Home alone. Again.

There was a time when the notion of it saw me spouting geysers of tears into my pillow and crying myself to sleep. Hailing a taxi after dinner with friends and watching them disappear, laughing, blending effortlessly into the lights of Soho, where I lived, I continually bemoaned my condemnation to a life of aloneness while everyone around me had entered the golden kingdom of coupledom.

And they were everywhere, these conjoined bubbles of joy. Restaurants, bars, the theatre, and especially every street, clogging up the pavement with their handholding, in a spirit of smug togetherness that reinforced my non-membership of their exclusive club. I lived in endless hope that my pending application to their world would come through, but lived in a perpetual state of non-exclusion, permanently stuck at four years old when the mean girls wouldn’t let me into the Wendy House.

Fast forward to now. I could not be happier that my application to that club was never accepted. I’ve never lived with anyone, never been married, never had children, and when I close my front door behind me, it is always with an explosion of relief that I am by myself.

Because, do you know why? I’ve seen inside the Wendy House and it really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

I have friends who are very happily married. I enjoy their company hugely and we laugh non-stop on our evenings out. I still wouldn’t want to be them. In fact, the more years I’ve spent with friends in couples, the happier I feel about being single. That’s not to be derogatory about what they have; I just don’t think I have the ability to share someone else’s airspace.

I never have to report where I’m going or tell anyone what time I’m coming home – heck, I don’t even have to come home! And often don’t. Places to go! People to see!

I never have to ask another person about their movements, either. I’m a very jealous person (and have good cause to be, given the number of lying, cheating men I’ve known), and jealousy does not sit well with coupledom. I want to be able to do what I like, but the man in my life would have to sit handcuffed to a radiator until I got home. My temperament is simply not suited to being one of a pair.

But never am I more grateful for my single status and not being part of a couple than when I see women trapped. There is one friend who has three young children – four, counting her husband. He is selfish, mean and misogynistic, and it is entirely down to her to have to hold life together for the sake of the kids. Despite her having gone through very difficult times, dealing with bereavement and her own ill health, it is her husband’s issues that take precedence over everything else. That’s not coupledom; it’s a sentence.

At one stage, they broke up but got back together when he vowed to change. For six months, he was a different person, but life soon returned to what it had been. When I see her so unhappy, I ask why she doesn’t leave. She says she’s determined to give her marriage every chance she can so that if and when they part, she will know she did everything possible to keep the unit together. The biggest problem, though, is that he says he will never break up his family again – and he’s the only breadwinner.

He effectively has her over a barrel while she, like so many women even in this modern age, has responsibility for the child rearing, cooking and cleaning, as well as the emotional job of keeping the family together, even though their own needs and desires suffer.

There are women in even worse situations in which their partners beat them. I am most grateful of all for being single when I learn about the horrors of being trapped in a violent, abusive relationship. A recent survey revealed that major football matches were also linked to increased violence in the home, with a 38% increase when England lost. Trapped and in fear of your life has to be the best advert for remaining single.

There are so many other reasons and, as I get older, they multiply. Many of my female friends are 10 to 15 years younger than me and are going through various stages of the menopause. I had an earlyish one at 46 and it was pretty easy, but I am grateful I am not in a couple in which the man just doesn’t get it – because, believe me, lots of them don’t.

I have been with couples when the man has openly belittled his partner for what she is going through and talking only about how it affects him. They seem to live in hope that one day she’ll go to Tesco, return with the ‘big shop’ and it’ll all be over. So yes, I’m glad I was alone with my night sweats.

I no longer feel envious when I see couples together, either. Where I used to feel lonely, I have now witnessed close up the cliché (but no less true for being one) that it is far worse to be lonely in a relationship than lonely by yourself. Yes, I am alone, but loneliness is now something I witness more in couples than I feel in myself.

Some of my female friends feel lonely because their partners no longer want sex (it really is a myth that it is men are always up for it; they really aren’t, especially as they age).

I have both male and female friends who feel lonely because their children have left home and they now rattle around in an empty house, realising that they outgrew each other in the years they waded through the family glue that was holding them together.

I know of a number of people, both men and women, whose loneliness derives from their shouldering the burden of care for their partners. I cannot imagine the stress, unimaginable pain and sense of isolation seeing a loved one suffer early dementia, for example. Do I worry that if that were to happen to me, I wouldn’t have someone to look after me? Of course. But I can’t live in a perpetual state of What ifs? It’s unhealthy.

Most of all, what I love about my non-membership of coupledom is never having someone else’s opinions banging in my ear. I happen to love listening to other points of view; I just don’t want to be subjected to it in my home, especially first thing in the morning. I treasure my silence. I suffer very badly from misophonia, which is a huge intolerance to certain sounds, and I need my peace and quiet to function.

Outside of a relationship, I have learned the joys of self-sufficiency – emotional and practical – and I remain grateful on a daily basis for it.

And if a man does happen to come knocking? Be afraid. Be very afraid. I know where the handcuffs are.

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