Apparently, men are worse at living alone than women. To be precise, they are twice as likely to be miserable about their singleton state. But this is not, as everyone tends to assume, because men are rubbish at organising themselves. There is only one reason men fare worse in single households, and that is sex. A man living alone (Bruce Jones, as he is now known) is a man in search of sex — regular, random or otherwise. He may occasionally manage to distract himself with a bit of Sky football, but for the most part, he is preoccupied with how and when he is next going to get it. Your female single householder, on the other hand, has a whole arsenal of sex substitutes to keep her going in the absence of the real thing, all of them better enjoyed privately in a one-bedroom flat (and I’m not talking about Rampant Rabbits). Here are a few examples.

Sex substitute one: bubble baths and scented candles

Sharing a bathroom, particularly with someone of the opposite sex, is something all women secretly resent. It’s not that we are hygiene fanatics, or silly about toothpaste squeezing, but there is a bathroom aesthetic that we all aspire to (fluffy, white everything, no mud stains or sodden carpet, sparkly clean loo with no drips around the base). An uninterrupted bath in a Cadbury Flake ad bathroom environment does it for most of us. Bruce has a shower, frequently cold, because he has forgotten to turn on the hot water.

Sex substitute two: special exclusion diet

In the company of the opposite sex, or, God forbid, children, we let our resolve slip and find ourselves scoffing real food, plus tea, crisps and pre-bed snacks. The woman who lives alone can keep her fridge like Gwyneth Paltrow’s and live on things such as soya yoghurt. Weirdly, we find this extremely pleasurable. Bruce lives on microwave meals, which make him gain a couple of pounds a month, making the possibility of sex seem even more remote.

Sex substitute three: Sarah Jessica Parker downtime dressing

When they are safely behind their own door, most women who live alone look like David Helfgott in Shine. However, there is a whole single-girl downtime aesthetic that you can buy into, consisting of velour tracksuit bottoms, hooded dressing gowns and so on. If you live with someone, you never get the excuse to wear this stuff. If you live on your own, you barely do — but on those rare occasions, you feel pretty indulged. Bruce stays in his suit and then spills pizza on it, which depresses him.

Sex substitute four: pointless interior titivation

Bruce is at war with his single environment. He probably hates everything in it and resents the money he had to spend on the leather sofa (which he bought purely for pulling purposes). Single women, in contrast, get unparalleled pleasure from shopping for the home and then rearranging their living space without having to consult anyone. There are few things quite so satisfying as finding the perfect place for the expensive new lamp you’ve just bought, without someone in the background saying, “Do we really need another lamp?” Nobody is suggesting that the above are any substitute for sex — just that women have the advantage of being able to find satisfaction in places men wouldn’t dream of looking.

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