Feeling the pressure to settle down? Don’t despair if the perfect someone has yet to grace your lonely, single doorstep. Being single is actually pretty sweet, so next time you find yourself wallowing in shallow self-pity, think about the following perks of flying solo.

1. Having The Bed To Yourself

Significant others are quick to take over your personal territory in the bedroom. Sleeping alone lets your avoid a potential bed hog.

2. Your Favorite Disgusting Habits

Who wants to eat a massive ice cream sundae while drinking a beer in bed in front of their lover? That’s right, someone who hates having sex.

3. More Money

Dates can be expensive, especially if you’re with someone you’re trying to impress. It takes very little to impress yourself… a tall can and some television will do.

4. Sleeping Around

Sometimes it’s great to have reliably good sex with someone you care deeply about. Other times, a good fuck comes in the form of an enthusiastic stranger who never gave you his name. Or, like, ten enthusiastic strangers (probably not at once, though).

5. Focusing On Your Hobbies

Who’s going to take the time to learn Sanskrit and plough through seven novels a month when they’re in relationship?

6. No One Keeping Tabs On Your Actions

“What did you yesterday, honey? Oh yeah? With who? That doesn’t sound very safe…” Please, who needs this all the time?

7. Avoiding A Second Family

You’ve already got your own nagging parents to deal with. Why take one someone else’s, as well?

8. Personal Growth

Sure, you can learn and grow in a relationship, but doing so by yourself has a lot more longevity in terms of independent happiness.

9. Your Career

Without the warmth of constant companionship, your job can become your best friend. This can lead to things like promotions, higher pay, an in with your boss, and lots of other things that people in couples are too busy cooing into each other’s ears to care about.

10. Exercise

The “sex is exercise” excuse only works until you notice the folds that begin to appear when you’re sitting on your ass all the time because you don’t have to go anywhere to get laid.

11. Being Single at Weddings

Only total saps let weddings depress them if they attend sans partner. An open bar and tons of horny partygoers? You’ve got to take advantage of that shit while you can!

12. Friend Time

Have you ever noticed how friends in serious relationships disappear into the black hole of couplehood? This doesn’t have to be you. Friendships are important relationships, too, you know.

13. His/Her Friends

Loving someone doesn’t mean that you will automatically love her friends. You’d never have to hang around best pal Kelsey with the high-pitched laugh and nasal voice if you were single.

14. Choosing All of Your Own Activities

You don’t have to worry about feeling obligated to go to brunch with her cousin or on that dreaded ski trip with his family when you’ve never worn a pair skis in your life if you don’t have a significant other pleading with you to do so.

15. Saying “No”

If friends ask you do something distasteful with them, you can decline the invitation. When it comes to your lover, “no” is not always an option.

16. Making A Mess

If no one else dwells in your room, who cares if your dirty laundry has been all over the floor for weeks? No one but you.

17. And Not Having To Clean Up After Your Partner

It’s pretty annoying if you’re a neat freak and your significant other doesn’t mind a week’s worth of unwashed dishes.

18. Choosing Your Own Décor

You don’t have to compromise with anybody else’s personal style when you live by yourself.

19. Single Self-Pity

It can be fun to indulge your single woes in ways that people in couples can’t…like through getting wasted by yourself at the bar while you rant to the bartender about your lonely existence until he closes up shop and you fuck on one of the stools.

20. Variety

Falling into a routine as a couple is easy. When you’re by yourself, you can hang out with a different person every single night! (Not necessarily in a sexual way—but maybe in a sexual way. Because you can.)

21. No Hiding Purchases

Sometimes the person you’re with judges you for spending your money on $300 sweaters. What you do with your money alone doesn’t have to come under scrutiny.

22. The Delicious Snacks You Buy Are All Yours

You don’t have to worry about eating that whole cake in one sitting because otherwise you know your partner will leave you with crumbs.

23. And No One Can Tell You Not To Eat Them

…because it’s “bad for your health” if you do. When you’re on your own, your health is actually your health.

24. No Forced Love

Not for your partner, of course, but for his dog or cats or kids. Forget pretending to adore Fluffy when you hate that his copious, white hair gets all over your black outfits and never comes off, regardless of how many times you use the lint roller.

25. Social Media

With social media, people with internet access know way more about our lives than we would like them to. That includes our significant others, who are more likely to pry into our time spent without them than anyone else is (except for your elderly mom, who just friended you on Facebook).

26. Freedom To Move

You got an amazing job offer out of state? Great, you can go. No one else’s dream job at home is stopping you.

27. There’s No One Judging Your Family

No one can complain about your family like a significant other can. He knows too much and may very well not be too shy to rant about it.

28. Pregnancy Scares

If you’re not with the person who accidentally impregnated you, you don’t have to have “a talk” about whether or not to keep the baby.

29. TV Privileges

Who controls the remote at your house? You do. No having to watch the news and pretend to care about current events when all you really want to do is stare at hour after hour of “Law and Order: SVU.”

30. Snoring

Whether you do it or your partner does, you don’t have to worry about waking her up or her waking you up.

31. The Toilet Seat

It will stay in the position you leave it in, whatever that may be.

32. Getting Married Is Such A Production

From the flower arrangements to getting your Uncle Milty and Aunt Roberta to sit in the same room, the whole things doesn’t seem worthwhile. Unfortunately, your partner probably wants to make it a big thing, or at least your parents do.

33. And So Is Divorce

It may very well be more expensive than your wedding. And pretty emotionally draining, if you’re not just thinking in terms of dollars and cents.

34. Arguments Won’t End In You Sleeping on the Couch

You can have a tiff with your best friend or co-worker and still end up sleeping in your own bed.

35. Doing Things At Your Own Pace

You don’t have to constantly wait for someone or attend to your lover’s cries of “hurry the fuck up—we’re already two hours late for that dinner!”

36. No Worries About Your Partner Sleeping Around

Instead, you will have the assurance that most people you’re sleeping with are probably also sleeping around, and so are you, and nobody cares.

37. Watching Porn

Unless your partner is really into it, too, she’ll probably ask questions when she sees a bunch of it on your web browsing history. Questions like: “Am I not enough for you or something?”

38. Only Your Alarm Clock Will Wake You Up in the Morning

Forget his alarm or him pawing at your for sex when it’s seven in the morning and you don’t have to be at work until noon.

39. Dealing With Someone Else’s Emotions Is Hard

As if struggling with your own sanity wasn’t tough enough, you have to constantly keep tabs on someone else’s mental health when you’re in a couple. Why make life more work than it already is?