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I’m often asked what my NUMBER ONE most important piece of advice for a single person is.
My answer? It’s always the same:
Get your affairs in order.
And prepare to die alone.
I mean, cause, we die alone anyway. Even if you’re married your entire life, you still die alone. Even if you died at the exact same f*cking time as your loved one you still would be buried separately.
I mean maybe there is a story out there of a couple who put it in their will that they wanted to get buried in the same coffin?
Which is equal parts deeply f*cked up and cute and romantic.
But if there is a story like that I’ve never heard of it. And I feel like if there were a story like that I would know about it.
Anyways back to my point…
Don’t just prepare to die alone but die a super sh*tty miserable death where you’re buried all by yourself in the corner of the worst f*cking cemetery in your city.
You know, with a horribly nondurable headstone that’s cracked and the writing on the headstone is barely legible anymore, so nobody even knows it’s even your headstone and there’s bird sh*t splattered all over it from a bunch of crows who don’t give a f*ck.
That’s my best piece of advice for single people. Prepare for that sh*t.
Now, I know most of you reading this are probably deeply offended by what I just said. But hear me out.
The problem is most people put too much importance on a relationship to f*cking save them.
They solely rely on the love of another and a romantic relationship to finally validate that they’re worth something.
They don’t know who they are or what they want and hope that someone else will come into their life and finally help them figure it out.
They believe that once they find that dream partner and get involved in that dream relationship they will finally be happy and their life will finally get started.
But this strategy will kill you a lot faster than my strategy will.
My strategy at least forces you to begin living for yourself and to become your own hero.
So prepare to die alone. Prepare for a sh*tty, meaningless death.
And begin living a meaningful life right now.
Ask yourself this question: If I died right now as a single person, would I still be happy? Would I still feel like I lived and contributed something? Or did I just sit around like a single sack of sh*t just complaining about the fact I’m single and it’s impossible to find a relationship?
Because the more you keep searching for someone and something to transform your crapshoot reality, the more you give away your power to forces outside of your control and kill off a little bit of your soul.
Life is like a milkshake. A great relationship is the cherry on top.
Most people have it backward.
They create lives that are like sh*tty, processed cherries and desperately search for the milkshake.
And they find a milkshake that tastes delicious for a sugary second and then they get stomach cramps and runny diarrhea and decidedly complain about the f*cking milkshake.
And they keep searching for another milkshake as a processed cherry.
F*ck that!
Become the milkshake.
Sure, a cherry on top would be a delicious addition to the sweetness of the milkshake life you’ve created, but you’re not reliant on the cherry to feel like you’re complete.
A great relationship is not your whole life. It’s the missing piece that makes your good life, a great life.
Most people walk around like empty puzzles, desperately searching to find the missing pieces inside of a relationship with someone else.
But they never learned to create the puzzle pieces themselves so they have no idea what shaped pieces they’re even looking for.
And they wonder why their love life becomes this puzzling mess that looks like it was put together by a f*cking toddler?
If you don’t create your own puzzle first, you won’t even know what pieces compliment the puzzle you wish to design.
You are the puzzle; your relationship is just a piece of that puzzle.
Jerry Maguire f*cked over an entire generation when he stormed into Dorothy’s house like a drunk, unwelcomed, a$$hole during Sunday night book club and said: “YOU COMPLETE ME!”
And Dorothy f*cked us over a little more when she responded: “YOU HAD ME AT HELLO!”
How f*cking desperate is Dorothy?!?!
That a guy literally just had to say “HELLO” when he was hammered to suddenly be the man to COMPLETE HER.
She said “YOU HAD ME AT HELLO” when she really should have said “BYE BYE” Tom Cruise. Go ride off in your Top Gun jet and complete a fly by because I can complete myself thank you very much.
See, Dorothy was not prepared to die alone.
She was a processed cherry.
A lonely puzzle piece in search of a puzzle to make her whole.
And if they ever make a Jerry Maguire 2 it will be Dorothy sitting on the f*cking toilet with a milkshake spilled all over her blouse.
This is how we f*cking die long before the cemetery – we hand over our happiness to someone else.
We say: I’m whole, I’m complete, I’m happy as long as you’re here to pick up the f*cking slack on my lack of being a whole human being.
