1. True love doesn’t include perpetual fear of being alone.

We can’t choose a partner wisely when the desire to do so is, at least partly, based on a fear of being alone. Being happily single is often conflated with a lack of desire to eventually find a partner. However, it’s a mistake to assume just because you recognize that you don’t need something and can be happy without it that that somehow is incompatible with wanting something.

The takeaway? The desire to find love and being happily single are not mutually exclusive: You can still want the love of another person without your happiness depending on finding someone. In fact, the more comfortable and genuinely happy you are alone, the more likely the partners and subsequent relationships you attract will be healthy. In healthy relationships, both partners are simultaneously emotionally self-sufficient and able to ask for, provide, and accept emotional support from one another when necessary.

2. You can only learn yourself, by yourself.

When you spend a substantial amount of time with yourself, inevitably you’ll learn more about yourself. This may seem obvious, but a lot of the time we have subconscious preferences or personality traits that even we don’t fully comprehend.

However, these characteristics inevitably influence our behavior. We don’t completely understand these aspects of ourselves simply because we haven’t had the experience of confronting them alone, without the influence of friends, partners, or any other social influences. When you use the time that you are single to thoroughly observe your thought processes, boundaries, and values, it makes it much easier to attract a partner who will complement the traits and preferences you’ve identified in yourself.

3. You’re most attractive when your happiness doesn't depend on others, and your behavior indicates this.

All relationships are an investment. However, romantic relationships as they are defined in our society require us to provide much more commitment, dedication, and effort than our platonic relationships. As a happily single person, the current lack of commitment allows you to be free of some of the stressors serial daters may face, which in turn may allow you to be an overall calmer and less anxious person when it comes to dating. Essentially, there’s “less pressure” to always feel as if you need to impress someone and your behavior will illustrate your more carefree and outcome-independent attitude. Not depending on specific outcomes to dictate your happiness demonstrates to others that you are comfortable with uncertainty, living in the moment, and are not reliant on them acting in a specific way to please you. When we are less focused on an outcome, such as ensuring that we are with a specific person for a certain amount of time, we become much more attractive to others because this kind of attitude demonstrates emotional self-sufficiency.