Last weekend, I met up with someone I hadn’t seen since I was 13.

We had a lovely time catching up. He reminded me of the last time we saw each other, which I didn’t remember. When we were 13, we ran into each other on the street. He said I was with a much older man who, my friend remembers, “looked like a black gay fashion icon.” That sounds about right.

The fashion icon and I took my friend to the Scrapbar on MacDougal Street, where we drank beer and sang along to the jukebox.

After laughing about that and other memories from our youth, he filled me in on his life.

He was honest in a way I find rare. He was open about how difficult raising children was for him and how marriage was incredibly taxing. Yet, despite all their unconventional ways to stay together, when they thought they wouldn’t last, he and his wife somehow made their life work.

Then he asked me the question that everyone asks me, but because I was not expecting it from someone who had just been so open about the hardships of conventional life, it caught me off guard.

“So, tell me. Why didn’t you ever get married?”

For the first time, instead of explaining or feeling the need to justify my life, I asked him a question:

“Why did you get married?”

“I don’t know, it’s just what people do,” he said.

The thing about me is that I’ve never succeeded at doing “What people do.”

I’ve tried, but I’ve failed at living life according to those conventional heteronormative markers, and common rites of passage. Many people follow the course of doing “what people do” without ever questioning whether this ready-made formula is the life they want, assuming it is the path of least resistance.

But when you live according to society’s prescribed notions of a proper life, is it really easier?

That’s when I realized something…

The one-size-fits-all model of life doesn’t fit a lot of people. I’m one of those people.

It’s hard to live in a world as a never-married, child-free woman. This world rewards couples and families and mistreats people like me. When I have a boyfriend, I’m invited to dinner parties, barbecues, cocktail parties, and other couple-y affairs. When I’m single, I’m suddenly … not. I’ve talked about this with other single people, wondering if it was just me—maybe I’m more likable when I’m partnered?