I hate being single - now what?
There’s a huge difference between being in your single girl era when you’re living up the independence, full control of your schedule and peace without emotional disturbances from dating. And then there’s the period of singlehood where you’re begrudgingly single. You look at your friends in relationships and can’t help but feel a little jealous. You think to yourself “it’d be so nice to be in a relationship - I want the companionship, the support system.”
If you’re in that mode right now, I totally understand. I spent a substantial part of the last 5 years in that mode and I know how lonely and painful it can feel.
Add on to it the very obvious reality that you are not 100% in control of when this period will end. There’s not a 10 step process you can follow to find a partner that will end this period of singlehood. (If you thought there was, then I have lots more dating resources for you that are probably the reframe you need!)
But does that mean you just have to passively sit back and live in this phase that you don’t like? Absolutely not.
It’s no accident that I’m writing this post in the lead up to Valentine’s Day, potentially one of the most annoying holidays for the single girl. Let’s talk about what to do when you realize that you hate being single….
What to do when you’re tired of being single
It’s absolutely okay to say that you don’t want to be single. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a relationship. Even though everybody and their mother (maybe even your mother) may say to you “you’ll find it when you’re least expecting it!” Such unhelpful advice because it asks us to experience dating from a place of passiveness - it implies that we are not a factor in when we find our next partner.
To be clear, we absolutely play a role in when we find our next relationship. But here’s the key…
We are not the ONLY factor on when we find our next relationship.
So when you are in a period of singlehood and wanting to be in a relationship, you absolutely should take responsibility for the things that are within your control (we’re going to dive more into that in a moment) but you have to balance that with the reminder that part of the timing of finding a great relationship is outside of your control.
Why is this so important? The reality of you being single right now is not “your fault.” And it’s not a sign that there’s something flawed or wrong with you.
There are two deeply common beliefs I hear that result in women hating the reality of being single:
That they’d be happier or more fulfilled in a relationship.
They fear it means something about them - that they’re somehow less worthy or just less than the other women they see in relationships
In a world that puts so much emphasis on relationship status, it’s almost no wonder that these beliefs are so prevalent but they’re both so dangerous to our well-being that we have to dive into each of them.
Why a relationship isn’t actually the end goal
To state the obvious here, you’re not looking for any relationship, you’re looking for the right relationship.
But when you’re in a period of hating being single, this is a hugely important distinction! If you wanted to find a partner or even someone to go on dates with, you could! If you are willing to compromise on what you’re looking for, getting a date isn’t hard!
But that’s not really the goal here because you know that relationship or those dates wouldn’t feel satisfying to you.
We deeply want to be in a relationship because we’ve painted a picture in our brains about how we’ll feel in a relationship. We expect being in a relationship will make us feel safe and loved. We think we’ll feel more satisfied or fulfilled with our life when we’re in a relationship.
But a relationship will not save you.
You can feel safe and loved and fulfilled and satisfied in a relationship. But it’s not automatic. And the biggest factor that determines whether you feel that way is how you feel about yourself.
If you don’t feel worthy of deep love, you’ll start dating a guy who treats you right and question “why is it that he’s so available? There must be something going on.”
If you don’t feel desirable, you’ll hear a compliment that a guy gives you and brush it away as “oh, he’s just trying to get in my pants.”
If you don’t feel good enough, then you’ll people please in your relationship to try to keep yourself safe and end up in situations that feel hollow.
How a relationship feels is determined by how you feel about yourself.
We’re going to dive into this concept more with the next unhelpful belief but it’s important in this period of disliking being single that you remind yourself: being single is better than being in an unhappy, unhealthy or empty relationship.
While sometimes the logistics of being partnered may sound appealing, the psychological and emotional pain that comes from being in unhappy or unhealthy relationships is absolutely worse than being single. So your singlehood is not the worst case scenario here.
But let’s also take relationships off a pedestal - they include compromises, balancing needs of another human, they can involve more conflict, releasing control and a whole host of other things. Plus they’re not a miracle drug that make you feel worthy.
Which brings us to the next damaging belief you might be struggling with…
Why being single doesn’t mean something about your worthiness
Partnered people are not better than single people. It’s not somehow a sign of your quality as a human that another human has chosen to date you.
You might instinctively push back on this idea - “Well, but somebody chose them - nobody wants to be with me!” or “It at least means something about their desirability!”
