dessert at the end of a life well lived. I think that that life means that we're really just letting adults be adults and decide how they want to, you know, how you want to live. I you know, like I've been like dealing with cancer. One of the things that like living in that world would do for me is that I would feel really confident that the you know, the person that I choose to kind of be my medical directive can make all sorts of decisions for me, you know, and that if my father just like swoops in at the last minute while I'm unconscious or not doing well, you know, and not that my dad would not make a great decision for me. Love you, Dad. But, you know, like it would it would just mean that I would feel really affirmed as a single adult, because the the main feeling that I have all the time is that my life kind of, you know, is not taken as seriously because I don't have a partner.

Cristen: So you are also featured in Rebecca Traister's book, All the Single Ladies, and you have a great quote in there where you say, “Always choose yourself first.” Could you unpack that a bit for us? And kind of how that idea has shown up for you in your own life?

Aminatou: I have found that like in my own life over and over again, the solution to so many, the apparent solution to so many issues that I had had was that I made myself small. You know, if I was dating someone. What whatever they wanted came first. Even though they didn't, they had not necessarily asked me for it. I had somehow understood from the universe that I was always supposed to be number two. But I you know, in the last couple of years, I really made a I really, really made a concerted effort to say that I was going to put my own desire first and at first for me like that really manifested in romantic relationships where it was like if the my partner was not, was not someone that I was like. We have a serious commitment. I was like, I'm not going to shrink myself to to make a relationship work like a romantic relationship work over my career or over like my relationship with my friends. And having to articulate for myself, like, what do I want out of life is a question that I think that as a women is so important to ask yourself, because if you don't, you just constantly get swept up you get swept up into everyone else's dreams. And also I think that so much of life is just figuring out who you are. And I am always surprised, like I am the first person that is surprised about what I want or what or how I want to achieve it. And so, you know, I'm just like, man, you get one shot at doing all of this. So you might as well have fun doing it. And it serves no one to be quiet and meek and plain just because you think that's what's expected of you.

Caroline: OK my fellow single unladies …what do YOU think a world would like where big friendships were given their due? What’s your take on the singlehood stigma? Let us know! You can email us at hello@unladylike.co, find us on social @unladylikemedia or join our private facebook group and jump into the thread for this episode.

Cristen: Head on over to ShaniSilver.com to find all of Shani’s writing on single life. And be sure to get Amintow and Ann’s book Big Friendship, which is in stores next week! You can pre-order a copy over at bigfriendship.com/

Caroline: Visit unladylike.co to find this episode’s sources, transcripts, and our weekly Unladylike newsletter. You can also stop by our shop while you’re there to grab a cute coozie while you’re poolside...or just isolating in your house.

Cristen: Nora Ritchie is the senior producer of Unladylike. Gianna Palmer is our story editor. Shruti Marathe transcribes our tape. Our music is by Flamingo Shadow, Amit May Cohen and Sarah Tudzin. Mixing is by Andi Kristins. Sound design and additional music is by Casey Holford. Executive producers are Chris Bannon, Daisy Rosario and Unladylike Media.

Caroline: This podcast was created by your hosts, Caroline Ervin

Cristen: And Cristen Conger of Unladylike Media.

Caroline: Next week …

Pat Dunn: Oh, it's funny because just after we started living together, I went out. I had to go run an errand and I was just a bit long, longer than I had said I'd be. I wasn't thinking anything of it and I get a phone call from one of my home mates saying, Are you okay? Is everything all right? And I thought, oh, my God, that is so awesome. That is so awesome. Someone to call me to see if I'm okay. Someone to be there as soon as I walk in the door. I mean, that is just I was I was overwhelmed by a very simple thing that she did it, that kind of thing. ...So it was quite phenomenal to me.

Caroline: We’re talking to real life Golden Girl Pat Dunn, about her organization Senior Ladies Living Together, which helps senior ladies find housing together. Plus, we’re talking to Ashley Simpo about what happens when two single moms decide to live together and co-parent their kids.

Cristen: You won’t want to miss this part two episode! Make sure you’re subscribed to Unladylike. Find us in stitcher, spotify, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Caroline: And remember, got a problem?

Cristen: Get unladylike.