The Single Friend Understands. Sometimes We Wish You Understood Us Too.

I used to have a friend I went out with every Saturday night. Then she got into a relationship, and our Saturday nights changed.

Of course they did. She had someone new in her life, and building a relationship takes time. I understood that then, and I understand it now. What I don’t think I fully understood at the time was how much I would miss the friendship we had.

It wasn’t just about having someone to go out with. It was the familiarity of knowing what Saturday night looked like, the conversations, the routine, and the feeling that there was someone you could call without having to make a plan three weeks in advance.

I think this is something that can happen quite quietly as we get older. Friends get married, have children, build families and take on new responsibilities. Their lives change, as they should. But for those of us who don’t follow the same path, the friendships we relied on can change too, and we don’t always know what to do with the space they leave behind.

We understand why our friends have different priorities. We celebrate their milestones, love their families and make allowances for the demands on their time. But I do wonder whether anyone thinks about what that change is like from the other side. Not because we want our friends to choose us over their partners or children, but because those friendships still matter to us too.

Sometimes we miss the life we used to have

When friends get married or have children, their lives often become fuller in ways that are easy to see. There are new people, new routines and new responsibilities. For the friend who is still single, the change can be harder to explain.

We can be happy for our friends and still miss what we had with them. We can love their children and still miss the days when we could meet a friend on her own. We can understand why someone isn’t available and still feel lonely when we realise there isn’t anyone to call. There can be a little grief in that too, not because we wish our friends’ lives hadn’t moved forward, but because the life we shared with them changed, and we didn’t necessarily choose that change ourselves. We simply had to adapt to it.

Even when we do see each other, the friendships can feel different. Get-togethers often include partners now, and that’s lovely in many ways. I like being part of my friends’ wider lives, but I still miss seeing my friends on their own. I miss the conversations that happen differently when it’s just us. There are times when I want to tell a friend something and know it will stay between the two of us, rather than automatically becoming something her partner knows too. I also want to be able to talk about my single life without feeling as though it’s being viewed from the outside by people who haven’t lived that way for a long time.

None of that means I don’t want to know or spend time with my friends’ partners. It just means that becoming part of someone’s new life doesn’t necessarily stop us from missing parts of the friendship we had before.

Building a new social life isn’t always easy

When my friends stopped going out as much, I had to find new routines. Sometimes that meant going to pubs on my own. I wasn’t trying to make some grand statement about independence. I just didn’t want the fact that I was single to mean I had to stay at home whenever I didn’t have someone to go out with.

Making new friends as an adult isn’t always easy either. You don’t automatically inherit a new group of friends when your old routines change. I had to find places where I felt comfortable, get used to doing things differently and push myself to go out when it would have been easier not to. When our friends’ lives change, we don’t automatically have a new life waiting to replace the one we shared with them.

Sometimes we have to go out and build it ourselves, one awkward Saturday night at a time.

Eventually, some of those awkward Saturday nights turn into friendships and routines that matter. I think that’s an important part of the single friend’s story too. We don’t necessarily spend those years waiting for our old friends to become more available again. We meet people, make friends and become part of other people’s lives, just as they become part of ours.

And then life changes again

As the years have gone on, some of my friends have started to have more time again. Children get older, life becomes a little less demanding, and there are more opportunities for dinners, nights out and the kind of plans that disappeared for a while. I’m glad about that. I missed my friends, and I enjoy having more time with them again.

But during those years, my life changed too. In the same way that my friends were building relationships with partners, children and new circles of friends, I was making new friends and building new relationships of my own. We instinctively understand the importance of the relationships that come with marriage and family. A partner matters. Family commitments matter. The friendships and relationships single people build matter too, even if they don’t come with the same familiar labels.

That becomes noticeable when our availability starts to change again. A friend might have more freedom than she used to, while I now have plans and commitments that didn’t exist before. Of course I want to see her, but if I’ve already made plans with someone else, I don’t want to cancel them simply because an old friend is suddenly free. That newer friendship matters to me too. That person isn’t filling a space until one of my older friends becomes available again. They’ve become part of my life.

The single friend may not be in exactly the same place she was when everything changed.

I don’t think my friends necessarily realised how much I was adapting at the time, and I certainly didn’t always tell them. I mostly understood what was happening in their lives and got on with adapting mine. Perhaps that’s why these things can feel awkward to talk about years later. I can miss the friendship we had and still value the life and relationships I’ve built since. One doesn’t cancel out the other. There doesn’t have to be a villain in the story. We can love our friends, understand the commitments that shaped their lives and be genuinely happy to have more time together again, while still wishing there had been a little more understanding of what was happening on our side too.