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Over the dating scene? You just might be a 'super single'

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I heard a new term the other day: ‘super single’. 

It’s from a show called ‘Better Things’ and it looks like it’s creeping into the dating lexicon the way Sex and The City’s ‘he’s just not that into you’ did.

Watch a trailer for the series below. NSFW

Super single: being super good at being single. 

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It reminded me of this woman I used to be fascinated by as a kid, when I still went to church. 

I must’ve been 13 at the time and she, well, to the eye of a child, she was somewhere between 40 and 105.

But she was unlike any woman in the community. 

She wore her grey hair cropped and her clothes like functional uniforms and pulled the same beret on every Sunday. She had a job, owned a house and a car, and smoked cigarettes with the men round the back during tea after service.  

Most alarmingly, she was single. 

Not ‘divorced’ and ‘waiting for love’ single. Like SINGLE single. 

In all the time that I knew her, she never had a man friend or for that matter, a ‘woman friend’ in the way that the older generations had to hide their orientation. 

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And despite this can you believe, she still seemed incredibly happy all the damn time. 

Of course, I’ll never know what happened behind the scenes. But the fact remains that this woman is etched in my psyche as the ultimate independent single lady. The ultimate super single. 

I’ve known others since then; men and women who are more at home with themselves, their independence, animals, gardens and just general ‘being aloneness’ than with the fuss of another human vroeteling in their space. 

They’re not lonely; they’re not pining; they’re not trying to be okay. 

Maybe they engage in some type of love or sexual relationship from time to time but wanting to involve themselves in the day-to-days of another person simply isn’t on their hierarchy of needs. 

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Personally, I think this kind of person is rare. 

Homo sapiens are a social sort of species, more inclined to huddling and picking fleas and issues off each other than going it alone. 

But even so, our big brains and curious minds have us engaging with each other in all sorts of ways. 

If we’re going to accept the array of relationship models we do now (monogamy, negotiated monogamy, ethical non-monogamy, open relationships, polyamory etcetera ad infinitum), surely we can consider ‘single and happily involved with self’ – or super single – as another?

READ MORE: You don't have to choose monogamy... but it's okay if you do

I check in with my folks from time to time about that grey-haired super single and she’s still motoring along. Now, probably 250 years old. 

Which does get me wondering again… has her super single status and the lack of stress endowed her with extra-long life? 

Hmmm. So many questions. 

Follow Dorothy Black on her blog and on Twitter.

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