Why It’s Time To Check Your ‘Couple Privilege’

three years after shacking up with my significant other, I thought the days of the patronising head tilt were over. You know the one – it usually accompanies the words ‘Oh, still single?’ There’s a lot loaded into that head tilt.

But I got it again last week, when I told my friends that my boyfriend could not make a wedding abroad with me. My single friends gave me the bright-eyed ‘see you at the free bar’ look, but some coupled-up friends adopted the head tilt, as if attending this social occasion plus none would be a struggle of gargantuan proportions. They seemed to forget that I was single for years before boarding Noah’s Ark and, miraculously, I have not since forgotten how to function as a single entity. Nor, even more crucially, have I forgotten what it’s like to be single in a group of couples.

I call it checking my ‘couple privilege’. This not only means ensuring some semblance of individual autonomy, but also checking myself if I ever forget what it means not to have a locked-down plus one. As a single woman, I remember the dinner parties I was uninvited to, the couples’ ski trips and the holidays where friends went two-by-two. I remember looking forward to parties, imagining it would be me with friends, dancing like loons, drinking too many shots and bonding in cab rides home clutching ill-advised fast food. Then I’d arrive and be greeted by a stilted gathering of plus ones, all awkwardly chatting to the other surplus men and women they did not know.

On so many of these occasions I would pray that not every smug married I knew would bring along their other half, so that I might have a hope in hell of spending some time with my friends. Quality time – time with in-jokes and introspection, nostalgia and intimacy. Not time with their conjoined-sex-partner, making small talk about house prices and congested trains. I’d be thinking, ‘I did not befriend you to one day hope that the person with whom you decide to spend a lifetime/few months shagging would then tag along to our every interaction.’ Friendships should have space for this person – sure – but should also be allowed to evolve in their own right, not as a stop-gap between amorous relationships.

But if you check your couple privilege, you avoid making your friends feel like second-class citizens. You recognise that your paired-up bliss needs to coexist alongside friendships you have cultivated your whole life, not supersede them. is means not taking your other half to every dinner, pub gathering or party; as well as actively organising events or holidays that are markedly plus-ones-free.

Of course, there are the unicorn couples: the ones where you are just as pleased to see their brilliant other half as you are your friend. But look closely and you’ll find that these two check their couple privilege. They are not always together and, even when they are, they devote conversations to you, dance with you, listen, even hold your hair back if you need to vom at the end of the night. If you’re in a couple, be this couple: your friends will thank you.

I feel this more than ever now that I am in a relationship. I don’t take my boyfriend to everything, even if he’s invited, because I remember what that felt like. My boyfriend and I live together and have days of each other’s company that are blissful and precious, but I still want that with my friends, too. Those wine-soaked dinners; or those lazy Sunday brunches. I want that well into my seventies – whether we are all married or not.

And that’s the thing, as I embark on my thirties and am neck-deep in weddings and birth announcements: I hear a klaxon of change. It’s time to check that couple privilege. Do not abandon your single pals to a sea of nappies or antenatal-class mums, or subtly slip into a collective of wedding spreadsheets just so you can compare notes on florists. Your single friends are still your teammates, they’re still the girls – or guys – who stood by you in the trenches of dating warfare. I know this from my mother’s single friends, who she still sees religiously, who are invited to Christmas – who are never relegated just because they didn’t pair up. Being in a couple is a beautiful privilege, but having great friends is, too.

Have you experienced ‘couple privilege’? Email feedback@graziamagazine.co.uk

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