“All the Single Ladies, All the Single Ladies, Put your hands up!”
Hands up? Now look around.
How many are up? For some of you it may be every hand you see. For others, you may be the only one. In a sea of googly eyed couples macking on face, you proudly have that hand raised!
Or maybe not.
There are moments we love being single. Eating what we want and not sharing is a major highlight. There are times, however, that we look from the burrito in our hands to the couple holding each other’s hands and think that another person may be an acceptable substitute for that burrito. My burrito moments (Copyright: Me 2016) have come many a time.
Once, I was at Disneyland with one of my sets of couple friends. As I looked across the line, I saw a woman, with a beard and at least a dozen missing teeth, holding her husband’s hand. That’s right, a near toothless, bearded woman, was getting more action than me.
Being single was no longer fun.
I can currently count on one hand the number of single friends I have. Unfortunately, that can mean a lot of neglect. At one point, I said, “If your ideal superpower is invisibility, just go ahead and hang out with couples. It’s basically the same thing”. There were times that I felt incredibly lonely, even in a room of my closest friends.
“Wow, this is a real downer!” you’re probably saying to yourself, as you fill out your match.com profile. We’ll get back to the giggles (or you staring blankly at the screen because you don’t think I’m funny. Rude.) in a second, just hear me out.
As hard as it’s been at times, I do have to thank my couple friends. Through them I have learned what to do and what not to do, how to treat others, and what I’m really looking for in a relationship. Your couple friends are like royal food tasters. They try out dating and figure out what’s good and what’s poisonous and then you get to eat the good stuff. Yes, this scenario does make you royalty, you deserve it.
I have seen my friends light up, loosen up and just be happy because of their relationship, which leads me to the biggest thing I’ve learned: Happiness should not be contingent on someone else. I’ve found that there’s a million cool things I get to do because I’m not dating someone. I love the independence and autonomy. When I stopped getting hung up on what I felt I was missing and started focusing on the opportunities I had (like not sharing food), it changed everything.
Until we learn to embrace this idea of being happy in our circumstance, of embracing singleness, we will wallow in our loneliness. If feeling happy in your singleness means uninviting yourself from events with your couple friends, that’s OK. If it means you spend more time with your single friends, should you be lucky enough to have them, that’s fine too. Bottom line: You have to be happy on your own.
All this is not to say that if you learn how to make yourself happy, you’ll be fine the rest of your life. There will be days where it sucks; where being single is far from fun. Where, despite your best efforts, you wind up back in the loneliness. It will happen, but don’t let loneliness become your home.
And if someday, you should exchange that burrito for someone’s hand remember how the bad days of being single felt and don’t let anyone live in loneliness; there’s no good burritos there.
