Were you feeling lonely on Valentine’s? Maybe you saw your coworkers receive flowers at the office. Or non-single friends kept asking you what plans you had for February 14th. Or, most likely, you saw your Facebook blow up with Valentines content, pictures of couples each other, etc…
I didn’t have a Valentine’s this year. To my surprise, I didn’t mind. I was happy for my friends who were in solid relationships and had plans for their special Friday. I didn’t feel bitter, alone, nor even annoyed at the surge pricing of flowers and chocolates that comes with this particular holiday. Maybe part of it was just growing up. But I did feel anxious about something else.
Perhaps this thought will hit you like a ton of bricks the way it hit me:
[su_quote]This has nothing to do with being single. This has everything to do with finding the right person.[/su_quote]
We get preoccupied with the label of being single. In our hyper-networked culture, single is associated with loneliness. Not a twenty-something will dare eat or watch a movie alone in public. To be seen as alone can be viewed as inferior, hearkening back to primordial days when being singled out was literally a matter of life and death.
But it’s 2014! The age of Amazon, disposable condoms and handheld devices that can hail the equivalent power of 150 horses to give you a ride 2 miles away. Being single is not really a problem in this modern age.
Being single is a state of being. It means that you’re not involved in a romantic relationship with someone else. At face value, there is nothing wrong with this. The real issue single people face is the frustration of finding the right person and establishing mutual attraction. It requires hard work – sometimes even heartbreak.
Taking the time to get to know someone isn’t easy. Building an intimate connection isn’t easy. Finding both compatibility AND chemistry isn’t easy.
If dating was easy, thousands of dating sites and tens of millions of dollars wouldn’t be expended to solve the ancient problem of building a real connection between humans.
At first I was shocked that there were so many attractive girls on dating sites. My first thoughts were “look at them…how could they ALL be single?” It’s obvious how short-sighted that notion was: attraction requires more than just looks.
Many of the gorgeous women online can have free dinners every day of the week – and some do – yet they still haven’t found the right guy. They didn’t find the right fit, that mutual attraction, or a number of other possible reasons.
CONVERSELY, if you go out enough, you’ll find that there are lots of people who want to date you…but you want nothing to do with them. In this sense, being single is a choice.
This hypothetical may once and for all cure any notions that being single is the problem:
[su_quote]What if, in some fucked-up alternate universe, you HAD to be with someone? In this universe you would be stuck with whoever is assigned to you and that’s it. (I guess some people might call that arranged marriage.)[/su_quote]
Now that we’ve established that being single is a choice, not a problem, we can begin to explore the core underlying issues:
how do I figure out what I want in a relationship? What do I need to work on to become a more attractive person? What can I do to meet that special someone?
These are all questions I’m working to answer…to be among the first to get notified of pending works like Slow Dating, an Unconventional Guide to Finding What You Want and more, subscribe with your email below.