We are all conditioned from day one to believe that “True Love” is the happiest, most fulfilling experience a person can have. Virtually every Disney movie I saw when I was a kid included a romance. When I was asked what I wanted my future to be like, the first bullet point on my list was, “Fall in love and get married.” Then of course have kids, get a job as a Marine Mammalogist, and literally nothing after that. Most of the younger girls I knew had the same list in the same order, and differing professions falling somewhere around the third or fourth priority. All of my Barbies had weddings, pretty much every single day (to the same guy – we had about 95 Barbies and one Ken, and he was a busy man). Falling in love Cinderella-style is every girl’s first dream.
That is so messed up. It is messed up to teach children that romance is The Goal, even if the teaching is inadvertent. It’s one easy way to compromise a person’s self esteem, convince him or her that their value is determined by who they date and what their romantic partner thinks of them, and teach them that their lives are not whole all by themselves. That is not a lesson I want my little sisters, my future children, my current friends, or the toddlers I see at the pool learning. It is a myth and a plague to believe that the happiest a person can be is when they are with a significant other.
Recently I had the experience of taking a year and a half off of school – I swore off men during that period and I took the time to look inward. To my pleasant surprise, I emerged feeling enlightened, empowered, and ready for all that lie ahead of my return to the University of Mary Washington. Since then, I have urged some of my friends (girlfriends especially) to do the same. Until I was actively denying the instinct, I had never realized the influence that the constant, sometimes subconscious hunt for a partner had over my every day life. Once you take away the pressure of attracting a mate, the sense of solitude you are left with gives you a deeper focus on yourself. Instead of going out to bars in a mini-skirt and heels, I had close friends over for campfires, sleepovers, and movie nights. After some time, you get those internal aches for intimacy. No, I don’t mean it like that. I mean, you crave that too but that’s a whole other problem. I mean hugging. I mean holding hands in the grocery store. I mean having someone to cuddle when you watch Netflix. You really start to miss having someone to text when you feel lonely, or Snapchat when you could use a compliment. Eventually, the loneliness turns into peaceful solitude. It’s not sad; it’s relaxing. Your thoughts go from, “Man I wish I had someone to squeeze me right now” to “I wonder what I’m going to do this summer… Time to Google internships or something.”
Now that this experiment is over, I want to share some of the things I have learned along the way. I should mention that I identify as a Heterosexual, Cisgender Female. So I am writing this from the point of view of a woman who has only ever been interested in men. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t extend my experience to the Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, Transgender, or Queer communities. I want to acknowledge that any and all of these pronouns can be switched around and the message still stands. I’m simply telling my Heterosexual, Cisgender Female experience of withdrawing from the realm of dating, sex, and men in general for one year.
1) When you take a year off of dating, you realize that you can find fulfillment from a plethora of options outside of romance: you can find a passion and build a life around it; be it cooking, swimming, teaching, finance, Justice, Peace-making, or volunteer work. You can sell everything you own and travel the world, learning about cultures, history, food, human rights concerns, environmental factors wreaking havoc, castles in faraway lands and stories of people whose lives will forever affect the way you view your own. You could delve into your studies and emerge a brilliant mind, able to shape and mold the future of your country through means of technology, philosophy, modern medicine, or literature. When you take a year off of dating, you have time to really get to know yourself – your interests, your skill sets, your likes and dislikes – and you can have a better understanding of the kind of role you want to play in the world. Admittedly, you can do these things when you’re dating someone. However, the feeling of getting to explore every aspect of your person and every understanding you have of the world without being tied to a partnership with another person is less difficult and in most cases, more fathomable.
2) Your friendships strengthen when you don’t have the pressure of searching for “something better.” You have time to form bonds without romantic or sexual qualities - just pure, unapologetic human bonding with no strings and no commitment. It’s healthy to have true-to-its-core platonic love with people who will be able to support and care about you, people who will be there for you without touching on fears of performance, like-ability or ulterior motives. Let’s face it – we are all more critical of people whom we’re “interested in” than we are of our friends. Friends are important, however it can be difficult to form real, lasting friendships when you are also developing a romantic bond with a person of interest. The hormones, anxiety and passion that entail a new relationship can play into the dynamics we hold with everyone else we know. In the past year, I have gotten to understand and appreciate my existing friendships more than I ever have, as well as form new friendships with several wonderful people.
