Have you seen it said on the internets that single women declare higher levels of happiness than those married with children, and that the longer they stay single, the higher the probability they will remain so by choice? While this data is mostly shared with no sources cited, and therefore highly questionable, I can say based my own experience that the happiness level and growing wish to continue single are definitely happening at least on a sample of one. Being single can be as fulfilling and desirable as being in a couple, even if old-timey social norms want us to think otherwise.
In the 21st century, it's time we establish once and for all that lives led in singular or plural form are both firstly, equally good life choices; secondly, situations that can happen to anyone at any point in time, no matter how hard they plan or try; finally, arrangements whose success requires knowing and loving your own self first and foremost. While we are not socialized to be happy singles, and we are expected to struggle being alone, we can, and absolutely should try to move past those expectations. Happy singles don't only build wonderful lives for themselves, but will also make for better partners, should they decide to become those. Instead of fading into spinsterhood, let's make it our life's work to furnish out little single kingdoms with great and beautiful things. We can settle in for an enjoyable solitary ride without actually settling. We can thrive and enjoy being single, and we can then have a choice to decide whether we want anyone else in our life or not, whether it's a destination or just a scenic stop.
As a single woman in my thirties, I have been through all the cliches. Doom scrolling on “the apps”, because you need to put yourself out there. Uncomfortable situationships with mixed signals, because any shittiest prospect needs to be given endless chances. Family gatherings with baby pictures being shoved in my face, asking “when”? Identity crises wondering what is wrong with me. I had a heart overflowing with love, fueled by the steroids of daydreaming, with exactly no-one to whom I could give it. Each unsuccessful attempt feeling like a personal failure, I was in a state of perpetual waiting, my life on pause until “the one” finally comes along and gives me the official permission to be complete. An official seal of being a grown adult, as if having two university degrees, an international career, a furnished apartment and a fully stocked fridge wasn’t enough to make me one.
We wait, we search and we bear with the red flags because despite the new economic reality, in which we don’t need to live in multiples to survive in the wilderness or to make a living, as women, we are still raised to think the old way: that marriage and kids are the end-all-be-all achievement in our lives; that once the wedding band is on that finger, problems magically solve themselves because you are not alone; that being alone is bad, ugly, pathetic, grey and dying of tuberculosis surrounded by cats; that everyone who's worth anything will get their grand romantic love. But while romantic love can be a beautiful thing and everyone sure deserves it, how many marriages / relationships are truly built on love? Not convenience, fear of loneliness, status aspirations, force of cultural habit, but actual love? And of those, how many are healthy, uplifting, equal, and therefore worthwhile? How many start off fairytale-like but turn sour with neglect, cheating, lying, or even just changing priorities? Yes, love is our fundamental need, but romantic love specifically, is not meant for everyone and it's not immortal by nature. Romantic love is a lottery draw prize and then a responsibility, not a free gift at the entrance to life. It’s not something you can earn with effort of a thousand bad dates and unexpressed needs, not an award for merit or being “agreeable”.
Romantic stories resonate so strongly because so few of us get to experience them in reality. Not everyone will meet a romantic soulmate in this lifetime, or even a decent good person to spend the life with. What if there isn’t “the one” for me? What if the best it gets is just this, a few kind of tolerable ones? Or what if I do have a wonderful love story but it ends for one reason or another? And, most of all, what if it doesn’t matter who is or isn’t there, but I just really would like to be living a full life? Will I continue waiting, feeling lonely, crying myself to sleep, longing for something I have no control over, wandering in the drafty, echoey spaces like a shadow until it’s time to become invisible for most men because I’m over 30, as per patriarchy? I, for one, do not want to spend the rest of my life this way. There is a bizarre sense of disillusioned yet illuminated freedom in realizing that my single status is just a coincidence of circumstances and not anyone’s fault or punishment. You have to bear the consequences of a punishment. You can work around the circumstances.
When waiting is no longer the way ahead, a whole new set of questions is unleashed. What is it that you are waiting for exactly? What would that person add to your life? Then you can move from anticipating to making it all happen. Yes, you can and you do not need a significant other to get you there. You can start living alone, going places alone, choose what you like, just because you can. If you crave someone to accept you fully, work on self-acceptance first. If you are looking for company, not to feel lonely some evenings, find old and new friends, old and new things to do and occupy the mind. Deliberately notice the positives of your own company. If you are looking to fulfil the great quantities of love and caring you have inside, a significant other is not the only one who can receive them. Give them to yourself, give them to things you love doing, give them to your friends and humanity at large. Give love to your life. Choose, instead of waiting to be chosen. Furnish your single kingdom until it’s cozy and comfortable. You will definitely struggle at first under the weight of all the negative patriarchal baggage. But gradually, maybe unknowingly at first, you will start feeling full. You will arrive in singledom.
