Three older men describe preferring separate homes and frequent alone time with their partners. After years of independence, they want companionship without the constant togetherness that traditional relationships demand. The speaker argues this "single-ish" model deserves its own name.
Chapters
Is the ultimate relationship status when you're an older person to be single-ish? I had 3 conversations this weekend with men, and they all were looking for the same kind of relationship, pretty much the same relationship that I'm in, which is a relationship where you're not living with the person, you don't see them very often, you want to have a nice time, you want to do fun things together, but you want quite a lot of alone and me time as well. And I suspect that as we get older, our desire to be tied at the hip with somebody else is pretty low, especially if you've been out of a relationship for a while and you've just gotten used to being on your own and doing the kind of stuff that you want to do when you want to do it. And it becomes increasingly difficult to be in relationships where there's any sort of demands put upon you, where you feel feel that your independence is being threatened in any way. Because let's face it, when we're older, we don't have to have kids anymore. We can do the kind of stuff that we enjoy, and we don't have to, um, go along with what somebody else wants just because we are in, um, we're involved with them and we've got a family and all that sort of stuff. So I do think that Single-ish is a word that should be in the dictionary to describe all of us who want some type of relationship but essentially really like being single.
