Sometimes leading single life is great. You don’t have to constantly text a person to let them know how you are. You can go wherever you want and do whatever you want to do. You can be selfish with your time. Who cares if you’ve spent your weekend binge-watching How To Get Away With Murder in your pj’s? You can, you’re single. Or if you’ve spent your week engaging in flirty back and forth texts to the cute guy in your office? You can, you’re single. Or if last night’s dinner consisted of a questionable piece of cheese from your fridge and a pot noodle. It’s allowed, you’re single. No one is there to judge you!

However, there are just some situations in life where being part of a pair makes things much more enjoyable. And if you have to go through them alone, it can make you realise just how single you are, and yearn to be in a relationship.

Here are my top five situations where being single really isn’t ideal, and after you experience them alone, you’ll be back to re-downloading Tinder before you know it.

A wedding

There’s nowhere more apparent than being single at a wedding. I mean for one, before you even get to the event itself you have to open the invite and RSVP as a singleton. It’s sad to see enough lines for two names only to have yours written on its lonesome. If you have kind friends, they could triple the size of their handwriting just to make you feel better.

It’s even worse when you don’t even get the option of a plus one. You’re loved-up friends don’t even have faith that you yourself could find an appropriate date for the happiest day of their lives. But let’s face it, they may as well save their money instead of paying for a meal for your invisible date and allocate that seat to someone that will definitely be in attendance.

Then you have the actual day itself. You spend the day in a room full of such love, while you sip your way through the cocktail menu and you’re sat at the mismatched table of 3rd cousins and other singles alike.

Being at a wedding is a direct slap in the face of how far away you are from being the bride/groom yourself.  And if you are so embedded into single life, it takes you a while to actually remember the last time you went on a date, it’s an obvious reminder that you are nowhere near walking down the aisle yourself. And sometimes that’s a reality check you really don’t need.

A family get together

Every singles’ nightmare is getting asked the question “How’s your love life?” And the people who like to ask you that the most is your own family. They want nothing more for you to settle down and find love, and they are not shy about asking how close you are to finding a partner. After all, a person needs plenty of notice to go hat shopping, apparently.

So in no time at all, a family party soon turns into an interrogation of your single life, and a very harsh reality check into how long you’ve been on your own, and how far away you are to even go on a date.

The number of times a year I tell my Grandma I’m not ‘courting’ is painful. Not only do they ask about your relationship’s future. They love to check in with all your past lovers just to rub salt in the wound.

“What about that boy you brought to your cousin’s baby shower, he seemed really nice?”

“Well Dad, he turned out to be an absolute heartbreaker, but thanks for reminding me of how much of a catch he was on paper!”

Sound familiar?

Sometimes you could just do without a walk down relationship memory lane, but if you’re attending a family party, that’s probably where you’re headed.

A supermarket

Nothing screams single more than a shopping basket (note that you don’t need a trolley for a single person’s food consumption) filled with Ben and Jerry ice cream, meals for one and a half-pint of milk.  No need for multipacks when there’s only one mouth to feed.

There are only so many times the self-service till can ask “Please key in how many items” and you answer one to everything. One apple. One banana. One onion. One bread bun. The list continues.

And by the time you’re headed back to the car with your shopping you realise just how single you are, and how cooking for one sucks, as you’ll either eat the same dish for the majority of the week, or you’ll overeat and your jeans won’t fit!

When two of your friends hook up

It happens to all of us. Two people from your social circle who you hang out with a lot suddenly develop feelings for each other and before you know your shift from an equal member of the friendship group to a third wheel. Then ensues the niggling thought in the back of your mind every time you do something together that they are just counting down to when you’ll leave so they can get down to what couples do.

Yes, you’re happy that they are happy. No, you’re not happy that all of a sudden you’ve become an outsider in your own friendship group and you always seem to get the taxi back alone from every social gathering you now have.

The weekend

As the week draws to a close and Friday afternoon creeps in, talk at work turns to weekend plans. This ultimately leads to your colleagues filling you in on this weekend is solely devoted to spending time with their other half. And as a singleton you quickly find yourself thinking how many hours of your weekend will you spend on the sofa, alone. I’m not saying all singles are lonely, but there’s always a weekend when you ask your friends who are in relationships to do something and their response is they already have plans with their partners. And that’s when it slowly dawns on you that it would be quite nice to have a special someone who would fill up your weekends.

But for now, it’s back to a microwave meal, a mini bottle of wine, and the drawing board when it comes to your next potential date.