My dear, this is a classic example of one of the universal truths - the world reflects back what we believe about ourselves. If you have the idea of yourself as unattractive, undesirable or unworthy, then you’re going to seek out patterns in the world that confirm that fact - which includes, assuming that people who are in a relationship are different than you are. It’s not necessarily true.
What if you consider that your friend Katie isn’t necessarily better than you are but the game of chance put someone who was a fit for her desires in front of her at an earlier point than it’s happened to you? Couldn’t it just be chance?
Or maybe you read the section above and realize that you maybe have some unworthiness beliefs that might lead you to not being able to receive the type of love you want. Maybe a little self-sabotage in there?
Let me remind you, that doesn’t mean being single is all your fault because you have these limiting beliefs. Think about it - you probably have at least a couple friends you can think of who were still working through all sorts of confidence or self-image issues when they met their partner.
That’s because you don’t have to be fully healed to find a partner.
BUT, just like “it’ll happen when we least expect it” is unhelpful because it puts us in passive mode, I want you to be focused on the things that are in control. And while you will absolutely still be “healing” when you find your partner, if you have self-doubt or maybe don’t see yourself as loveable or desirable and think that might be leading to some self-sabotage behaviors, those are absolutely something you can be focused on to clean up your side of the street so to speak to help increase your likelihood of finding a relationship.
There are plenty of unhealed people in reasonably happy relationships and plenty of people who have done an enormous amount of confidence, self-esteem and mindset work that are still single.
Being single doesn’t mean there’s more wrong with you any more than being in a relationship means there’s less wrong with you!
So when you are in this mode of disliking being single, let’s start by stripping away some of those painful beliefs about what it means. There’s nothing wrong with you that means you’ll be single forever and you’re not being punished with singlehood, because it’s also not true that a relationship is a reward. Sometimes dating is just hard!
But that doesn’t mean that you aren’t still experiencing the longing for a partner.
Why it’s okay to want a relationship
Our culture likes to paint pictures of “chill girls.” It implies that men are most interested in the women who don’t care. That women who want relationships give off desperate energy and it turns men off.
But asking someone who legitimately wants a relationship to just stop wanting it, or pretend not to want it, is like asking somebody not to think about a pink elephant. It has the opposite effect.
Pretending like you don’t want something you want is just going to contort you into some performance that takes you further and further from the authentic representation of who you are, which is crucial for you finding a partner.
If we desire the happy, fulfilled relationship, what we’re typically envisioning is a relationship where somebody likes us for who we are authentically are, that we can be ourselves around. So why would it be productive to bait them in with this fake disinterest and then switch around once we get to know them?
In my personal experience, men are actually attracted to women who know what they want. Especially once they are at the place where they too are looking for a real relationship, a real partner. They don’t want to chase after someone who’s still figuring it out - their time is valuable too!
But there’s a big difference between a woman who knows what she wants, which includes wanting a relationship and being clear about what that looks like, and needing a relationship to make them feel okay about themselves.
If you feel like you can’t feel good about yourself until you find a relationship, it’s possible that you are showing up to the world from a pick me, choose me, validate me energy. And while it’s possible that you can still find a healthy relationship from that place, when we are feeling that need to fill a hole in our lives, we’re a whole lot more likely to overlook red flags, to hesitate to speak up for our needs, or to accept less than we want because we want so desperately to keep that hole in our life filled.
Not the recipe for the healthy, fulfilling relationship we’re actually looking for.
So what now? I’ve talked a lot about the things not to think, the ways not to approach looking for the right relationship. But what is the right way?
I can’t promise you this is right per se, but back in the years when I coached women through their dating lives and from my entire big sister perspective, including over a decade of dating experience, here’s my advice on what I think is most likely to help…
The most helpful things to be focused on when you’re single but you don’t want to be
Let your desires increase your self-knowledge
When you’re in a period of singlehood, you’re likely to have pop culture relationships, characters in TV shows or books, or real life relationships that you notice yourself admiring. These are hugely useful indicators of what you want.
Now to be clear, if you, like me love Romantasy and find yourself drooling over Xaden or Rhysand, that doesn’t mean you need to update your type on Hinge to shadow daddy. But you might ask yourself - what do I like about them? What characteristics of this relationship do I admire?
For me, the answer is things like these characters are both verbal about how they feel about their partner. They express affection generously and their behavior demonstrates over time their willingness to put their partners feelings as equal to or more important to their own.
