This pressure to ‘get out there’ – to date widely and invest time and energy in new activities – is something 26-year-old Sandra Dickson, from London, is currently experiencing too. “There’s a sense that if you’re not dating multiple people, then there must be something wrong with you,” she says. “But I’m finding it really stressful. Do I have to constantly be dating multiple people to find someone?”

Sandra’s experience resonates with me: I can think of many moments over the past few months when, in getting ready for a date I’d arranged in an effort to be productive, I realised that what I’d really like to be doing is watching Gossip Girl in bed. Yet throughout all of this, I found myself thinking: ‘At least I’m trying – at least I’m not, as single women are so often warned against, wasting my time’.

Aswan Magumbe, a 22-year-old journalist from London, also feels the need to use her singleness ‘wisely’ by dating multiple people. So where does this pressure come from? “With the cost of living crisis and the lack of uncertainty around our [Gen-Z’s] future, it feels like the pressure to date to find ‘the one’ is intensifying because it offers greater financial stability,” she says.

“I’m newly single – here’s why I’m rejecting the pressure to fill my time with dates and ‘productive hobbies’”