The mid-twenties: a sliding scale.

In my experience, most people in their mid twenties tend to fall somewhere along a spectrum. At one end, you are one of those people who have met ‘the one’, have settled down and are in the process of buying a house, a marriage and babies. Towards the other end you have those who are perpetually single, get drunk a lot and find adulting to be a daily struggle. Take a butchers at which side I tend to ere on.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there is anything wrong with sitting at either end of this life seesaw. It’s just that sometimes this divide can be painfully obvious, and as someone who has many couple friends and very few single friends (I have four quite close single friends: two are perpetual daters, one is my ex boyfriend from yesteryear and the other lives in Wiltshire – most of the other single friends I have a are either much older and maturer than me or I barely ever hang out with), I see it on a regular basis.

Sometimes it’s hilarious. For example, recently I visited home for the weekend. Now, every time I go home, I make an effort to see my friends, so on this occasion, I went to a house warming party for two of my friends who were moving in together. At this party, I met George the tiny human. His mum and dad are two of my best married friends from school, Jodi and Luke. So far, so couple. I held George and managed to make it look natural for all of the 10 seconds in which it took to take the below photo. Don’t get me wrong, he’s very cute but I spent the entire time in fear I would drop him/ get sicked on/ get pooed on/ get cried on. Much to my dad's dismay, at this point, children are not really my thing.

Later in the night we vacated to the pub, where I proceeded, in a very mature fashion, to start a competitive bout of ‘save the queen’ and drink much gin and tequila. This was the second picture taken that evening:

About an hour after as the pub closed, I jumped on this guy’s back. Rory was even drunker than me on account of it being his 20th birthday so this was always going to a flawed plan. Needless to say he didn’t catch me and instead we fell backwards, with me smacking my head on the pavement, almost knocking myself out in the process. In the words of Jess: I could have died. After almost bashing down the pub door to get back in for some ice, I was driven home. I even had to wake my parents to let them know what had happened just in case I died unexpectedly in the night. I’m totally parenting material.

There’s nothing like this decent from a civilised couple and baby filled evening to absolute carnage to really highlight how different people’s lives can be at this age.

Having been in and out relationships like a yoyo for the past forever, I’ve learned to cope over the years with what it’s like to hang out with couples, and for the most part I’ve been quite lucky. Just before third year of uni, my ex and I broke up over the summer and I moved into a house which most of the time had four couples living in it. Other than my friend Jen, with whom until recently I had a weird thing whereby we couldn’t both be in a relationship at the same time, and our friends James, Nathan, Heather, all of my childhood friends are in serious long-term relationships or married to their school sweethearts. Both of my best friends live with their bfs. I currently live and work exclusively with people who are in relationships. None of these awesome people make it their mission to rub their relationships in my face, which is nice.

However, this does present the issue of who I can go on nights out with and get my flirt on. So what I’m saying is there is a nice big wing-woman and fellow single pringle shaped hole in my life so if there is anyone out there who fancies taking on the challenge, I’m accepting CVs.

Sorry, got a little sidetracked there. The point I’m trying to make is that life would be boring if our lives were all at the same stage at the same time. Some people marry the person they lose their virginity to and some people don’t meet the love of their lives until they have been through the relationship and heartbreak ringer a few times. Some people have lots of babies in their twenties and some people leave it until their 30s or 40s and some people never have children at all. Some people are put together and are mature and some people simply cannot adult. Somehow the majority of us get to where we’re supposed to be eventually, it’s just a matter of timing.

So there, smug marrieds.