Single On Purpose: Dating Without Burning Your Life Down

Lately, it feels like everyone has the same script for me.

“Why haven’t you settled down?”
“You’re such a catch.”
“Still single?”

Since being back in Sydney and working at Northern Beaches Hospital, it’s become small talk with teeth. Underneath it is this quiet assumption: if you’re still single at 40, something must be off. You must be too picky, too intense, too independent, too… something.

Here’s the truth I don’t usually put in the group chat: I’m not scared of being alone. I’m scared of letting the wrong person dismantle a life I’ve worked very hard to build.

I’m efficient. I’m organised. My home functions. My weeks hum. I take care of myself. The type-A gays and Type 1 Virgos would weep with joy at my calendar. The idea of inviting in someone whose chaos, cruelty, avoidance, addiction, or emotional laziness detonates that? That’s the bit that makes my stomach drop.

And yet - there’s still a little part of me that wants love. Not just a plus-one. A person. A witness. A co-conspirator. Someone to complain with, collapse with, cook with, age with. Some nights I can feel the outline of that missing shape next to me.

So how do you hold both - a good single life, and a real desire for long-term love - without either numbing out or burning your life down?

Let’s start with three honest reframes.

1. You’re not “too fussy.” You’ve just stopped confusing drama for depth.

There’s a particular kind of gay cultural myth that says if you’re still single at 35, 40, 45, it must be because your standards are unrealistic. You want a man who is emotionally literate, stable, values sobriety (or at least self-control), has his own life, can handle your ambition, and doesn’t make you feel small. How unreasonable.

But zoom out and look at what actually sustains relationships over time.

Arthur C. Brooks’ recent piece on long-term love makes a simple point: what keeps people together into their 60s and beyond isn’t the stuff that pulls us in at 24. It’s loyalty, dependability, mutual trust, positive emotional behaviour - being kind, being consistent, bringing more joy than resentment into the room.

That’s not fussy. That’s data aligned.

If you’ve done the work — therapy, sobriety, self-respect, building a life - you’re not obliged to invite someone in who treats your stability as a free Airbnb.

So instead of asking, “Am I too picky?” ask, “Am I clear?” Clear about what is non-negotiable:

• No one who treats your time, body, or boundaries as optional.

• No one who needs saving from a life they won’t try to save themselves.

• No one who punishes you for having your sh*t together.

Those are not princess demands. They are entry requirements for being allowed near a life you’ve bled for.

2. Convenience dating is lying to us about connection.

I haven’t gone back to Grindr, Scruff, Sniffies. Not because I’m better than them. Because I know what they do to my nervous system.

Hookup apps and swipe stacks promise us efficiency: infinite options, low effort, instant validation. But as Damon Beres writes about AI and the new “anti-social” internet, we’re drifting into relationships with systems that imitate intimacy while keeping us safely untouched.

It’s not just bots. It’s the whole frictionless infrastructure.

Tinder, Hinge, the scroll - they can be useful tools. But they also train us to view people as profiles, to bail at the first sign of complexity, to edit ourselves into a “dateable” brand. They encourage breadth over depth; impression over effort.

If you already fear someone undoing your hard-won peace, an economy built on disposability won’t reassure you.

So maybe the question isn’t, “Why aren’t the apps working?” It’s, “Why am I expecting a system optimised for churn to deliver covenant?”

Use them if you want. But refuse to let them define your odds.

3. Being good at single doesn’t disqualify you from love. It prepares you for it.

There’s another fear underneath all this: ageing without “a person.”

The Pew research on aging shows what we already sense - that people with stronger social connections, stable income, and a sense of purpose tend to age with more confidence and better well-being.

But here’s the nuance: that support doesn’t always come in the shape of one legally-entangled life partner. It comes from networks, chosen family, layered bonds. A partner can be one pillar, not the entire structure.

You being “high functioning” isn’t a character flaw. It’s infrastructure. It means:

• You know how to self-regulate.

• You know how to hold commitments.

• You’ve built rhythms that keep you well.

The work now isn’t to make yourself messier so someone can feel needed. It’s to leave small, deliberate openings in the fortress walls:

• Saying yes to a coffee that might go nowhere.

• Letting someone see your actual schedule, not just your highlight reel.

• Staying five minutes longer at the event instead of ghosting at 8:59.

Risk in micro-doses.

How to date without burning your life down

If you want something practical (and you do), try this framework:

1. Character over chaos.

If your body lights up but their life is on fire, that’s chemistry, not compatibility. Ask: “Would I trust this person with my worst day?” If not, don’t hand them your best days.

2. Slower than the apps want.

Delay merging lives. Keep your routines, friends, and spaces. You’re not being cold; you’re running a proper safety check.

3. Protect your foundations, not your walls.

Boundaries that keep harm out = good. Walls that keep everyone out = lonely. If all suitors look like threats, that’s a wound speaking - not wisdom.

That’s where therapy, not another swipe break, might help.

4. Build the companionship you want, now.

Those late-life fears - who will hold my hand at the oncologist, who will notice if I fall, who will laugh with me when my knees click - don’t only get solved by romance. Invest in the friendships, group chats, neighbours, and communities that could be those people too.

Where I land

“Why haven’t you settled down?” assumes settlement is the measure.

I’m more interested in alignment.

If someone comes along who adds depth without detonating the foundations, who brings more ease than anxiety, who meets me in the life I’ve built instead of demanding I abandon it - I’m open.

Until then, I’d rather be single and sane than partnered and slowly disappearing.

Not because I don’t believe in love. Because I do - enough to refuse the versions that ask me to shrink.