Just imagine… You are scrolling through social media to kill time, when a young couple you have never seen before pops up on your screen, taking part in a cute romantic trend. As soon as you turn off your phone and put it aside, an unsettling feeling arises in your heart, something close to uncertainty heavily sinking in your chest.
One thing is for sure! Waiting for romance, sometimes, can feel like forever. People often say that love will find you when the time is right and, especially, when you least expect it to come around. Although these sayings are meant to be comforting, in reality, they actually make us wonder: “Will it, really?”
Growing into adulthood, many people might relate to this sensation of being left out. We are taught to see finding “the one” and building a relationship as some of life’s most important milestones. However, an inquiry remains: is it such a massive crime not to have a partner during your twenties?
The Myth of Missing the Milestone
The thought of getting into a serious, lasting relationship has occurred, at least once, to all of us. On the streets, on TV shows, in romcom movies, in cheesy books.retty much everywhere, love always seems to be the main subject that turns the journey we call life a bit more interesting and appealing.
Throughout its course, the idea of an imaginary timeline hangs over our heads constantly. Just like a shadow, its presence is rarely noticed. But it has always been there somehow. It can be perceived as an immutable chain, woven by life events previously set and that must be followed as commonly stated by society over decades ago.
Sometimes , we might have the sensation that our lives are being guided by the automatic pilot. As every single stage is successfully accomplished — graduating high school, getting accepted into your dream university, finding the job you’ve always dreamt of having — we can easily convince ourselves that everything is already figured out, even when so much of our future has yet to unfold.
There are a few things in life that we can’t seem to have any control over. Although we have the power to make plans, as an attempt to visualize our older selves in the foreseeable future, there is no guarantee they will actually come to life. And that’s the thing when it comes to finding love: unfortunately, just like time, this specific milestone can’t be manipulated into happening.
Back to childhood, love stories in fairytales always had the same good old closure: “and they lived happily ever after”. If anything, this famous ending line isn’t just part of us when we are little, naive children. Ever since, we’ve been brought up believing that being in a romantic relationship plays an essential part in life.
It is no surprise that it happens to be partially true. Meeting someone new, falling in love, building a relationship, getting engaged and, then, married; is the common expectation society has on an average adult in both their early and late twenties. However, carrying the burden of having to fulfil someone else’s hopes, just because “it has to be that way”, is mostly frustrating.
Icelandic singer-songwriter, Laufey, perfectly translates the cruelty in feeling a step behind everyone else. In her song, “Falling Behind”,released in her album Everything I Know About Love in the year of 2022, gained recognition for its sensibility and truthfulness while depicting such a confounding and complex sentiment as falling behind.
“I’m only getting older
I’ve never had a shoulder to cry on
Someone to call mine
Everybody’s falling in love and I’m falling behind“
Laufey, in her song “Falling Behind”
There is a bittersweetness in comparison that hits harder than the actual sentiment of being left out itself. It comes from the dishonesty in trying to shape our wants, rushing our own time, in order to fit into others standards towards life.
Romance From the Sidelines
Young love is often romanticized as something especially intense, meaningful and almost essential to the experience of growing up. From the outside, it can seem like one of those moments everyone is supposed to live at least once. The problem is that, the more we idealize it, the easier it becomes to turn a relationship into an expectation rather than an experience.
From the outside vision, idealizing a genuine bond between two people, and what it is supposed to be like, is inevitable. Most of that comes from the state of being a spectator — one that watches many love stories happen in front of their eyes, yet is never part of one at all as an active lover. That is what American singer-songwriter, Conan Gray, intended to evoke when “People Watching” came out as a single in 2021.
“But I wanna feel all that love and emotion
Be that attached to the person I’m holding
Someday, I’ll be falling without caution
But for now, I’m only people watching”
Conan Gray, in his song “People Watching”
Not only has Conan poured his heart out in this song, but he also managed to pour ours as well. Seeing both people we don’t know and our loved ones getting a real chance at experiencing love leads us into thinking that romance is a must-see episode of our own show that we can’t miss for the world.
And that is where the problem begins. When reality does not match the version of love we have built in our minds, disappointment can quickly take over. Romance starts to feel like something we were supposed to have experienced by now, and not having it can make us feel like outsiders in our own lives.
The Cool News is: You’re on Your Own Now
Most times, when the familiar longing for falling in love emerges from the bottom of our hearts, we unconsciously buy the idea that singleness equals loneliness. Bewildering as it can be, it happens without any warning, and, in the blink of an eye, installs itself for good. Or, at least, for as long as it wishes to stay.
Loneliness, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), is a subjective and distressing feeling, brought about when the social connections one has don’t exactly meet the ones they want or need. That’s a relatable emotion experienced by many, that fits just like a glove when it comes to having trouble creating deeper, meaningful bonds with others, especially, when we turn romance into the forefront of our lives, and it can’t seem to get off page and become a real occurrence.
One thing is clear though: adulthood is much less about reducing it to a single, unpredictable milestone ,and much more about self discovery.
There is nothing more thrilling and exhilarating than starting new chapters in life. Every single one of them has the unique capacity to feel just like a turning point: for each, we all get a brand new chance at reinventing ourselves and becoming a better version of both the people we used to be and who we wish to become. Being in your twenties, more than ever, gives you that possibility. And so does being single!
Growing into adulthood as a solo traveller makes the world seem wider. As we don’t have our eyes constantly on the prize, effortlessly, we keep an open mind for countless possibilities: trying new things, starting over and over again, as many times needed, and, most importantly, finding out different versions of ourselves we never thought we could potentially be.
Being on your own doesn’t mean you have to feel lonelyIn fact, it is nowhere near close to that feeling. Singleness is pretty much the opportunity we have to learn how to enjoy our company for good, and not to put the power of our happiness in the hands of someone else.
Life Does Not Come with a Written Script
There are a few moments in life when we must use our free will to transgress unspoken conventions. Meeting someone new, falling in love, getting married, choosing the one for life. There is no doubt about romance being part of the relationships we build throughout the course of our journey on earth.
When it comes to love, though, there is no such thing as right timing. Our hearts cannot be bribed by the false pretense of both missing a milestone and falling behind. Singleness, most definitely, is not about the state of being behind others that succeeded pursuing a tender bond.
In this day and age, conceptions have evolved, and singleness has gained a brand new meaning, one that is close to solitude: the state of being alone, not by chance, but by choice. A preference for enjoying, pleasantly, your own company, not just because you don’t have a partner to spend quality time with,but because it is highly necessary to take proper time to relish yourself, to understand yourself, to find out yourself through your lenses, and not someone else’s.
And it changes the whole picture, because there is a lot of peace in choosing yourself, instead of choosing to be with someone else just for the status of it. Just to meet others’ expectations about what to do and how to live your own life.
Perhaps the real shift comes from understanding that being single is not a pause before life begins, nor a sign that something is missing. It is simply one of the many ways adulthood can look. Love may come sooner, later or in ways we never expected, but there is no deadline for it. There is also no reason to measure our lives by someone else’s timeline. So no, you are not falling behind just because you are single. Everyone moves through life at their own pace.
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The article above was edited by Isabella Messias.
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