The Lucid Millennial

What is Wrong with Being Single?

Essentially, this is a journal entry, in which I try to sort out my feelings on being single vs wanting a relationship. I think I am going in with the ultimate goal of convincing myself that I don’t actually need a relationship, but along the way I’m hoping to spend some time really figuring out why I think I want one. Let’s see where we land!

Overview

My current plan is to start with the following prompts, to really sus out how I’m feeling. From there, hopefully some thread will come up for me to work on. By the end of this I’m hoping to have a “snapshot” decision of whether I actually want to try to find a partner or not.  I say snapshot because I, like all humans, am prone to changing my mind. 

• Why do I want a partner?
• What do I want out of a relationship?
• Why do I think having a partner will be better than being single?
• What do I feel like is missing from my life that having a partner could add?
• Can I get (or am I already getting) any of these things from alternate sources or myself?

Initial Thoughts and Context

I’m not really feeling like I’m gravitating towards any one of these questions to start off with, so I am just going to jump in with my general stream of consciousness brain dump. When I moved to Maryland, I didn’t have any friends or family in the area. Pretty quickly after I got here, my beloved pickup truck got totaled in a car accident, and I was left standing on the side of the road, 10 hours away from anyone I knew for sure would come pick me up (they didn’t answer their phones anyways). I was in a state of shock, just numbly trying to think of who I should call, or how I could get to work. Fortunately, a co-worker saw me standing there and turned around to come get me. I think that was really the first moment where I realized that my support system was gone, and I was going to have to build a new one.

I work with a lot of really wonderful, amazing, and generous people, who have become a major part of my new support system. I love them all dearly, but sometimes it still feels hard to ask for help. Rather than reaching out a friendly hand, it often feels like I am trying to butt myself into a place I don’t belong: their already full lives. Logically, I know they don’t really feel that way. I know they genuinely care about me and enjoy having me around, but when most of them have partners and kids, it’s hard to feel like I’m not intruding. 

Since the day I lost my truck, life has only gotten more difficult. I realized my relationship with my mother was wildly unhealthy, and I cut contact with her, and then spent the whole past year dealing with all the different types and levels of grief and healing that came along with that decision. 

Since I cut contact, there have been some regular themes in my healing journey: sense of belonging, sense of community/support, sense of home, and sense of identity have all been heavily impacted, and all have felt way out of reach.

Every few months the idea of dating comes up again, and I try for a while and then I end up frustrated, stressed, or burned out from the whole rig-a-ma-roll. Dating apps are awful. 

Why do I want a partner?

I think the first obvious answer is support, followed closely by companionship. I want a partner because when I look around at my life, I see that there is no one around me who has known me for longer than 3.5 years. There is no one I have known long enough to feel comfortable asking them to put away the folding chairs after a party. No one to ask “what time is thanksgiving dinner?” (because I already know what we’re going to be doing) instead of “hey, could I possibly crash your thanksgiving?” (or worse yet, just waiting around to be invited somewhere). There is no one to go grocery shopping with, no one to discuss the logistics of family Christmas gifts with, no one to memorize my coffee order and daily caffeine consumption habits and just show up with the coffee when I need it. There is no one to rely on to help me meet my own needs, and no one to pay deep attention to (without being creepy) to help them meet their needs.

Holiday’s have been one of the hardest parts.

What Do I Want Out of a Relationship?

I think for this question I am going to dig all the way down into the nitty gritty specific stuff, because that will help me assess whether I need a partner for these things or not. I would really love a partner who likes to cook and can pack me lunch every day, because I am really bad at thinking ahead about food, and really bad at figuring out food in the moment.

I want someone to build traditions with. I want to just know that every year on this day we do this thing, and we both enjoy that. I want to know where I am supposed to be on holidays, and not have to worry or think too much about it. I want to have a place to go for holidays that feels loving and welcoming and warm and fun.

I want spontaneity. I want to be able to hop in the car with someone and suddenly go to the museum we’ve been talking about seeing for 2 months. 

