I have explained before why your advice on being single is terrible; more than once, actually. I have also explained that I can be painfully awkward on my own, without your help, but you still insist on trying to “help me”.
So I swear, one more of these and I’m done. And I saved the ones that really perturb me the absolute most and/or hardest. This also means there’ll be more italics down the road than I normally prefer. I sincerely apologize.
“YOUR STANDARDS ARE TOO HIGH”
We’ll start off here because this one’s easy, what with it being absurd and all. The lonesome, solitary reason to willingly grant anyone asylum within the confines of your life is the belief that somehow, in some form, to some degree, they’ll improve it. Hiring new blood at work or partaking in a casual round of flesh fencing? Even if either ends up regrettable later on, you likely figured at the time that it would at least momentarily quiet down some biological or psycho-emotional demand you put on yourself to make life more bearable.
Of course, you need to be flexible in what you demand from other people. Because, well, you don’t get to demand anything from other people, and very often we find exactly what we want in the polar opposite of what we thought it would be. But if you feel a pining for a truly worthwhile connection, settling is a flat out no-go. If Taco Bell can refuse you service for not having enough adequate drapery covering the lower half of your person, I’d say we’re all allowed to have some non-negotiable criteria with possible long-term partners.
Just taking whatever’s in your vicinity with a measurable pulse means you’ll end up making sacrifices and life adjustments for someone that, deep down, you know there’s nothing about them that deserves that much of you. Eventually this becomes mutual resentment, which is a toxic way to live, but you were told to just take what comes along rather than placing any value on yourself or your right to hunt for something joyful. I don’t know you, but you’re reading my article, which means I like you quite well indeed. And I don’t want you debasing your sense of self-value by not holding out for someone who ignites a particular sensation. I want you to question your self-value because you found someone who’s utterly confounding in how much higher they prize you than you seem to think you should be and doesn’t quit.
“ENJOY BEING ALONE”
I don’t care how profound this sounds coming from an influencer’s backpacking trip blog post or your hot yoga instructor, it’s a thoughtless, snide brush-off of a meaningful human struggle by people who think taking a break from being chased by others, having occasional romantic victories or just get bored with monogamy is the same as being ‘alone.’
For anyone keeping score, choosing to be ‘single’ is totally artisanal mixed nuts levels of ok. In fact, if you want to have any chance at a meaningful existence, it’s mandatory. So much interior evolving happens when we’re not attached, which makes you a better you. A better you makes you a better partner for others down the line, makes recognizing what a better partner for you looks like or can help you realize you don’t want partners at all.
Alone and single are emphatically not the same thing. Maybe I’m quibbling over finer points and clarity, and maybe I’m letting my own personal madness muddy my take on this. Actually, there’s no maybe about it. But alone is constantly struggling to forge connections with people and having no fundamental idea of how to make that happen. It’s your innermost craving for contact feel like it’s starving to death on a daily basis. It’s a discomfort at being around too many people because it forces you to take that sensation you have of everyone you desperately want to see you the way you want them to instead look right through you, then multiply it by every single living thing within a nearby radius. Alone can happen whether you’re attached or not, have close interpersonal bonds or not, or living in a reconfigured outhouse in the Everglades by yourself trying to snap pictures of the Skunk Ape. It’s way more than just pausing your Zoosk account for a couple months.
But I don’t mean to be so nasty about it; loneliness is complicated, and most people who don’t get it means they haven’t really experienced it. That’s an objectively lovely thing. And hell, even Joseph “I literally wrote the book on incurable injuries wrought by total disconnection” Conrad wasn’t sure he had a grip on it.
“IT’LL HAPPEN WHEN IT’S TIME/YOUR ATTITUDE HAS TO CHANGE OR YOU WON’T FIND ANYONE”
Well, which one is it?! That first bit implies getting to a junction where I find my greatest human matching will happen regardless of my outlook on it. The second one says that fate or kismet or Naboo or whatever completely reorganizes all of our intertwining destinies out of spite any time I deign to reasonably start wondering if maybe it won’t. If you want to pitch me one or the other, fine (except don’t). But this is always hurled at me as a jab-hook combo of contradicting, asinine tomfoolery.
Convincing me that my heart’s healing tonic is of course absolutely most certainly guaranteed on its way just sets me up for crushing disappointment on a continuous loop. It’s cruel to forcefully replenish someone’s dwindling hope rations, then blame them having the audacity to lose faith when the promise you made them doesn’t get followed through on since God’s apparently too busy writing Joe Heller fanfic or something. Shaming people for not having the resilience you likely have never needed to rely on isn’t helpful. We’re only human, most of us, and the plain fact is that we have limits. I genuinely have no need in the slightest for your critiques when I acknowledge that I’ve collided with mine.
“GIVE IT TIME, THEY’LL CATCH ON TO HOW GREAT YOU ARE”
I can’t. This just makes me mad.
“YOU HAVE TOO MANY WALLS UP/YOU DON’T LET ANYONE GET CLOSE TO YOU”
What? If you’ve somehow made it to this sentence, I’ll assume in good faith you’ve read everything leading up to it, so let me ask you something: what part of anything you’ve taken in thus far would leave you with the inkling that boundaries are a bone of contention for me? Even if my emotional access road were jammed up, it still wouldn’t be a thing because nobody’s trying to drive down it. Granted, this one’s probably not all that universal. But for me, it’s the biggest embodiment of people trying to give pointers that are beyond useless because they assume the context for each of us solitary creatures being solitary is exactly the same. I’m not a divorcee or been recently dumped, so stop trying to cram my singleness peg into the square hole you insist it fits in.
Again, sorry for the italics.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: Shutterstock