3) Your understanding of things like “Modern Beauty Ideals” and “Body-Acceptance” becomes a substantially larger spectrum than it was before. You come to love yourself at all times. Without the constant, subconscious concern that he’s going to come over with a pizza and a movie, you can strut your stuff around the house Au Natural. I’m talking about the you that parades around the living room with no makeup, zit cream, a pore strip nose, wet bun head (no, not the cute sloppy bun, the “fresh out of the shower no-tangles ugly bun” we all know so well), dirty sweatpants, granny panties and a spatula with a gob of frosting in your mouth. Sure, you’ll put on a shirt to go get the packages from the porch, but the UPS guy is pretty much over you at this point. In fact he probably just tosses the packages in your direction from the truck now. Who cares? You do you, man! Eat those Ranch Doritos like it’s your job because you’re not kissing anybody tonight. And when your friends call you, you can pull your shit together and go to a party that night. They’ve probably seen your From-Scratch Look by this point, so they’ll do you the favor of a two-hour heads up.
4) You learn that when your life is not whole by itself, you cannot possibly have a healthy relationship with another person. If you cannot walk away from a boyfriend or girlfriend to a life without them – a life with a career, friends, goals, passions, and contentment - you should not be dating them in the first place. People who depend on their significant others for a the joys that come with the human experience are setting themselves up to be taken advantage of, emotionally abused or abusive, or simply unhappy. It’s common knowledge. Any doctor, teacher, counselor, sociologist, psychologist, or love guru would say the same; unless you are happy with yourself, you cannot be happy with someone else. At the conclusion of your break, you will find yourself feeling more prepared to engage with another person in that way because you have had the time to figure out your understanding of yourself, what you want from your life, and how you’re going to get it. And it’s not like you have to start dating immediately after 365 days – wait until you’re ready. Wait until you’ve achieved everything you now know you need to achieve in order to be content with your life, enough so, that you would be open to the idea of dating again. I came to recognize this after about nine months – I never realized that I wasn’t in a place where I could have a healthy dynamic with a man, and three months after that, I find myself possibly considering trying again in the near future.
5) You start to realize how many people end up single, and that there’s a good chance you will too – but that doesn’t mean you have to be unhappy. You’re either going to be married, divorced, widowed, or single (in Legal terms). Only one of those four options includes a partner. This doesn’t mean that the almost 127 million Americans who are currently single (New York Times, 2014) are necessarily miserable, alone, or searching. No one has to be unhappy, whether you’re single or in a relationship. Ending up single certainly doesn’t have to be a “sad” thing, and there’s no need to pity people who haven’t found "The One." Interestingly enough, the fact that so many people end up divorced is probably an indication that instead of following the traditional path of marriage, some of them would have been better off just staying single. So you grow to be disgusted when the old lady you’re talking to says, “Don’t worry, you’ll find someone.” It’s always an old lady. It doesn’t matter where you are; the old lady in the room always delivers that same line. You want to correct her so badly, but you’ve also got to remember that for her, falling in love with her partner of 50-some odd years was the best thing that ever happened to her. To her. She really believes that everyone else is going to have the same experience, and she’s not trying to be offensive. On the contrary, she’s trying to be helpful. So the correct response on your part is, “Thank you, but I’m not worried. I appreciate the sentiment.” And to be clear, sometimes there’s no “ending up” anything. It’s never too late to find love, but it’s also never too late to go to college or write a book. There are plenty of exciting things we can do, and we have our entire lives to do them. We should not be weighed down, as a society, by the impending "necessity" of marriage because just like writing a book, it’s not necessary for a happy life.
Li, David. "Single Adults Now Outnumber Married Adults." NYPost.com. New York Post, 9 Sept. 2011. Web. 7 Aug. 2015.
