While it's always sad and painful to end a relationship (even bad ones leave some residue of regret), one can't help feeling a modicum of relief. I've been happily single for fourteen months now.

It's liberating to realise one enjoys one's own company, not to have to arrange one's life around someone else's whims and inclinations, to have time and autonomy to spend the evening in with a video if one wants, to hit the clubs if one wants, to read and write and contemplate one's navel, not to keep a repertoire of ready-made excuses in one's mental portfolio for when the same-old gets just a little too same-old.

Sentimental season

On the other hand, the Christmas season always awakens in me a sense that I should be with someone ? a silly feeling, but one that remains valid nonetheless, if only by virtue of its social standing as 'the norm' and one's own sense of what should be.

In the new, massively inferior version of 'Alfie', the eponymous hero declares to the audience that: "Couples should never split up between Thanksgiving and January 2nd. Always have a relationship to see you through the holidays. Always."

And he has a point. We South Africans may not celebrate Thanksgiving, but any event whose marketing material demands that on the day one be surrounded by apple-cheeked children or dressed by Versace or flanked by straight-but-sensitive, Cordon-Bleu-proficient lotharios is bound to be depressing when one's own experience of the occasion falls short.

The presence of someone who has seen you naked but loves you anyway, goes a long way toward compensating for the hideous decorations, the decades-passe Yuletide stylings of Boney M, the protracted and apparently hilarious armpit-farts World Championship put on by younger (or older) cousins, the overcooked and pathetically unseasonable cold-weather food or the gropings of elderly and beginning-to-smell uncles.

A boyfriend is a useful buffer against Granny's singing of the same old refrain: "When are you going to get married and have some nice children like your thin, pretty, successful, seven-figure-salaried cousin over there should accidentally fall, there'll be nine thousand, four hundred and seventy-six and when are you going to get married and have some nice children like your thin, pretty, successful, seven-figure-salaried cousin over theres, hanging on the wall... " (repeat ad nauseum)

There for moral support

He's like Hadrian's Wall or the satellite states in the former USSR ? he doesn't actually do anything useful and he probably resents being placed between you and the marauding Celts or Capitalists or whomever, but he's reassuring to cast your eye over when you need some moral support.

The cost of presents is halved when there are two of you. The second cheapest thing on the gift registry, coming from a couple, doesn't look cheap, as would the cheapest thing on the registry coming from one.

On the other hand, there is nothing worse than arriving at a gathering carrying armfuls of goodies because someone neglected to tell one that presents are out this year ? I mean, what else does one spend Christmas with one's family for?

Thing is, though, from an individual, excessive generosity just looks effusive and weird. From a couple, for some reason, it looks thoughtful and kind.

Last year I got one present ? someone gave me a meat thermometer for my Weber. It is called the Thermo Fork and, I quote from the blurb on the back of the package ? 'determines level of doneness'. So at least I got to unwrap something.

Then there?s arriving home afterward. Leaving a party, dirty pie dish in one hand and a basketful of useless, tasteless, not-at-all-what-I-wanted presents (that looked so much like jewellery when they were wrapped) in the other, the relief of getting away is quickly dispelled by loneliness upon arrival at empty home.

No amount of leftover custard or hugging the cat can compensate for a proper autopsy of the evening with a fellow survivor. Mutual commiseration, I'm given to understand, is the bedrock of any relationship in which the parties' families interfere from time to time.