This is also how I arrived here, at my Big Singledom AwakeningTM. I’m very single. Not because of religious reasons, sexuality struggles, internalized man-hating, excessive “standards”, or being too busy hustling towards some spectacular career goal. It’s not an achievement or a failure but a fact of my life, a circumstance, and only one of the myriad things I am. My singledom, my single kingdom, is filled with books and the smell of baking, with long walks and even longer dance sessions, with friends who laugh and cry together, with travelling, constant singing and lots and lots of tea breaks. It’s not lonely, because I’m usually busy or surrounded by people I belong with. It’s just enough to keep my cup full. I’m not waiting for anyone, I’m not searching for anyone, and most importantly, I don’t regret it because any eligible man who comes along is compared not to other men, but to the blissful, though hard-earned peace, rightness and fulfillment I grow in my introvert cave. I don't need to find my other half because it was never missing. Yes, I had to put in the work to unearth it from under all the heartbreak and disappointed illusions. But I am a whole person and I was whole all along. I’m the main character in the story I write with my life, and that story passes the Bechdel test every day. It's a very ordinary story with an utterly average protagonist, mind: it doesn’t take some monumental will ahead of our time to be single without wishing you weren’t. Like any story, it only requires a call to action and figuring our challenges one at a time. I've done it, and I'm sure so can you - at your own pace and in your own way.
Of course, being single might feel extremely lonely right now. Loneliness is empty and restless, burdened with unexpressed feelings making the future nothing but bleak. Imagine a drafty, echoey, dilapidated building with no furniture. But you know what? People in relationships can also feel that way, and personally speaking I'm more lonely spending time with the wrong people than I was shacked up at home n the pandemic. Both coupled and single people can experience the whole spectrum of emotions, so the point is to quit the black and white thinking of single is always only lonely, coupled is always unanimously happy. When you’re single you are just alone, a neutral, factual word describing not being accompanied. Even better, it can get to a point where you see it as a thriving state. Alone, I can tend to my peace, existing in the world as I was created, as weird and ugly as I want. I can take the time and focus to form my own opinions and memories. I manage my time as I see fit, I play any music I want as loudly as I want, I take care of my needs. And from this fulfilled place, I can then engage with the world and give to others. There are things I still need to do in this lifetime, but pairing up is truly not on that list any more. If it happens and is great, as in “I meet another full heart whose presence can enrich my space and add new colors to it” type of great, then great. If it doesn’t, equally great. I call this the singledom mindset, because we can all create the kingdom of ourselves, and we are all singular creatures. We come in and out of the world as individual, salient creations. We each are a single kingdom in itself. Singledom.
And if someone right comes along and we do decide coupling up is the shit, let’s also remember that when that arrangement is not working and cannot be fixed, and makes us continually miserable, the alternative is always to go it alone. Once in place, singledom can be a universal attitude: a constant reminder that we are all individual beings and as such we retain the singledom as an always viable alternative (not a failure, not purgatory, not a horror story). A healthy relationship is a union of two full people, i.e. two singledoms joined. This means you don't have to bend and diminish yourself to make it stick at all cost. You do get to keep your boundaries and personality and cultivate them next to the other person. It’s not supposed to be a hostile takeover or an occupation where you bend and reshape until you’re acceptable to the other. This is why building your single kingdom first is so important. Entering a relationship before truly knowing and appreciating yourself can be excruciating and the polar opposite of the land of rainbows and butterflies we are taught to long for. On the other hand, a worthwhile relationship also requires work and loving maintenance, just like singledom. It's different work, but work nonetheless.
And so, I want to call on everyone to quit the negative talk about singles, while coupledom reigns supreme looking down with self-congratulating pity. Let us have the beautiful singledom as a viable and equal option to lead a life. Not better or worse, just an alternative one, with equal rights. Let us have the nurturing space in which to figure out who we are, love ourselves, and build our individual, fulfilling singledoms for their own sake, not as placeholder for a hypothetical future. Let us have a choice, not only between who we couple up with, but whether we couple up at all. There are many configurations in which to spend one’s life, and many reasons why a life of singledom might be a good one. Who decides that’s allowed? We do. So please give yourself permission to feel like it’s okay to quit the waiting, and allow yourself to give yourself all the things you are waiting to receive from a significant other. Because you can. I promise it will set you and your choices free. I will be here to remind you regularly.
Your very single friend
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