Being single in Ireland is clearly a sensitive issue, particularly as the years go by and hopes of finding a partner or having a family recede. As Natalie Schwartzberg, Kathy Berliner and Demaris Jacob, authors of Single In A Married World, observe: "The lack of validation from the mainstream culture imparts a sense of deviance, which may seriously limit the single person's ability to feel life is, at present, authentic or to envision other options beyond marriage for creating a rich, rewarding life." You'd think that such feelings of "deviance" hardly apply to people in their 20s, but Sharon McGarry (29), a publicist with Columbia Tri-Star and 20th Century Fox based in Dublin, is already beginning to wonder if she's ever going to meet someone.
"Every woman I know is single. I don't know what's going on here. Irish men just don't seem to be interested. They're paranoid - they think you want to capture them and get married." She was in a long-term relationship which broke up last February. "When I was 14 and thinking about the future with my friends we reckoned you were past it at 30. Things aren't working out the way I expected. The conventional pattern isn't there anymore for Irish women."
But being single does have its advantages. "I'm enjoying the freedom. I don't have to be in a good mood if I don't feel like it. I can travel. I have two flatmates so if I have a bad day there's always someone at home I can moan to."
She finds the Dublin pub scene "cliquey" and notices that she's a lot more fussy about what she wants in a man than she used to be: "I don't want to compromise." Meanwhile she has an active social life with her single women friends which revolves around work and her love of the cinema. "It makes a huge difference when you have a job you like and a disposable income. You can go out and do things rather than stagnating." Before you can be happy with someone else you have to be happy on your own, she believes.
Ann Bourke (31), a Dubliner who works in the tourist industry, joined the dating agency, Who's Who for the Unattached, because she was tired of "one-night stands and lobotomy lads". She wanted an opportunity to get to know men rather than going out on the town and because she travels a lot for her job found she wasn't meeting "the kind of man I'd like": "As I get older I value my social and leisure time and I like to spend it wisely. When I was at college I used to meet a lot of people but it's been harder since I started working. Clubbing was another way of meeting people, but these days it is very dance-orientated. Anyway, I feel a bit of a geriatric, bumping into 17-year-olds." She isn't in a hurry to have children but if she was with someone who really wanted them would consider it. So far her long-term relationships haven't worked out: "There' s no point staying in a bad relationship. You have to pick up the pieces and carry on."
Like many young Irish single people she still lives in the family home. "I get on very well with my parents and I'm the baby of the family so I think they're eager to hang on to me." Still she's saving to buy a house. "I'd like to have my own property. I don't need a man to buy my own house." Writer Aisling Maguire, from Dublin and aged 39, is content to be single. "I never felt the desire or need to be married and I never wanted to have children. I have arranged my life to suit myself and, more specifically, to suit my writing. I never felt I could live at close quarters with another person and also write. Children in particular take up so much mental and physical space." Most of her friends got married years ago and have started having children. "They might have been originally nonplussed by my attitude but they're quite envious now of my peace and quiet." She finds men react to her decision not to have children "with some distaste" and suspects they're brought up to believe that all women want children. Frequently she is asked why she isn't married or in a relationship and people are amazed when she says she isn't lonely. People also wonder why she isn't scared to be travelling, a single woman, alone in places like India and Nepal. "You're supposed to feel so vulnerable. My sister teases me that one day I'll be found dead, all shrivelled up. It's not an impossible scenario. But I don't really think about it."
She has a charitable attitude towards the many married people who find her decisions odd. "I think it makes them insecure, that you didn't want what they did."
Anne Callaghan, a homeopath based in Bray, Co Wicklow, is similarly unimpressed by the conventional route: "I've never wanted the kind of life my parents had: kids, suburbia. Marriage has always seemed like a prison and if I do have a biological clock someone has taken the battery out. Most of my friends are like me: we've always wanted to be different. I would never want to belong to that dreadful circuit of paired dinner parties."
At 40 she is now ready for a stable relationship. "But I'm not being very pro-active about it. I don't hang around places where single people congregate. Apparently Thursday night at the Merrion Centre is the place to be, filling your trolley with exotic icecream. But I suspect the sort of relationship I want is not to be found in a place like that."
She gets plenty of offers from married men but "it isn't worth the pain and hurt". She is quicker at recognising what she wants in a man now than she was in her 20s.
"In my work I see lots of people becoming ill because they've stayed in a relationship that isn't working." The single women in her family are important role models: "I know that it is possible to survive on your own because I've seen my aunt live a successful life as a single person, and my great aunt."
MEGAN is 42 and from Dublin. She finds being single "heaven" after the break up of her unhappy marriage: "I'm not in debt any more, I can control my life. I'm not answerable to anybody." One lament is the absence of a singles "scene" for adults of her age, beyond "anxious, despairing dances where single men and women are desperately looking for partners. Men just wanting to hold a woman, needy as little boys." A lot of the single men she meets of her own age or older are looking for someone "to maintain their households and adore them. An independent woman like me presents a threat." She has her own house and a good job "but although I have part-time lovers now and then I haven't met a man yet who intrigues me". Her one regret is that she didn't have children: "The chances are at this stage that I won't have children, and I would have liked to. I would have made a great mother. But it is not the ultimate thing for me as a woman. If it was, I'd be having one right now, on my own."