Even from a fictional character, I can yield information about what I desire in a partnership and you can do this with anything in your life. (Even outside of relationships - ogling an influencer’s apartment? Why? What about it appeals to you? You may not be able to get a luxury high rise condo but if they have minimal decor you can use that to make tweaks to your own space, etc.)
Address the limiting beliefs
While you don’t have to be healed to find a great relationship, the more limiting beliefs (like I’m not good enough, the guys I like don’t like me, most guys are only after one thing, I’m too emotional for most guys, etc.) you’re living with, the more likely you’re unintentionally getting in your way.
You don’t need to put your dating life on hold to address these things, in fact, once you start making a little shift in a belief, it’s super common for the universe to reflect that back to you with experiences, like first dates that provide evidence for a new belief.
But if you’re curious where to start to make those changes, there are tons of resources out there. While talk therapy can help with this sort of thing, in my experience, it can take a long time to get to the deeper emotional core of the issue that needs to be accessed to make a shift.
I’ve had huge success with EMDR in helping shift difficult beliefs - the eye movement is supposed to help connect the memory part of your brain with the storytelling part of your brain to help you rewrite stories around the deeper memories that might have led to these beliefs.
But if EMDR isn’t in your budget right now or you’re looking for something more DIY, my other go to and the one I recommend the most is To Be Magnetic - I’ve been a member for years and the combination of their journal prompts and guided meditations are amazing for shifting these problematic beliefs at a deeper level. (I legitimately love this program and pay for it myself year after year but because I recommend it so much, they gave me a code - you can use code SAMANTHA to get 15% off at checkout!)
Work to love the rest of your life
Our dating lives and the rest of our lives don’t live in isolation. When we think about the dream outcome where we’re in a happy relationship, it probably also involves you being happy with other parts of your life!
When you are happier and more fulfilled in other parts of your life, you will show up happier and more confident in dating. When something is out of alignment with the rest of our lives, our dating lives are sometimes naturally worse as a result.
I experienced this personally in my last few years in New York. I was doing all the work on myself and wondering why my dates still felt like strikeouts. Once I started to identify areas of my life that were out of alignment, like moving from corporate work to self-employment and ultimately realizing I needed to leave New York, it became more and more obvious why dating in New York wasn’t working for me - the people who liked New York (which you’d think are most people that live there) weren’t a match for who I wanted to be.
Looking back, it’s a good thing dating wasn’t going well because that frustration led me to look deeper at whether I was happy with my life. And on the flip side, the more I made adjustments to my life to be more in alignment with what I wanted, the better things started to get.
I went on more good dates during my digital nomad year, including some who became more than just dates, than I had in my entire last two years in New York.
When you are in alignment with your life, you are naturally more likely to meet and attract people who are a fit for what you’re looking for.
Find gratitude in the lonely
It’s unlikely that reading this article is going to turn around your experience of being single overnight. And with that, I know, comes with feeling lonely sometimes.
It’s okay to be lonely sometimes. It means you know what you want.
But before we demonize feeling lonely, or run immediately to fill our time to avoid the feeling, it can actually be helpful to sit with it for a bit.
When we acknowledge feeling lonely, we’re also acknowledging what we want in our lives. We don’t put being in a relationship on a pedestal, of course, but it’s okay to have those moments of thinking about how it might feel whenever we do find the right person. I like to channel gratitude for that future version of my life and how grateful I’ll feel for the companionship, the partnership, the memories we’ll build together. I know the more I’m grateful now for what is coming in the future, the more certain it is to happen (it’s a universe thing)!
But then it’s even more important to channel that gratitude back to the present moment when you’re feeling lonely. Take a moment to identify things you’re grateful for then! It might be gratitude for the comfy couch you’re lying on, living by yourself so you can have space to feel your feelings, a friend who has been a great single buddy during this phase or having resources that are helping you feel empowered.
We only live life in the today. So while you’re deeply looking forward to that day when you’re in a healthy relationship, recognizing that that day will also have it’s own imperfections is crucial. And if you’re not able to be grateful for your life today even in the absence of a relationship, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to feel the gratitude then when whatever else is going on in your life.
Channeling gratitude today, in your loneliness, sets you up to channel gratitude for your future relationship.
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Okay, girlie, I’m going to leave you with those thoughts. Know that I have absolutely been in your shoes and that feeling of wanting a relationship but not having one yet is real and can be difficult but you are not in the backseat of this ride. You have the power to take back the wheel and start doing the things to set yourself up the best you can and then remind yourself that there’s another person in this equation and some of the “when” is up to them.
Your best is all you can do. Love you!