What happens when you wear a couple’s costume as a single girl

Ah, Halloween. Yet another holiday that makes you blatantly aware of how single you are.

Friends show up to Halloween parties cute as fuck with their significant others, and you’re wearing the same hipster costume you’ve worn the past three years in a row. Maybe this year will be different, you think to yourself, but you know in your heart it won’t be. It’s not that you necessarily want or need a significant other, it’s just that you want to wear a costume with someone other than your best friend for once.

This year, I did a couple’s costume with a new friend–someone I’m not dating.

If you’re going to collaborate on costumes, make sure you’re with that person, or it can get weird

My “partner” (his name is Adam) and I decided to go as Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy from Spongebob. Our Friday night started out like any normal Halloweekend, although we ended up going to separate events at first–I went to the bars with a couple of my friends, and he went to a party with his. Interestingly, I felt so much more alone doing a couple’s costume and not being with that person than if I’d decided to go as something by myself.

A couple random people asked me where Barnacle Boy was, to which I replied “dead,” because anything more clever than that wasn’t coming to me at the time. Since Barnacle Boy has the less iconic costume, when Adam wasn’t with Mermaid Man (me), he had the misfortune of people mistaking him for a sailor.

If you post pictures online in couple’s Halloween costumes, people might actually think you’re dating

We did eventually meet up, and it finally felt like my costume was complete. Oh you think my costume is good? Just you wait, I thought. For his friends, it cleared up why Adam looked like a sailor. For me, I was finally reunited with my lesser known sidekick.

We decided to take pictures since we thought we looked so cool as the elderly dynamic duo. I posted one on my Instagram, and it attracted a lot more traffic than usual. I wondered if it was the Spongebob reference, or if it was because people were wondering if the perpetually single girl was dating someone. I got a couple Snapchats from friends asking who he was or if we were dating yet. “His name is Adam, we’re just friends,” I’d say.

Don’t give a fuck about what others think

I’m really glad we went as Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy. It was fun to dress up with someone. We had both procrastinated on figuring out our costumes, and luckily, collaborating made it a lot easier to come up with one. Yeah, some people might have thought it was weird that I dressed up with a new friend. Yeah, it might’ve appeared like we were dating. But as long as we know the truth, it doesn’t matter.

You do you, and if that involves Halloween costumes with someone who isn’t your significant other, go for it.