In November 2019, a few months before her 30th birthday, Emma Watson used one phrase in a British Vogue cover story and the internet ran with it.
She was not single, she said. She was self-partnered.
The term went viral within a day, and so did the jokes.
Four years later, she explained what she had meant.
What Did Emma Watson Say About Being Self-Partnered?
The line came in an interview with journalist Paris Lees for the December 2019 issue of British Vogue.
She opened with a confession: “I never believed the whole ‘I’m happy single’ spiel”.
Her view changed slowly. “It took me a long time, but I’m very happy [being single],” she said.
And the label that made headlines: “I call it being self-partnered”.
Context matters here.
Watson was 29 and talking about the pressure of approaching 30.
Emma Watson attends the 2011 ELLE Style Awards at the Grand Connaught Rooms on February 14, 2011 in London – @Getty
At first she shrugged it off. “Why does everyone make such a big fuss about turning 30?” she remembered thinking.
By 29, the stress had arrived. She blamed “this bloody influx of subliminal messaging” around her.
The checklist in those messages was specific: “If you have not built a home, if you do not have a husband”. Add a baby and a stable career to the list, and the result, in her words, was an incredible amount of anxiety.
Self-partnered was her answer to that checklist.
She refused to treat being single as a hole in her life.
Did Self-Partnered Mean She Stopped Dating?
No. In the same interview she said she was dating, with no one in particular: “I am going on dates”.
That detail got lost in the headlines.
Emma Watson and her boyfriend Will Adamowicz – 2012 – @Getty
The phrase described her relationship with herself, and it never ruled out a relationship with someone else.
NBC News explained the idea the same way. A self-partnered person can still date and hope to marry one day, the difference is that they take time to know themselves first.
A lot of women loved it. One fan on Twitter wrote: “Someone put ‘self-partnered’ on a shirt and sell it ASAP”.
Others mocked it. TV host Piers Morgan asked: “Self-partnering means you can’t get a bloke, right?”.
Tom Felton, her friend since the Harry Potter years, was a fan. He told MailOnline: “I’m in the same category, to be honest with you, quite happily self-partnered”.
Watson came back to the term in her January 2024 British Vogue cover story.
@Getty
The reaction had caught her off guard: she woke up to her phone full of messages from friends asking “self-partnered?”
She said the term was never “necessarily about me celebrating being single”.
The real meaning, in her words: “It’s much more about your relationship with yourself”. She added that it is about not feeling deficient because you are not with someone.
“Maybe I’ve figured out some things about how to care for myself better”. She said she took pride in that.
Her Love Life Since 2019
By the 2024 interview, she had been through a handful of relationships since first using the term.
She has given few details about any of them in public.
Emma Watson and George Craig attend at Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm on June 25, 2010 – @Getty
That fits the 2024 explanation.
Self-partnered was a mindset about her own worth, so it never had to switch off when she started dating someone.
The famous line filled about 15 seconds of the Vogue video. The rest covered fame and going to therapy.
She talked about fans who see her as Hermione, and what she tries to tell them: “I’m just as human as you are”.
Watson also admitted that social media wears on her: “I have moments where I just want to delete my Instagram account”. What stops her is the thought of the girls who find something meaningful in her posts.
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I am Bulgarea Candin Stefan, and I founded FamousPeopleToday.com in 2018. I’m using my bachelor’s degree in economics and 9 years of experience in blogging to guide millions of people through the incredibly complex world of celebrity net worths.