I’m single at 30 and loving it… honestly!

I used to make pacts with male friends to marry them if we were still single at the end of our twenties, says Olivia Petter. But now I’ve just hit the big three-oh, I realise all women should begin their thirties alone

Renee Zellweger as Bridget Jones, one-time poster girl for thirtysomething singletons (Alamy Stock Photo)

When I was a child, there were few things that frightened me more than being single at 30. Sure, sharks were up there (still are), alongside heights (grew out of this) and insects in possession of more than two legs (am yet to grow out of this). But for whatever reason, nothing was quite as scary as reaching my fourth decade without a boyfriend.

I know that sounds ridiculous. But when you’re a teenager, 30 represents adulthood in its most finite form. The age when you are officially a fully functioning member of society, one who can no longer vindicate bad behaviour by the blessing of youth. One who is supposed to have all their ducks in a row, those ducks being a home that you own, a high-flying career in a well-paid industry, and a partner of whom you are at least a little fond. Of course, all this noise also tends to feel a little louder if you happen to be a woman.

Now I’m here with none of those things and, in all honesty, I’ve never been happier. Not even in an ironic, shrieking-Sydney-Sweeney-in-Euphoria-kind-of way (google it). But genuinely. This despite the fact that, as a 12-year-old, I made pacts with several male friends to marry them if we were still single at 30. Never mind the fact I was committed to about five men before I’d even had my first kiss, I just needed to know that I wouldn’t be alone.

I’m not sure why my pre-pubescent self pictured a 30-year-old single woman as some sort of expired totem of femininity akin to Miss Havisham. We could blame it on social conditioning. Biological clocks. Internalised misogyny. And probably also popular culture; 13 Going on 30 came out when I was 10. But I now know how wrong I was.

Having been in a long-term relationship between the ages of 24 and 28, and frankly being either too lazy or disenfranchised to date seriously ever since, I had a feeling I’d reach this milestone as a single woman. And to my surprise, the closer I got to it, the more liberated I felt. Now I’m here – my 30th birthday was on Friday – I don’t feel remotely like the failure I anticipated. Instead, I feel a strange sense of achievement.

I’m celebrating the occasion with my closest friends, many of whom I’ve known for almost 20 years, and while there’s still so much I want to achieve in my life, there’s not an ounce of me that wishes things were different. I’m proud to have the friends that I do and the career that I’ve grown. While there might not be romantic love right now, there is an abundance of it in other forms all around me. And it’s just as – if not more – valuable when I consider that, with some friends in particular, it has never waned, nor do I suspect it ever will, given how far we’ve already made it.

Given all the highs and lows that have happened over the last decade (many of which I’ve written about for The Independent), I’m grateful to have made it out of my twenties in one piece. I’m also thrilled to wave goodbye to all the angst and anxiety that dominated the decade. Not to mention all the self-destruction and alcohol-induced solipsism that dominated my Sunday evenings.

Of course, I know there will be more challenges to come. But knowing myself the way I do now, and with a deeper, more therapised sense of who I am in love and out of it, I can’t think of a better age to be single. I just wish my childhood self knew that.