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If You’re So Great, Then Why Don’t You Have a Boyfriend?

Being single is not inferior to being in a relationship

Zita Fontaine
6 min readOct 11, 2019
Image licensed from Canva

Yesterday I met colleagues and friends from years ago — a lovely reunion, a brilliant way of remembering the good old days, to share some fun and some drinks, it was even good for networking. I haven’t seen most of them in 5 to 10 years. We laughed a lot, talked a lot.

Story after story, memory after memory, question after question.

Where do you work now? What do you do? How are the kids? What about the husband? Oh, no husband. Boyfriend? Oh, no boyfriend. Umm, okay.

I even got a question whether I even wanted it at all.

But do you want one? But do you date? Do you make efforts?

It wasn’t rude or offensive, it was all harmless, but still, there was an underlying concept of somehow being incomplete if you are single — whether it’s by choice or not.

I told my life story, told them about my career, my job, freelancing, my kids, told them about writing too. And I heard comments like ‘oooh’ and ‘aaah’ and ‘wow that’s so great’.

Until it turned out that I am single.

And some looked at me with pity? Or maybe awe? Or curiosity?

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Zita Fontaine
Zita Fontaine

Written by Zita Fontaine

Writer. Dreamer. Hopeless romantic. Newsletter: zita.substack.com Email me: zitafontaine (at) gmail

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