How to Age Alone (Even if You Don’t Really Want to)

Being partnered may get the societal seal of approval, but it does not protect us from aging solo

I’ve been forced to think about death lately — my own. First when I interviewed Katy Butler about her book The Art of Dying Well: A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life earlier this year, and more recently when I interviewed BJ Miller on the book he co-wrote with Shoshana Berger, A Beginner’s Guide to the End: Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death. Both books are more about living a good life in the time we have left (however long that might be) than about death and dying per se, and so they have made me think a little more urgently about the years ahead. How will I age alone, even though I don’t necessarily want to. But I’m single and I may be single from here on in — what is that going to look like?

I have feels.

I realize I need figure out how this aging alone as a single woman thing is going to work. As much as I’d love to have a grand romance before I die, I can’t count on that — I need to have a plan in place for aging alone.

And, to be honest, so do you.

Being partnered is no guarantee