Being Happily Single

We may know that an incompatible partnership is fragile, but so many of us are in these partnerships out of a fear of being alone.

We’ve been consuming subtle messaging that we’re “not enough” without a partner for most of our lives. We grew up with stories of princes and princesses, followed by rom-coms, love songs, and fairytale endings. When we reached eighteen, the nosy questions from our elders began to rummage through our relationship statuses.

As a result, many of us see marriage as a destination, a life checkpoint. We crave it, we seek it out, we end up in incompatible partnerships, and we hold on longer than we should. We’ve been told from the beginning that we’ll only be complete with a partner. But will we?

Just like we can be unhappily single, we can also be unhappily coupled. Marriage and love don’t guarantee anything. I’m exercising my ability to feel enough as a single person because that’s all I can control. I can’t control when, or if, I find a compatible partner. And I can’t expect that person to ‘complete me.’

For me, being happily single means not holding back. It means forgiving myself for believing that being in a relationship is one of the few paths to happiness and reassuring myself that I can find contentment on my own too. It means leaning into the non-romantic relationships in my life because they’re still a form of love. It means stripping the expectations that I have on dating, reminding myself that it’s an opportunity to meet someone and, hopefully, have an enjoyable experience (but knowing that I may never see them again).

Being happily single and compassionate means leaving space for the times when I feel the inevitable pangs of loneliness. It doesn’t free me from missing the touch of a lover or missing the “good morning, babe” text. For the most part, I’m happily single but sometimes I’m not. And that’s okay.

If we learn to be happily single, then it might mean that we avoid settling for someone who’s incompatible with us. We’ll believe that we’re more than enough as ourselves, on our own. There isn’t one pathway, there are many. And, even better, they can all lead to happiness.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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