This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Exeter Cornwall chapter and does not reflect the views of Her Campus.
Each year, about this time, the same insecurities arise about our dreaded ‘relationship status’. Comparisons begin to fly between those in a relationship and those lesser mortals who are single. When the roses get sent around, those of us still single gradually lose faith in our self worth because those smitten few seem to have life sorted. But this is damaging to our confidence: we waste so much time feeling bad about simply living life differently from our best friends, or that random couple having coffee over there. Of course relationships are great experiences, but you should never put the potential of being happy with the vague ‘someone’ over your present happiness with yourself.
Why do we need relationships to feel complete? Why is it so hard to convince ourselves that we are enough on our own? Everywhere you look it seems there are people on a frantic search for ‘the one’ all because we impose this pressure on ourselves that being dateless on Valentine’s day is a social taboo.
Every person will live their life differently, but nevertheless it is likely that you will spend many years of your life overall as a single person – do you really want to waste these years waiting for a relationship? The pressure can build, especially when friends have more interesting love lives and it seems ‘living vicariously’ becomes your norm.
But I’m offering an alternative.
Use the moments you are alone to learn who you are and build a friendship with yourself. This development of yourself will be important in years to come if you find you are away from a partner, or even friends, and you need to rely on just yourself. The valuable time you spend as a single person will be the time when you learn the most about yourself: you will need to use strength, learn confidence in yourself, and ultimately take total responsibility for your own happiness. It shouldn’t be dismissed and wished away. This time will even help future relationships as you will know where you are willing to make compromises and what’s really important to you. You can still be lonely in a relationship as if you are unable to support yourself in your own head, you cannot expect any partner to do it for you.
Stop hiding behind the idea of a relationship and just go to coffee by yourself. Find out who you are without people around you all the time.
They say you need to love yourself before anyone else can, and perhaps this is more true of knowing yourself. If you always jump between relationships, too afraid of being single, you are never really spending time with you. We need to understand that singleness doesn’t equate to loneliness.