Being single can be like being on vacation.
For instance, you can create rules and boundaries in your life and only have to answer to yourself. Better yet, you can change or break the rules however you like. If you decide that you don’t drink on week nights but have a particularly awful day on Tuesday and want to shotgun a glass of wine as soon as you get home, you can do it and call it a freebie. The only person who has to deal with your behavior is you.
You can be utterly selfish. This even extends to relationships in certain phases, because until there’s a ring on it there’s still that room in your life to say “that’s where I do what I do and you don’t have a say in it”. You get to say no to plans because you want a pedicure. You get to dole out your time with friends like a miser or lavish attention in unexpected ways. You can put all of your time and money into your favorite hobby, be it learning how to basket weave, playing a certain game, or constructing life size clay creatures from fantasy novels. You get to have your thing that makes you happy and no one gets to take that away from you.
You can have weird rituals.  You can spend two hours perfecting your makeup.  You can wake up later and skip the shower.  If you’re a slob that keeps piles of clothes instead of a hamper you have a completely organized floor. If you can’t go to bed without having cleaned the house with everything in it’s place you can call it a perfectly normal night.
When you’re single you can do things like treat yourself to an adventure, be it driving across a few states to see a friend or taking yourself to the movies. It’s a little scary, but it’s exhilarating to experience something all by yourself. You can focus on the parts of a movie that speak to you, or the joys of a long drive that make you feel more like yourself.
One thing that I sometimes miss about being single is being able to romanticize what a relationship would be like. I think we all have done it, looking forward to that magical moment when your eyes meet across the room, the butterflies will be fluttering in your tummy as that person starts talking to you, and you find yourself swept off your feet with the initial request to spend time together. I used to imagine beautiful dates planned and sweet conversations with compliments about parts of me that I didn’t know could be seen as beautiful to another human being.
Of course, it is usually based on the romantic things I’ve seen in movies, TV shows, and heard in love songs. One of the reasons I actually love the movie “They Came Together” (which my boyfriend calls one of the worst movies he’s ever been forced to watch, right up there with the time I made him watch “Pride and Prejudice”) is that it mocks the entire romantic comedy genre in the best way ever. It gives the characters the qualities and story lines that we see in every Rom-Com, making the entire movie a mockery of what Hollywood has sugar coated and force fed us since we were in the uterus.
Now that I’m on the other side, in a relationship, I occasionally fantasize about the romantic ideas like I used to, but I don’t get too far into them. I’m happy with the Fella that I have, and dreaming about what he could be like if he changed feels wrong. I know what kind of person he is and what kind of person I am. Of course, as a woman, I want to be romanced and wooed and pursued. But it doesn’t all come about in the same ways. Our romantic moments are usually surrounded by goofy moments, loud moments, nerdy moments, serious moments, angry moments, stupid moments, stinky moments, and more. I wouldn’t trade the reality of talking with our mouths full about what the correct answer is in “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” for the daydream of what Hollywood deems romantic.