27 Ways to Respond When Someone Asks Why You’re Still Single
I cannot tell you how many times I have been called upon to explain my utter and complete lack of boyfriend. Typically, I alternate between two main responses, which are 1) shrugging and 2) making noncommittal mouth sounds. It almost always happens at family parties, and the question usually comes after “How’s school?” but before “How is [friend I haven’t spoken to in about ten years and who may as well be dead to me]?”
You’ve been there. I can tell. But hey, since we’re going to be parrying these questions at every family gathering and holiday party from now until the day we die, we might as well be ready. So when they ask “When are you ever going to bring a boy around for us to meet?”, you simply say…
1. Tis neither here nor there.
2. The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love.
3. I am too blunt and saucy.
4. I am pigeon-liver’d and lack gall.
5. My good opinion, once lost, is lost forever.
6. I have never been in love; it is not my way, or my nature.
7. I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me.
8. They’re a rotten crowd.
9. Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for, has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows.
10. [Exeunt, pursued by a bear.]
11. I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness.
12. Ask me not.
13. What have I done that thou dar’st wag thy tongue in noise so rude against me?
15. Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.
16. I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.
17. I am becoming more and more attracted by the gay side of life.
18. Not all those who wander are lost.
19. I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own.
20. That little word “why” has run through all universe from the first day of creation…and for seven thousand years it has had no answer.
21. I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.
22. Anybody between fifteen and thirty may have me for asking.
23. Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises.
24. Men don’t interest me. No—women neither.
25. The worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.
26. I am unlike other people, I dare say.
27. Let me be boiled to death with melancholy.
