My newly single friends are all starting to see that The Single Life isn’t all they thought it would be. They are discovering Bumble and Tinder and texting and $15 drinks and ghosting. The bloom comes off that rose pretty quickly, and I have been over nursing them through it for years now. I always dread the day, though, when they discover that being single is so much more than just the dating.

For years I watched my married friends rely on their spouses to take their cars in for servicing. Sounds innocuous, right? But when you’re single, this is something you do for yourself along with everything else. It’s also something your married friends don’t understand is a big deal. The car gets serviced on time, the dinner gets made, the coffee filters and milk get bought. Things get said like, “Well, if I lose this job, it’ll suck, but at least [insert spouse’s name here]’s salary will cover us while I look for something else for a while.” Or, “I just didn’t have enough time to get all the way across town to pick up that cake for her birthday, so I sent [insert spouse’s name here] to do it so I could get my nails done and buy a new dress between work and the party.”

I think the biggest issue is the cleaning. I watched in envy when one of them was tired and spent a few hours in bed and the carpets still got vacuumed. Or just when one of them would pick up the other’s dish or sock. They all wondered why I didn’t have them over often. It’s because they’d give my place sidelong glances where the dust has collected. They made jokes when my toilet wasn’t a porcelain bowl out of which they could eat. They’d inspect my dishes for water spots and then look disapprovingly when they found a dozen. And they’d just give a blank look and nod when I say, “Yep, sorry, I didn’t have time to deep clean the house this week. I was busy holding down a full-time job, getting the car re-registered, paying all of my bills, buying groceries, cooking, doing general cleaning and picking-up after myself, and talking to you people so that you don’t wonder why I never go out.” I don’t have a second pair of hands all the time, dude. Or, you know, ever.

If it’s not the cleaning, then it’s the touching. As an extremely tactile person, the absence of touch is probably the toughest thing about being single for me. No matter which way they sliced it, it was difficult to watch and hear. If they did or didn’t like touching each other, that was difficult to see and hear about. “I just think he’s disgusting, and I don’t want his hands on me ever,” my good friend used to say. I would go home and cry. How could you have someone you love there with you, in your house all the time, and not want to touch him? Not want him to touch you? Is your respect for him so far gone that you can’t even fulfill a basic human need with him? Or do you take touch so much for granted that you don’t even know how excruciating it can be when it’s gone?

I dread the day when they call me up and ask, “Do you have any idea how hard it is to do all of this alone? Like, I had to do the dishes, clean the house, work a full day, and then my parents wanted to talk to me for like an hour and for me to come there and do some things around the house for them, and then the guy I’ve been talking to called and asked to move our coffee date from tomorrow to today…and I hadn’t taken a shower or shaved in a day….”

Yeah, of course I know how hard it is. I’ve been doing that shit for 25 fucking years. And I love you, and if you tell me one more time how hard it is to be single, I might kill you. I dread the day they say that to me because I know I’m going to say something like that back, and they’re going to flinch.

I am not unsympathetic. Nor am I bitter, really. I am simply…desirous of acknowledgement that this has been my life, I guess. This is single life. You do shit on your own. Every day. You ask for help and sometimes you get it. Sometimes people look at you funny and laugh. (That’s how you know they’re still married.) Sometimes people you ask for help say “no problem” and then give you a bill afterwards. This is adult single life. Sometimes you find a good person out there to spend some time with, and you can’t stop thinking about them. They’re the first thing you think about when you wake up and the last when you go to sleep, and sometimes you even wind up dating them for a while. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll ride off into the sunset with that person.

Until then, this is adult single life. Welcome. Now clean your toilet.