There’s a certain performance that happens every November. The group chats fill with “I’m so happy alone” energy. The timelines go soft-focus: candles, blankets, solo wine nights, captions about “romanticizing my life.” And listen, some of that is real. Solitude can be sacred. But if we’re honest, and this is a space for honesty, a lot of it is theater. Because something clicks on in us when the temperature drops. The days get shorter and the wanting gets longer. We start craving connection, warmth, and joy in a more intimate capacity, and no amount of festive playlist is going to playlist that away.

The internet named it years ago: cuffing season. A joke, technically. A meme about yearning affection so hard you’d handcuff yourself to the first warm body with good vibes. But jokes survive because they’re true in a way that stings. Nobody jokes about wanting connection in July. They joke about it when the holidays roll around and the family table has one chair too many.

I never used to worry about any of this. Not even a little. There was a time, and I need you to sit with this, when I had at least seven people on rotation. Seven. I could chat somebody up on a Tuesday, go to dinner on a Thursday, take a spontaneous day trip out of town on Saturday. Adventurous outings. Mini vacays. Exclusive parties where my plus-one was the least of my concerns. Attention wasn’t something I chased; it was something I managed, like a very glamorous scheduling problem.

Then I made a mistake that had nothing to do with dating and everything to do with listening. I started taking advice from people who did not have my best interests at heart. The message, delivered in different flavors, was always the same: you’re too friendly. Too warm. Too open. The subtext being that I attracted too many suitors, no matter the biology of their gender, and that this abundance was somehow a character flaw I needed to fix.

So I dimmed. I pulled back. I became “appropriate.”

And now? I have three people I text every so often. Three. From seven to three, and honestly, that math is sickening to me. I say it with a laugh, but it’s the kind of laugh you do so nobody hears the part underneath.

The people who call your warmth excessive are usually the ones who benefit from it the most, or the ones who can’t generate their own. Friendliness is not a leak in your character; it’s a current. When you let someone convince you to shut it off, you don’t become more respectable. You just become colder in a season that was already cold enough.

And can we talk about the timing of all this? Because it’s not just me. A lot has changed in how we connect, and a lot of people are, to put it gently, under-functioning right now. Half the people I know are running on 12% battery socially. And last I checked, that tracks with where Gen Z is at: deeply craving intimacy, deeply exhausted, fluent in vulnerability as an aesthetic but rusty at it as a practice. We screenshot connection instead of having it.

I’m going to say the thing people pretend not to want, because pretending is how we got here.

I love attention. I love being admired. Not in a hollow, validate-me way, but in the way where someone notices that I get quiet when I’m proud of something, or that I always save the best bite for last. I want someone to share the dullest moments of my day with; that’s the part nobody puts in movies. Not the grand gesture. The “guess what my coworker said at 2 p.m.” text. The “look at this ugly dog I saw” photo. Romance is nice, but witness is better. I want a witness.

And I’ve stopped treating that desire like a confession. Wanting someone isn’t desperation. Wanting someone is direction. It means my heart is still oriented toward people even after people mishandled it.

Every winter, nature does something we should study: it doesn’t perform abundance it doesn’t have. The trees go bare without apology. The sun clocks out early like it has boundaries. And everything living moves closer to whatever warms it. That’s not weakness. That’s wisdom.

So this holiday season, my practice is simple. I’m not dimming to be digestible. I’m not pretending the empty side of the bed is a personality trait. I’m texting first. I’m saying “I miss you” without a joke attached. I’m treating my own desire for connection like the compass it is instead of the inconvenience I was taught it was.

If you’re solo this season, genuinely happy or genuinely faking it, I hope you get honest about which one it is. And if it’s the faking kind, welcome. There’s no shame at this table. Pass the candied yams and tell me about your day. Even the dull parts.

Especially the dull parts.

Where beautiful things and honest words meet.

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