I also want plans. I want dinner dates full of love and joy, and monthly farmers market trips. And I want to plan to do one new thing at some regular interval.

I want someone to talk to about my feelings every day. I want to connect with someone who is not a coworker when I get home from work. I want to play games and have inside jokes. 

I want reliability. I want to feel like there is definitely someone I could call in the middle of the night, and they would come get me if I needed them to. 

I want to know someone really deeply. I want to know their secrets and their fears. I want to know what makes them tick. What they love and hate. All those things. And I want someone to know me just as well. 

I want someone to give gifts to. I love gift giving, and I want to share that with someone.

Why do I feel like having a partner will be better than being single?

As I was writing out the previous section, my brain flashed to all these Christmas parties on my mom’s side of the family. Often at these parties as a kid I felt like everyone hated me and my brother. All our cousins were much more connected to each other than they were to us, and I often felt like we weren’t part of the cool club and they didn’t want us around. As we got older and they started dating and bringing partners to the events, I felt even more uncool. One of the hardest parties was the first one at which my brother had a girlfriend. His now wife came, and it felt like the two of them had each other and I was completely alone. 

So one of the reasons that I think having a partner will be better is because I have a core belief that with a partner, I won’t ever feel alone or singled out. I will always know that someone in the room loves me and cares about what I want and think and need. 

I think I have also spent a lot of time in the last three years feeling lonely. Back in MI, before I moved here, when I wanted to hang out with someone, I had several people I could text and ask, and they often said yes. My best friend, my dad, my aunt; all of them were usually free if I needed to spend some time with people. After I moved here, not only was it really difficult to ask people to hang out, but everyone I worked with was often extremely busy and didn’t have time for spontaneous hangouts. If I wanted to spend time with them, I usually had to ask several weeks in advance. So another reason I want a partner is so that I will always have someone to spend time with.

I also think part of this feeling lonely can be attributed to the amount of time I spend thinking about how alone I am. If I could instead focus on doing something fun, or finding people to spend time with, I might not feel so alone so frequently. 

The only other reason I can think of is that dual income would be really nice. It’s tough funding this lifestyle alone. 

What do I feel like is missing from my life that having a partner could add?

I think I am going to approach this question from a vision board planning kind of perspective and assess based on several categories:

• Physically: obviously sex is a primary difference, but I’m not going to talk about that beyond just mentioning that it is an important factor. Physical touch is also a key part of relationships
• Mental: I think a lot of this is covered by some of the things I’ve already mentioned, namely, having someone to talk to and connect with when I am feeling lonely.
• Work/Career: I think having someone to both vent to when work is tough and to support and encourage me is important
• Finances: Dual income would be really nice. Ideally my partner would be so rich that I could just spend all my money on whatever I want and not have to worry about bills and such.
• Spiritual: I think having someone to connect with on faith and beliefs (especially while I try to figure out what exactly I believe) would be really lovely.
• Environment: I would love to have help with the house I am buying

Can I handle this differently?

Okay, this is a bulleted list of all the topics I mentioned that I want from or make me want a relationship. For each one, I am going to assess whether there is a non-relationship alternative way to solve this for myself.

• Holidays & Traditions
• Food and Cooking
• Spontaneity
• Dinner Dates
• Farmers Market
• Daily feelings
• Reliability
• Knowing someone and being known
• Gift giving
• Feeling singled out
• Always have someone to spend time with
• Dual Income
• Work support and encouragement
• Spiritual work
• House help
• Physical Touch

I think I am going to answer this in the order that sounds easiest, rather than the order they are listed in. For Food and Cooking, I could start meal prepping and planning once per week. A while ago I implemented this “decide once” premise in my life that has really helped me out a lot. If I decided what I was going to eat all week and then made sure the food was here and ready, I could just pull it out and eat it. I think this would help me a lot more than it would have in the past, because it isn’t about restricting (like it used to be when I was dieting all the time) it would be about making my life easier. Right now I just kind of wing it every day, and some days this means I don’t eat nearly enough. If I meal prepped, I could just pack enough food for each day right up front and I could cook on the weekends or something. And sometimes I could take a break from this and just handle it like I do now, on a day to day basis.

