Let me begin with a story.

The other day I was out at midtown, and a guy came up to me and introduced himself. For the purpose of this article, we’ll refer to him as “Sam.” We started having a great conversation—by great, I mean slightly better than the typical, "what’s you major?" but, nevertheless, it flowed smoothly. After maybe five minutes, Sam shifts our conversation from the topic of music festivals to about how he, and I quote, is, “not looking for a relationship right now or anything.” I nodded my head in agreement, which he seemed surprised at, and moved along with the prior conversation of music festivals.

But after that conversation, I was left wondering, why does anyone assume that after a few minutes of dialogue someone is looking for a relationship? In this particular situation, I had just met Sam five minutes ago, tops. To be completely honest, a relationship was probably the last thing I was thinking about at the time (the first being the pizza I was about to leave to get).

Of course, that conversation that night was similar to the ones that I had already had weeks and months prior with Jack, Tim, Joe, and Jeff. It’s so common, and that’s just the thing—why do we assume people are always “looking” for relationships? Why isn’t it okay to be perfectly content with being single for a portion of time in our lives? Not being in a relationship seems to create an enigma for society.

But for those of us who are single, we get to focus on us. We’re independent. We’re comfortable being alone, and we only depend on ourselves for happiness. We’re free to do what we want, as we please. We’re strong and can get through things on our own. We have learned so much about ourselves and the personality of the world around us—an experience we never would have gotten to have otherwise.

So the next time you assume that someone is looking for a relationship solely because they are single, think twice. Most of us are content with the way things are.