This is Dating While Gray, the grown-up's guide to love, sex, and relationships.

I'm Laura Stasi.

Maybe you're between romances and that gap between the last one and the one yet to come is starting to feel too wide.

Before deciding anyone is better than no one,

let's talk about how to be single.

I grew up listening to some songs on the radio

that were basically cautionary tales about being single,

like Gilbert O'Sullivan's alone again naturally, you know, the one where the man is planning out his day after

getting left at the altar. In a little while from now, if I'm not feeling any less sour,

I promise myself to treat myself and visit a nearby tower. And then jump. Poor guy can't

turn to a 65-year-old mother for comfort because she's lost from a broken heart. Then there's

that song Three Dog Nightmaid Famous. It repeats over and over and over again. One is the loneliest. One is the loneliest number.

One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do. Or how about Hall or was it Oates?

Despairing about his true love. She's gone. She's gone. Oh, why? What, what wrong? Still, he's going to, quote, pay the devil to replace her, because no way he's staying single.

Now I understand why I was so scared to get divorced. These songs were written a long time ago, of course, but I wonder, is it popular opinion that being

uncoupled is to be avoided at all costs?

By the way, I happen to love that phrase, the uncoupled single male.

Uncoupled. It sounds like I should be attached to a train headed west.

That's Steve. He's 63, and he's a broadcaster, actor, and voiceover artist.

Steve has been married and divorced twice, and since that last split about a dozen years ago,

he's been on his own.

Wherever I go, people are asking, the usual, well, where's your wife today?

...