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| We should mourn the bachelor pad. Who wants to live with other people anyway? | |
| (about 5 hours later) | |
| How tragic, laments the Telegraph, to discover that the bachelor pad, that sophisticated pied à terre beloved by men about town from James Bond to Bertie Wooster, is on its way out, largely thanks to Britain’s continuing housing crisis. The bachelor pad was, according to the newspaper, once considered “a right [sic] of passage for young men who had flown the nest and wanted to enjoy single life undisturbed”. Well, young men of a certain class, naturally. | How tragic, laments the Telegraph, to discover that the bachelor pad, that sophisticated pied à terre beloved by men about town from James Bond to Bertie Wooster, is on its way out, largely thanks to Britain’s continuing housing crisis. The bachelor pad was, according to the newspaper, once considered “a right [sic] of passage for young men who had flown the nest and wanted to enjoy single life undisturbed”. Well, young men of a certain class, naturally. |
| Moving in such low social circles as I do, I’ve seen very few bachelor pads, but in my single days I would always be impressed when I did. This, I would say to myself in awe, is a man who has got his life together. He is solvent. He has appliances. He is not, unlike me, the sort of person who mistakes a glass of neat gin for their bedside water and steps out of bed into a discarded dauphinoise. Clearly this is a mature, independent, worldly man who can teach me a lot. This one’s a keeper. | Moving in such low social circles as I do, I’ve seen very few bachelor pads, but in my single days I would always be impressed when I did. This, I would say to myself in awe, is a man who has got his life together. He is solvent. He has appliances. He is not, unlike me, the sort of person who mistakes a glass of neat gin for their bedside water and steps out of bed into a discarded dauphinoise. Clearly this is a mature, independent, worldly man who can teach me a lot. This one’s a keeper. |
| People might end up going in for a place with someone they are not sure about, just to get their name on a mortgage | People might end up going in for a place with someone they are not sure about, just to get their name on a mortgage |
| Cue hollow laughter. Because any sensible adult knows that an ability to own property says very little about a person’s personality or, indeed, the probability of revealing psychopathic tendencies at some point in the future (didn’t Patrick Bateman have a bachelor pad, after all?). Having your own place only really says that you have money. Except that now, single men (and presumably single women) apparently don’t. According to Halifax, nearly half of people aged between 18 and 35 are relying on a partner to help them get on the property ladder. With the costs of rent and living being what they are, it’s hard enough saving for a deposit with someone. To do so alone is a Herculean task. | |
| Of course, what this means is that some people might end up going in for a place with someone they are not all that sure about, just to get their name on a mortgage. It might seem a colossal act of stupidity, but when you’ve had the importance of property ownership shoved down your throat since a very young age, you’ll perhaps become willing to overlook even the most glaring of faults in a partner if it means turning your back on the expense and precariousness of the privately rented sector. | |
| It used to be that people stayed together for the kids. Could it be that, instead, they’ll all soon be staying together for the kitchen? Or is my generation expecting a wave of pretty nasty breakups once we hit our 40s and realise that no gaff, no matter how swish, is worth a lifetime of desperate unhappiness? | |
| It’s not just about buying a place, either. There are a lot of people who dream of merely renting their own home but are put off by skyrocketing prices. In cities, particularly London, house-sharing is the norm even if you’re part of a couple or even – in my case – married. What this lack of privacy will mean psychologically in the long term is hard to predict. It is often said that learning to be alone is one of the most important lessons that an adult can have. It teaches you to look after yourself, to tolerate your own company, to experience the joys of not having to answer to anyone. Ideally, it sets you up for those times in life – and they happen to everyone unless you’re very fortunate – when you are left, or you feel, completely alone. | |
| And living alone is a pleasure unlike no other. I only did it for a year, in Paris when I was 18, in a tiny little attic with a sink and a hot plate, but I loved it and wasn’t lonely at all. I feel very lucky to have done it. These days, it is a privilege that is out of reach for many. | And living alone is a pleasure unlike no other. I only did it for a year, in Paris when I was 18, in a tiny little attic with a sink and a hot plate, but I loved it and wasn’t lonely at all. I feel very lucky to have done it. These days, it is a privilege that is out of reach for many. |
| Not that having your own place isn’t without its problems. A woman in her late 20s who I interviewed recently, and who owns her own London flat, told me she dreaded the “your place or mine” conversation at the end of dates. The men she’d go out with would invariably live in cramped shared flats where the chance of encountering a housemate or three is high, but when she brought them back to her own place an awkward conversation would always ensue about how the hell she was able to buy a two-bedroom flat in this city. | |
| It’s an issue that you might think merits consigning to the “first world problems” drawer as you reach for your tiny violin. But a gulf emerges around this time in your life between those who can afford to buy and those who can’t, and as the former becomes harder for increasing numbers of people, bitterness, awkwardness and resentment can grow. | It’s an issue that you might think merits consigning to the “first world problems” drawer as you reach for your tiny violin. But a gulf emerges around this time in your life between those who can afford to buy and those who can’t, and as the former becomes harder for increasing numbers of people, bitterness, awkwardness and resentment can grow. |
| Of course, it’s not all doom and gloom. There are lots of upsides to communal living, and perhaps as my generation do it for longer we will begin to see it as less of a necessity and more of a choice. But it’s important to remember that not everyone enjoys being around other people, and many actively choose to be single or to live alone. For those lone rangers, the decline of bachelor and bachelorette pads must strike fear into their hearts. Hell is, after all, other people. | |
| • Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist | • Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist |