Last Year of Single

If you have been listening to Last Year of Single from the beginning, you know I have been talking about the Last Year of Single List since the very first episode. The idea is simple: if you knew in twelve months you would never be single again, how would you spend your time? What would you do that you have been waiting to do with someone else?

In this episode, I am finally revealing five of the things on my own list: what they are, why I chose them, and what success actually looks like to me for each one. I am keeping two items secret for now. But five is enough to be going on with.

Here is what made the list:
Writing a book.
Being in a Bollywood film.
Watching an entire Bollywood film without subtitles and actually understanding it.
Learning what a healthy and trustworthy romantic relationship is supposed to feel like and what that even means for someone who has never quite experienced it.
And becoming financially secure, not rich, not retired, just genuinely, solidly secure.

For the relationship goal, I play a clip from my episode with Ann Davidman, a counsellor and author who specialises in helping people understand what they actually want from love and relationships. For the financial security goal, I play a clip from my episode with Glen James, creator of the Money Money Money podcast, formerly My Millennial Money, and one of Australia's most trusted voices on personal finance.

I also want to hear what is on your list. Email me, DM me on Instagram, or come and talk about it in the Last Year of Single Facebook community. And if you have not written your list yet, Episode 10 is where I explain exactly how to do it.

The Last Year of Single List is not about being productive while you wait for life to start. It is about deciding what your life is and living it. Whatever happens next.

Substack memoir: breesteele.substack.com
Instagram: @breesteele.mp3
Facebook community: Last Year of Single

Host, Executive Producer & Editor: Bree Steele
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Asian men are twice as likely as Asian women to be single. Black women face the same exclusion from the other direction. This is not a coincidence and it is not about attraction — it is about bias, and dating apps have made that bias faster, more efficient, and easier to never have to examine.

I wanted to make this episode because of two things I have noticed. The first: every time I post about dating in India, Indian men get flooded with racist comments - comments that would never be said about a white man doing the exact same thing. The second: I am a white woman dating in India, and I have had to sit with an uncomfortable truth: in a country still shaped by colonial history, my whiteness makes me more desirable to many people here than I would ever be considered at home.

That is a bias I benefit from.

Harry Au, psychologist and social worker whose practice focuses on the Asian experience in North America, joins me to talk about what it is actually like to be a single Asian man navigating dating apps built on a hierarchy he did not choose and cannot opt out of. We talk about the research, the stereotypes, where they come from, and - more importantly - what each of us can actually do to check our own dating biases instead of pretending we don't have any.

This episode is a departure from my usual single-women focus, and I am not sorry about that. Last Year of Single exists because nobody is having an honest conversation about what it is actually like to be single and that conversation has to include people who are not straight white women, because the rom-com version of single life was never the whole story.

In this episode:

The research on racial bias in dating apps. What the data actually shows, and why
Why Asian men are twice as likely as Asian women to remain unpartnered
What it is actually like to date as a single Asian man in North America
The specific stereotypes Asian men face and where they historically come from
Why Indian men get disproportionately racist comments when dating content goes viral
The uncomfortable truth about whiteness and desirability in post-colonial India
How to actually check your own dating biases. Practical steps, not just awareness
Why "I just have a type" is rarely as innocent as it sounds

Harry Au is a registered social worker and psychologist whose practice, Asian Therapy, focuses specifically on helping Asian clients navigate identity, family and relationships. He holds a Master's in Gender Studies and Feminist Research from McMaster University.
This is not a comfortable episode. It is an important one.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Harry Au: https://www.therapywithharry.com/
Substack memoir: breesteele.substack.com
Instagram: @breesteele.mp3
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Going to a wedding alone when everyone else has a plus one is one of the most quietly expensive, emotionally exhausting and occasionally humiliating experiences of being single. This episode is the bible for single women at weddings and for the couples planning them.

I am writing this from Mumbai during Indian wedding season, where the city looks like a Bollywood film set and the celebrations last for days. It got me thinking: why do Indian weddings look so much more fun? And why, as a single woman, do I dread a western wedding invitation?

Etiquette expert Jackie Vernon-Thompson joins me to answer everything nobody tells you about navigating weddings as a single person: how to handle the plus one conversation, how to decline a wedding invitation without destroying a friendship, whether you are actually obligated to attend a bachelorette party, and why - according to Jackie - wishing wells at weddings are genuinely rude and should be retired immediately.

We also talk about a theory I have been sitting with for a while: when couples throw out all the traditional wedding etiquette rules to make the day entirely about themselves, they stop thinking about their guests. Main character energy is great for the couple getting married. It is expensive and exhausting for everyone else in the room.

According to LendingTree, 40% of wedding guests have gone into debt to attend a wedding, and for bridal party members that number jumps to 62%. And 48% of Americans are secretly hoping they are not asked to be in a bridal party this year because of the financial and time burden. The etiquette around all of this is broken. This episode fixes it.

Jackie Vernon-Thompson is a Certified Etiquette Consultant, #1 bestselling author of Transformative Etiquette, and founder of From the Inside-Out School of Etiquette, featured in HuffPost.

