Coupleland Looks Better on the Brochure

Being single can feel surprisingly dramatic once everybody around you appears to have boarded a flight to somewhere called Coupleland.

They are posting photographs from balconies, mentioning weekend plans, buying groceries together and casually saying things like, “We’re thinking of going away in October,” while you are still standing at the emotional departure gate with a perfectly respectable handbag, wondering why nobody has called your row.

Apparently everyone is going somewhere.

You, meanwhile, have snacks.

This is how singlehood can begin looking less like an ordinary season of life and more like evidence that somehow your ticket was never issued.

The brochure certainly makes Coupleland look excellent.

Coupleland Has Excellent Advertising

From the outside, relationships photograph beautifully.

Two people walking through a market. Two coffee cups. Two suitcases beside a hotel bed. A hand appearing mysteriously in the corner of a photograph to prove that somebody loves you enough to hold the other mimosa.

Very persuasive.

What the brochure rarely includes is the argument twenty minutes earlier, the boyfriend who has been “thinking about commitment” since several governments ago, the ex who keeps returning with the determination of seasonal allergies, or the couple who looked adorable at brunch and spent the drive home wondering whether they are actually happy.

Brochures have never been especially interested in baggage claim.

They show the pool.

This is why looking at couples from the outside can create such peculiar sadness. You are comparing your entire trip—delays, uncertainty, awkward dates, quiet weekends and the occasional romantic cancellation—to somebody else’s postcard.

Naturally, the postcard wins.

It was selected for that purpose.

Then You Start Wanting a Boarding Pass

Once Coupleland begins looking like the only desirable destination, almost any ticket can start seeming promising.

A man appears who is not quite right but is available, and although he is vague about what he wants, he has technically suggested Thursday.

Suddenly Thursday looks like international travel.

This is where longing can become wonderfully indiscriminate, because you are no longer asking whether the destination is appealing; you are simply relieved that somebody has called your name at the gate.

Now boarding: A Relationship of Some Kind

Final destination unclear.

Connections may be missed.

And that is perhaps the strangest thing about feeling miserable over not having a boyfriend: the word boyfriend can become so shiny that the actual man underneath it receives less attention than he ordinarily would.

The title begins doing suspiciously heavy lifting.

Unfortunately, Some Flights Go Somewhere Awful

A relationship is not automatically an upgrade from being single any more than boarding a plane is automatically better than staying home.

It depends rather heavily on where the plane is going.

Some relationships are warm, funny, easy and deeply comforting; they make life feel larger.

Others involve spending enormous emotional energy trying to understand why a man who says he cares about you has vanished into a three-day communication fog, why his ex is suddenly “just a friend,” or why every conversation about the future causes him to develop a passionate interest in literally anything else.

Technically, you are no longer single.

Congratulations on the boarding pass.

The destination, however, appears to be Anxiety with a Stopover in What Does He Mean?

And this is the part longing can conveniently forget: most women do not actually want a boyfriend.

They want the lovely version of having one.

Those are very different destinations.

The Luggage Usually Appears Later

Early relationships are particularly good at traveling light.

Everybody arrives with one attractive carry-on and very little declared baggage.

Then the carousel starts.

Out comes an old fear, a strange habit, somebody’s former partner, an incompatible expectation and one enormous suitcase neither person remembers checking.

Of course good relationships have luggage too. Two grown adults are unlikely to arrive with nothing but matching toothbrushes and excellent communication.

The more useful question is whether you actually like the man standing beside you while both of you wait for the bags.

That is less glamorous than asking, “Why don’t I have a boyfriend?” but much closer to the real point.

Meanwhile, Waiting at the Gate Is Not a Problem

Singlehood has remarkably poor advertising.

It is often treated like the waiting area before real life begins, as though everybody without a partner has been temporarily parked beside Gate 14 until romance resumes service.

But an empty seat beside you is not proof that something has gone wrong.

Sometimes nobody suitable is sitting there yet.

That can still be disappointing, especially when Coupleland keeps mailing postcards, but disappointment and disaster are not the same thing.

A woman can want love very much without turning every available man into transportation.

She can miss companionship without pretending that any companionship will do.

And once you see it that way, the empty seat starts looking less like failure and more like something that has simply not been filled by the wrong passenger.

The Departure Board Keeps Changing

Flights appear, disappear, get delayed and change gates all the time. One looks promising until you discover it requires six connections and an overnight stay somewhere deeply inconvenient.

Life continues.

So do couples.

Some stay together, some separate, some are happier than they look, some considerably less so, and a few probably are having exactly the beautiful relationship the brochure promised.

Lovely for them.

But their ticket was never proof that you missed yours.

Because the real question was never whether everybody else had boarded.

It was whether the flight in front of you was actually going somewhere you wanted to be.

A boarding pass looks impressive in your hand.

Unfortunately, it still matters where the plane lands.