So it’s friday and the weekend is upon us once again. Here’s my  truth about weekends if you are single. They are basically not my favorite two days of the week. On weekdays I get up, go to work, exercise, eat meals, talk to friends, blah blah blah. On the weekends I notice how many couples there are and  how few single people I see around. Starting Thursday night I review my calendar to see  if I have enough events on it to travel through the weekend in a happy state. Here’s the reason why this is. SHAME! It is the shame of the single people. For those of us who live alone there is a common element of shame as we believe somehow we are defective for living in this state. We make excuses for it, we deny we are bothered by it, we act as if we couldn’t be happier to be sitting alone in a restaurant or movie theater, but actually we are all ashamed we find ourselves alone at this point in our lives. I know, I know…there are a lot of folks who will argue and say they are perfectly happy with their single lives. They have no desire to live with anyone else. They feel no shame whatsoever. I don’t believe them. I don’t believe if any single person is asked the question about their life they will answer in the negative. You wonder, what is the question? Here it is. If you could live with someone whom you loved and who loved you, would you want this? If there was someone home at the end of the day who was happy to see you would you want this? If you had a stroke in the middle of the night would you want to have someone there to call 911 for you? I doubt there is a single person who could honestly say they did not want this in their lives. I think all of us do better in a relationship even if the relationship happens to be with an animal (pet). Life is better and feels happier when we have someone in the house with us. Some friends who are married and don’t dare leave tell me I am wrong in this. They tell me how lonely they are living with their spouses. I ask them why they don’t leave and they say it is because of the money. They are afraid they won’t have enough to live with. I understand this as I understand fear. Having a lot of money makes life infinitely easier. Having a lot of money and living in a fearful state is not a good thing. Living with someone you don’t love because you are afraid of being alone is very common. Many people are in marriages where they feel little comfort and little joy. They stay because they don’t believe they have a choice. They stay because that is what they were raised to believe was the right thing to do. They stay and then they have affairs and lie about them. They stay and sometimes fall in love again with their spouse but it is often too late for the spouse. I still think it is better to live with someone else than not because there is a lot of stress to being single. It is easier on  friday night to not have to plan for something over the weekend. If you are living with someone it really doesn’t matter if you have a plan as you can hang out with your partner and be fine. You don’t have to suffer from the panic of no plans!

I know this column will not be a great success with either the single group or the married one. Neither group wants to hear about unhappiness or loneliness for that matter. Most people want to read about solutions to problems they are suffering with. I have solutions to this problem as well. Sure, there are lots of solutions. Become religious! Go to church on Sunday! Join a walking club and walk all weekend! Volunteer! Make plans with other single friends. I think the biggest solution to this problem is to admit the problem exists. The first step is admitting to the loneliness and moving on from there. I meet people all the time who tell me how lonely they are but they only tell me after a long dialogue about how full their lives are. They only tell me when I admit how I may feel on any given day myself. I think there should be a single people’s hot line where we each have a call list. Just like people who are about to take a drink or use drugs and need help not to do this, we should have a number to call when we are lonely. There should be a matching service with other singles who want to do something at that moment! We could find each other and go out for dinner or to a movie. There would be no shame. As long as we no longer have families who care for their parents as they get older we need to find other ways for single people to find companionship aside  from Match.com. There is a large group of us out there range in in age from 50 or so on up. We are the fastest growing demographic using the internet. Single people of the world, unite! We can conquer this.Call me!