This is dangerous. As it says: you’re only worth something as long as you have this relationship.
Your happiness and fulfillment lives and dies by this relationship. That is a lot of pressure to put on your partner and on your relationship.
That milkshake will blow up in your f*cking face.
And when the milkshake doesn’t taste as sweet as you anticipated, you resent your partner for not being able to give what you never learned how to give yourself.
When the relationship is not the problem but the fact you weren’t prepared to die alone is.
If you can’t commit to yourself then how do you expect someone else to commit to you for a lifetime?
Commit to yourself. Prepare to die alone.
Create a life that you don’t need a romantic relationship to save you from.
Most people run from themselves in relationships hoping that love will absolve them of their pain.
But it doesn’t. It just projects our pain onto our partners and magnifies our pain even more.
By not being prepared to die alone we hurt ourselves and hurt others by not turning towards ourselves.
When you aren’t prepared to die alone, you get into relationships for the wrong reasons, with the wrong people.
You easily settle.
You meddle around with misaligned connections and misaligned people.
You abandon your truth in search of what you haven’t been able to give yourself.
You struggle to set boundaries, communicate your needs powerfully, and stick to your truth, because you never learned to create a life where you could validate your own authentic expression.
Now you keep trying to validate that worth with every f*cking stranger you meet.
A relationship created by two people not prepared to die alone, by two people looking to one another to survive, is like a castle made in sand, exposed to the elements, ready to fall and crumble once the winds of resistance come.
You keep abandoning and overstepping yourself because you never learned to trust yourself because you never prepared yourself to die alone.
You are living in this scarcity state of fear.
And fear is running the choices you make.
And you have to make friends with your fear and prepare to die alone.
Cause it’s better to die alone than it is to die with someone else but still feel like you’re alone.
Being lonely with someone is even lonelier than lonely.
And until you choose yourself you will never understand what it actually feels like to be chosen.
Even if you are chosen, you won’t actually believe it or actually know how to accept it. So you will sabotage what you’re most afraid of losing.
Cause we can only know how to accept what we’ve learned to give ourselves.
So prepare to die alone and begin choosing yourself.
Then you will actually know what it feels like when someone really chooses you because you first experienced what it was really like to choose yourself.
And you won’t settle for anything than being completely f*cking undeniable in the eyes of someone else. And you won’t stop the process of dying alone until you find them undeniable in return.
This is where true love is birthed: two people who were prepared to die alone, met, and chose not to.
This is where your relationship becomes the cherry on top. The missing piece to your authentically designed puzzle.
Both people had picked out shitty headstones and reserved their awful burial spots at the corner of a cemetery on the bottom of a slanted and muddy f*cking hill and made peace with it, when they locked eyes and said “hold the f*cking shovel grave digger!” and instead of falling into their graves, they fell in love instead.
The way you prepare for the person you desire is to prepare to live without them.
The way you prepare for the relationship you seek is to prepare to live without it.
And prepare to die alone by creating the love you crave.
It seems counter-intuitive – but what stands between you and the relationship of your f*cking dreams is your fear of dying alone.
That fear is at the root of your romantic dysfunction.
That fear is propelling the unhappiness that drives you.
Make friends with that fear, prepare to die alone, and learn to be happy without the prospect or possibility of being rescued by anyone but yourself.
Fill the pieces of your own puzzle. Make the most delicious milkshake the world has ever tasted.
Become okay with your life story being a solo mission. Because until you can become okay with that story, your love stories will never be ones created for the right reasons.
So you wanna prepare for the love of your life?
The best way to prepare for the love of your life is to prepare to die alone.
Pour the milk of your mission.
Scoop the ice cream with your purpose.
Toss the sprinkles with your joy.
Drip the chocolate sauce with your passion.
Toss the chocolate chips with your truth.
Drop down the whipped cream with your greatness.
Create a little slice of sweetness in the world.
And make your life the delicious milkshake of your f*cking dreams.
People always ask me the best love advice I can give to a single person. And without fail, my answer is always the same…
Get your affairs in order.
Prepare to die alone.
Cause if you’re not prepared to die alone then you’re not prepared for a relationship.
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Previously published here and reprinted with the author’s permission.
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