Every now and then I find myself thinking of the phrase, ‘Behind every great man, there’s a great woman.’ Coined in the 1900s, the expression was adopted by the feminist movement in the 1960s to highlight how women are often taken for granted when a man succeeds. I think there is still truth to it, but I would argue it goes both ways. I think that behind many a great woman is a really supportive and financially solvent partner or spouse cheering them on, enabling them to take career risks, try new things and generally offering a safety net if things don’t work out – and a lot of people don’t realise what a privilege this is.
When I look back over my career, I know I would be much further ahead had I not had to pay for everything myself. I’ve been single for more than a decade and in that time have watched countless coupled-up friends and colleagues benefit from that built-in support, enabling them to change careers, quit jobs without another lined up, go back to university or start businesses.
I’m a career changer and really struggled to support myself while doing it, so I didn’t manage to take the leap from the arts to the media until I was about to turn 30. While my friends were climbing the career ladder and getting promotions and accolades and living in increasingly comfortable homes with their partners or husbands, I was an intern living and working in a boarding school so that I could afford to make the switch. I couldn’t help but think that things would be different if I’d had a boyfriend to shack up with. One friend also changed careers around the same time and her other half supported her by paying the rent while she was earning much less. I could only look on with envy.
The fact is, these kinds of career risks are so much harder to take when paying the bills is all on your shoulders. It’s well-documented that it costs much more to be single – and people in relationships benefit even when one of them isn’t directly supporting the other. In 2023, a financial services provider worked out that single people, on average, spend £860 more per month than their partnered peers, totalling more than £10k a year, thanks to not being able to split rent, bills, TV subscriptions, groceries and so on. Those in relationships have been able to grow savings pots to tide them over if they need to do things like leave a job without having another to go to, or have the cash to spend on evening courses to help them change careers or get promotions, whereas I always felt like I was living paycheque to paycheque.
This is why one of my biggest bugbears, as a long-term singleton, is people calling me a career woman – we don’t have a similar term for men. There is a misconception that being single automatically means you are work obsessed – and have all the time in the world to develop your career. It puts even more pressure on us to succeed because, well, what else could we possibly be doing? When, ironically, I think it’s actually harder for us to get ahead. A friend once said that I was still single because I was focused on my career. In reality, I have to work a lot harder to be able to support myself.
It’s not all about finances. When you’re single and live alone, you don’t have that built-in support at home. It could be as small as when you’ve had a bad day at work, you don’t have anyone to moan to after a hard day at the office. I have friends whose partners help strategise when their boss is being a nightmare, or help them fill out job applications. Friends can be great, but they aren’t as invested as a partner would be.
Of course, there are positives. When I started my side project, The Single Supplement, which is a newsletter on Substack, I was able to dedicate hours to it in the evenings and weekends when I was growing it without having to consider anyone else’s needs or schedule. When I wrote my book, I was even more absorbed and didn’t have to worry about annoying a partner by not giving them any attention.
And, ultimately, I have the satisfaction of saying I’ve done it all by myself – and that is priceless. But I hope those in relationships know how lucky they are to have extra support, financial or otherwise.
‘Single’ by Nicola Slawson (Headline Home) is out now