In this episode you'll learn:

How to go to a wedding alone without feeling like the exhibit
The exact etiquette around plus ones for single guests, what you can ask for and how to ask
How to decline a wedding invitation without damaging the friendship
Whether couples should pay for their guests to attend bachelorette and bachelor parties
Why wishing wells are considered rude and what good wedding gift etiquette actually looks like
How to decide whether you actually want to go to a wedding
How wedding etiquette has changed in the past 20 years and why bucking tradition is putting pressure on guests
How couples can be more inclusive of their single guests
Why Indian weddings look more fun than western weddings and what western couples could learn from them

Whether you are heading to a wedding alone this summer, trying to figure out if you can say no without the guilt, secretly relieved someone cancelled their engagement, or planning a wedding and want to actually be a good host to your single friends, this episode is for you.

Jackie Vernon-Thompson: transformativeetiquette.com · @fromtheinsideoutsoe
Substack memoir - the Last Year of Single story in real time: breesteele.substack.com
Instagram: @breesteele.mp3
Host and Executive Producer: Bree Steele
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's the end of monsoon season in Mumbai. Bree went to the premiere of Call Me Bae last night. And she's been thinking about a question that's been sitting with her: what is it like when you have never once seen yourself reflected in a rom-com?

That question brought her to Peta Hooke.

Peta is a disability advocate, podcaster, and single woman living with cerebral palsy in Melbourne, Australia. She uses an electric wheelchair and has been navigating dating, ableism, body image, fertility decisions and the complicated business of loving her single life, all while the world largely pretends people with disabilities don't date, don't have sex, and don't deserve to see themselves in the stories we tell about love.

This episode is one of the most honest, important and entertaining conversations in the entire series. It will change how you see single life, dating, representation, and what it actually means to enjoy being on your own, regardless of whether you have a disability or not.

Peta is the creator and host of The I Can't Stand Podcast - the show that answers every question people are too scared to ask about living with a disability. It took her 313 days to be given access to freeze her eggs due to ableism in the medical system. She is not here to be inspirational. She is here to be honest.

In this episode you'll learn:
What dating with a disability actually looks like: the ableism on dating apps, the assumptions able-bodied people make, and the exhausting work of navigating a world that wasn't built for you
How growing up without ever seeing yourself in a rom-com shapes your expectations of love, relationships and single life
The myth that wheelchair users can't have sex
What Peta wishes able-bodied people understood before dating someone with a disability, the practical advice that changes everything
The 313-day fight to access egg freezing: what ableism in the medical system looks like when you're trying to make decisions about your own fertility and future
How Peta's relationship with being single has changed over the years, from grief about the life she hoped for to genuinely loving the life she has
What single women - with or without a disability - can learn from Peta's experience about self-worth, representation and refusing to make yourself smaller so the world is more comfortable

This episode is for every single woman who has ever felt like she wasn't the person the love story was written for.
Peta Hooke's podcast: The I Can't Stand Podcast - icantstandpodcast.com
Follow Peta on Instagram: @petahooke
Follow Bree on Instagram: @breesteele.mp3
Substack - community + Last Year of Single List here
Listen to the full series (best in order)
Email: lastyearofsingle@gmail.com

Host and Executive Producer: Bree Steele
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I used to say I loved myself. I also used to people-please, stay in situationships that made me feel worthless, and spend every night alone wondering what was wrong with me. Those two things cannot both be true. One of them was lying.

If you would say you love yourself, but you keep accepting less than you deserve, chasing people who don't choose you, and feeling like being single means something is fundamentally wrong with you; this episode is the one that explains why. And what to actually do about it.

Clinical psychologist Dr Adia Gooden joins Bree to break down what self-esteem actually is, why so many high-achieving women have dangerously low self-worth without realising it, and how to build the kind of unconditional self-worth that doesn't crumble when the world: dating apps, rejection, situationships, the stories in your own head, confirms every insecurity you've ever had.

Because it will confirm them. Repeatedly. And your self-worth needs to be built for that.

Dr Adia Gooden is a licensed clinical psychologist with a BA from Stanford University and PhD from DePaul University. Her TEDx talk "Cultivating Unconditional Self-Worth" has over 1 million views. She hosts the Unconditionally Worthy podcast and coaches high-achieving professional women to stop making their worth conditional on achievement, approval or being chosen.

In this episode you'll learn:
What self-esteem actually is and the difference between self-esteem and unconditional self-worth that changes everything
The hidden signs of low self-worth that look like being a good person: people-pleasing, over-giving, settling, chasing
Why hating being single is a self-esteem problem disguised as a relationship problem and why no relationship will fix it
How the stories we tell ourselves: "I'm too much," "I'm not enough," "nobody stays", become self-fulfilling and how to break them
Why the world, dating apps, rejection and situationships are specifically designed to confirm your worst fears about yourself and how to build self-worth that survives all of it
The four practices Dr Adia Gooden uses to help women build unconditional self-worth
What genuinely loving yourself looks like in practice, not as a concept but as a daily experience that changes how you date, how you live single, and how far across the world you're willing to go alone on gut instinct

Whether you're newly single after a breakup, stuck in self-sabotage and people-pleasing, exhausted by attracting people who treat you as less than you're worth, or a solo female traveller who moved countries alone and still wonders if she's enough, this episode is the foundation everything else builds on.

Dr Adia Gooden's free ebook: 4 Practices to Cultivate Unconditional Self-Worth - dradiagooden.com
Unconditionally Worthy podcast — Dr Adia Gooden
TEDx: Cultivating Unconditional Self-Worth
dradiagooden.com · 📸 @dradiagooden

Follow Bree on Instagram: @breesteele.mp3
Substack community + Last Year of Single List here
Email: lastyearofsingle@gmail.com

Host and Executive Producer: Bree Steele
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.