If I am meal prepping, I think I could plan dinner dates into that. Currently I have dinner with Robin every other tuesday. I could plan dinners with someone else on alternate tuesdays or solo dinner dates with a book or craft or something!

For the farmers market and the spontaneity, I could either do things planned with friends, or I could just hop in the car and go myself. It might be good to keep a list on hand of things I want to do sometime, so that when I am feeling spontaneous, I can just pick one off the list and go!

I think quite a few of these things I can solve through good strong friendships. I talk to my best friend in MI every day. I could just spend more time talking to her about my day. I have tons of friends who are very reliable – that I could count on in the middle of the night or in a car accident – and several of them have already offered to help with house stuff! Since most of them are coworkers, I can also get some of the work support and encouragement I need from them. I think I can also get that from my new boss and my coach! And several of my friends accept gifts graciously, I can channel that energy into friendships too. And to spread out anything that might feel like pressure, I can keep working on making more friends.

Having a dual income is actually a thing I am trying to accomplish on my own right now. By starting this blog and working on things to sell both online and at a craft fair, I am on my way! I just need to put the right amount of work into these things so that they work out! I also think the house I am buying could help with this. There are tons of rooms, and if I rent out 3 my whole mortgage would be covered, which would leave me with some extra cash to put towards other things like debts.

Spiritual work is only partly about figuring it out and partly having someone to do spiritual practices with after I figure it out. I can work with my coach on figuring it out, but as far as doing it with someone, this is going to be a little more difficult. The things that I am interested in/may believe in don’t really fall very nicely into traditional organized religion, which will make it harder to find community for these things. Though I do think if I tried digging a bit I could find someone to do these things with, even if we aren’t all doing quite the same thing, maybe a community of people doing slightly different things would be really nice.

As far as always having someone to spend time with goes, I don’t think I would actually enjoy having someone around all the time. This is more about having someone available when I want to spend time with someone, and I think if I keep going to events like I have been and working on building up more relationships, this wont be an issue anymore. I’ll feel like I always have something going on and like I am always around people and I’ll appreciate my alone time much more!

For physical touch, I have had someone recommend massages to me several times. I could also find myself a fwb situation if I really feel like that’s something I need. But as far as knowing someone and being known, I think I just have to accept that will never be a thing I can do as deeply as I’d like. I do think, though, that as time passes and my relationships continue to grow, this will feel less and less like something missing from my life.

The other two I think are just always going to be difficult. Every time I am around people who are together, I will feel the pressure of the person I don’t have filling that space in my life, and unless I can find another way to build a family for myself, I will always be waiting on invitations to holidays. I can build other traditions with my friends, though, that help fill those needs. 

What if I were alone forever?

I think the actual question here is: Could I be happy being alone for the rest of my life?

I think the answer is yes. There are certainly a few action items I have to make it feel okay, but I think it’s totally feasible to believe that I could be happy and single for the rest of my life. When I first started considering these questions yesterday, I was thinking that if I never dated, nothing in my life would ever change, but that is only true if I let it be true, and I have done a very good job for the last few years of not letting that be true. So I think I’ll be okay.

Takeaways/Actions:

• Keep being intentional about going to events and planning time to spend with friends
• Meal prep for myself so that lunches are always packed
• Schedule a massage and see if that helps (or get my nails done)
• Make a list of things I want to do so that when I am feeling spontaneous, it’s right there ready to go, and I can just pick something off the list!
• See if I can find some people in my area who want to do spiritual but non-religious stuff together.
• Plan dinner dates with myself

Let me know if you have any advice, thoughts, or insights for me after reading this! I’d love to hear from you!

Tata~

Meagan

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