Main Character Energy in your 30s: Personal Growth, Weddings, and the Single Tax

Lucy Ford is an entertainment writer, presenter and host who you can find all over the internet. She has chatted with most of your favorite celebrities, hosted a K-Pop documentary series for the BBC, and offers relatable and honest insight into pop culture events. (She can also show you how to style pajamas as everyday wear, which, let's be honest, we all want to do.)

There are some things people don’t tell you about turning thirty. Or, more specifically, they tell you, but you don’t listen because, oh my god, thirty is so far away, I don’t have to think about that right now. 

But when you turn 30, which is always less far in the distance than you’d imagine, some things will happen. Your search for back pain remedies on Amazon will autofill, as will mobility stretch videos on YouTube. You’ll start genuinely turning down pints at after-work drinks, opting instead for a lime and soda because you ‘have to be up early tomorrow’. And you’ll go to a lot of weddings. Like, so many weddings. More weddings than you have outfits for, but because you’re a millennial in your 30s, you have an inherent, Lizzie McGuire-induced fear of outfit repeating but no funds to reckon with that personal demon (again, millennial in your 30s).

Now, seeing people you love love each other is one of life’s greatest joys, as is the gift of living long enough to feel your body-worn by time and to look forward to the days ahead. All that being said, weddings are expensive, and when you’re a perpetually single person existing in life’s appointed decade of wedding bliss, it can all add up. As can being single generally.

I’ve existed most of my adult life as the resident single friend. The one who, when conversation at catch-ups that are long overdue, will punctuate the end of the life recap with an answer to ‘So what about you, are you dating?’. The answer is almost always no, from a mixture of few chances to meet people organically, dating apps being like the tenth circle of hell Dante forgot to mention in his Divine Comedy, to just, honestly, not being bothered about the whole thing. It’s just simply never been a priority for me. My late-blooming teenage years turned into adulthood, and somewhere along the way, I just forgot that that wasn’t really the norm. It’s something I thought I’d seriously get around to at some point. But even right now, it’s not that big of a deal.  

The thing that people often don’t tell you about turning 30 is that, even if you’re single, it is most likely your friends won’t be – hence the weddings. The effect of that often manifests in ways you didn’t expect. You’ll often get the worst room in an AirBnB on weekends away, box rooms with a bunk or a futon. It’s fine, you say, you can sleep anywhere. Lone car journeys cost more. And at those weddings, especially the ones that require an overnight stay, you’ll end up paying double what everyone else is for a hotel room by yourself. There’s essentially a tax on being single in your thirties that’s eaten up by weekends when we all cosplay at being adults. 

Before it sounds like I’m complaining or that I hate my friends or am three days away from turning into the neighbour whose house at the end of the road parents tell their kids to avoid, single life is fine, and my friends are good, and my life is whole and fulfilling. These monetary hiccups are just part and parcel of the ride when you dare make the decision to go it alone.

The thing about being the main character of your own life is that, in choosing to shoulder it all yourself, you really do shoulder it all – the great and the not-so-great. With all of the freedom I have on my own, the ability to travel and take holidays whenever I want and put myself first, I also have to inevitably pay more and experience more situations whereby being single and 30 makes me the anomaly (a fate worse than death for a tried and tested wallflower) and kiss goodbye to friend holidays with pals that are coupled up because they need to preserve their PTO to line it up with their partner. 

Your main character era, if it hopefully extends long into your life, will go through many phases, like the moon or the popularity of skinny jeans. How being the main character in your twenties may look, swilling cocktails all night without the pervasive thought of how badly the sugar will give you a hangover, kissing people you probably shouldn’t or hopping from job to job because you have the freedom to do so, will be different to how it looks in your 30s. This isn’t to say your 30s aren’t fun, as everyone will tell you, and you will refuse to believe them. Your 30s, by this tally of one voter, are your best decade. 

I have more freedom now than in my 20s, even if sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. Feeling more sure of myself than a decade ago is the kind of gift I’ve been kind enough to give myself, and finding a groove in life when so much of growing up feels like neverending turbulence is a momentary reprieve of calm. Sure, I may have to shoulder a £180 hotel room in Chichester every now and then, and I may have to awkwardly tell people no, I hate dating apps, but It’s okay, I’m okay, actually over and over again. But that’s my main character journey, and I’m so grateful for it.