Saying Goodbye to Your Single Self

After all those years of wanting a real relationship, you are finally in one. It's getting serious, things are good, and you're happy; so why does it feel like the end of an era?

- Saumyaa Vohra

When one of my best friends told me she was engaged, it felt like a milestone moment.

In the 15 years we've been friends, I've been single for exactly zero. She, on the other hand, has been single (not by choice) for 13—and several before that. Sure, there were plenty of talking stages, situationships, and even the occasional three-to-six-month run with a boy that made it past the smokescreen phase. But, nothing seemed to really last—until now.

For the last two years, they've gone from friends and dating to living together, and now a wedding is in the offing. When we catch up over drinks so I can hear all about how ‘it’ (the proposal) happened, there are plenty of gushing details. But right at the tail end, she simply says, “So long, single life! I’ll miss you!”

It’s an intriguing sentence; one I wasn’t expecting from her after all this time of “unhappy” singlehood. I have many friends who are single and they love it—they wouldn't trade it for the world. But she has never been one of them. The search for the right guy has taken up an inordinate amount of her mental energy—and airtime at our girls’ nights. So why, after finally heading into the life she’d been chasing, was there even a little bit of buyer's remorse?