I Love My Single Life and I Still Want a Relationship (Both Can Be True) | Episode 59

Speaker A: 00:00:02

Why is it so hard for other people to understand that I can love my single life and still want a relationship?

Welcome back.

Or welcome to all About Being Single.

I'm your host, Wioleta.

Let's get started.

So today I want to talk about something that I think explains a lot of the advice single people receive.

The way people just react to our lives and to, you know, even our venting, like, our friends, and even just the way we sometimes talk to ourselves, to be completely honest with you.

And I think it's that people just in general have almost like, an inability or at least a very hard time withholding two conflicting beliefs at the same time.

So it's not necessarily that we can't do it.

It's just that we're very uncomfortable with that tension.

So we try to, like, force ourselves or other people to, like, pick a side, basically.

You know, like, apparently you have to either love being single or want a relationship, or you have to either be happy with your life or you want something more.

Or you have to either be grateful for what you have, or you have to admit that something is missing.

And again, that's just how, like, I think human beings were wired to, like, maybe need to pick a side sometimes.

And I think in our world today, I don't want to say we've outgrown it, but it's just something that maybe we were wired to either unlearn or, like, work on, basically.

So a hill that I'll die on is that you can be happy being single while you're still wanting a relationship.

Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

Like, I can love my independence, and I do.

I love having my own space.

I love making my own decisions.

I love spending my money however I want to and not having to consider another person's schedule every time that I make a plan or not feeling, you know, bed that, you know, I'm leaving my person behind because I want to go hang out with my friends, right?

But I can still want someone to come home to, and I can enjoy a Saturday night alone, but still wish I had someone to just cuddle with and be there with me or even go out to dinner with.

I can be proud of the life I've built on my own, but still want someone to share it with.

Like, sometimes we act like wanting a relationship means our single life must be miserable, and that's usually not the case.

And on the other side, why do we act like enjoying your single life means you must not really want a relationship?

And again, some people might.

I'm not One of those people.

And I think most single people aren't one of those people.

But some people don't want a relationship.

But yeah, I think we probably do this because people just love categories.

Like, we like to make sense of things.

We like things to make sense.

Well, not everybody, because common sense ain't that common sometimes.

But overall, we want a clear answer because a clear answer makes us feel more comfortable.

You know, so someone is happy or unhappy, confident or insecure, independent or lonely, grateful or dissatisfied.

But like, at the end of the day, reality, like the day to day or the week to week doesn't work like that.

From moment to moment or day to day or week to week, our feelings and thoughts can change.

And often we do actually feel conflicting feelings and think conflicting thoughts.

And again, maybe that is like a challenge that the universe, God, whoever you believe in, kind of created so that we can learn to overcome it.

Or we can, you know, learn to pick the better one out of the both of them, whatever the case may be.

Because you can be confident but also have insecurities.

And you can be grateful for your life and you can want a different chapter in it.

You can forgive someone but still decide you don't want to have them in your life.

You can be excited about a new chapter and terrified of what it will bring.

And you can be doing everything right, Building life that you're proud of, working on yourself, going to therapy, meeting people, trying new things, excelling at things, and still be disappointed that something you want hasn't happened yet.

It doesn't make you ungrateful.

It just makes you a person.

And I think sometimes we try to eliminate one feeling because we think it invalidates the other.

Like, okay, if I'm lonely, does that mean I'm not being good at being single?

If I want a relationship, does that mean I haven't learned to, quote, unquote, love myself?

If I'm happy with my life, am I supposed to stop wanting more?

And the answer is no.

Feeling lonely on a Tuesday doesn't mean that you're life sucks and they're secretly miserable.

Being single, wanting a partner doesn't mean you're incomplete without one.

Being happy today doesn't mean that you won't want something totally different tomorrow.

I think what makes this especially frustrating for single people is that other people often want us to resolve that tension for I don't even know what.

But they just want us to kind of fit into something that they imagine.

And like, if you want know, for example, if you say you want a relationship Someone, and usually people do tell you this, to either stop looking, work on yourself, or learn to be happy alone.

And the worst one of all, you know, I hate this one the most.

You'll find them when you're not looking.

And it's like so many times in my life when I was not looking, never found even a single person to date.

So that one doesn't work, guys.

And don't get me wrong, I. I believe there's a bit of truth to it.

Obviously there's a bit of truth in everything, because again, so many things can be true at once.

If you say that you're happy being single, someone has to tell you that you'd be even better off if you were in a relationship.

So it's like, it's got to be the opposite if you admit that being single is hard.

Sometimes people just have to tell you right away that, okay, well, you're doing a great job at it.

It's like, yeah, I know, I know.

I'm doing a phenomenal fucking job at living my best life and doing hard things by myself.

Like, I've been remodeling my house.

I've been doing this podcast.

I have a difficult full time job.

I also host singles events and I'm getting my website done for those over the last few months.

And I am coming up with like different icebreakers and different activities for the singles event.

So, like, sometimes there's days when I am literally, and that's been a lot of days recently where I am waking up and a lot of times lately I wake up late because I'm just so exhausted from everything that I'm doing.

But also all these things that I'm doing are things I want to be doing because they're helping improve my life.

But, like, I'll get up, I'll eat, I'll go take a walk, I'll go to my job, then I come home, I work on my house with the remodel.

I also work a little bit on something for the singles events, like working on another page in the website.

So I'm doing more things than most fucking people do in a day.

So, yeah, life can be hard.

I know this.

But also it's okay for me to say that it's hard.

It's okay for me to be struggling and knowing that if I had somebody else at home, they could take care of some of the housework, they could help me out with things, so that would ease up my load.

But it's not happening.

And I just want acknowledgement, just validation for It.

But then there's the opposite.

If you talk about how much you enjoy being single, they might assume that you've given up on love completely.

It's like we just can't exist in this middle and we can't have these conflicting thoughts and feelings because somebody has to.

Somebody's uncomfortable with it basically.

I think some of it too is like due to other people's.

At least being single part is due to other people's like misconceptions because they've never really been single and happy.

So they don't understand that like you can sometimes be sad about being single and still happy overall being single.

You know, I think some people believe that like the secret of to finding love is just being completely content alone.

So then when you admit that you want a partner and that you're wanting like that you're wishing you had one, they think you haven't done enough inner work.

And it's like, that's not the case.

I've done plenty of inner work and I'm sure you have done it too.

Whoever, whoever is listening.

Because at the end of the day, like, neither story tells the whole truth.

Being single can be wonderful and disappointing.

Personal growth can make your life better and still not guarantee everything that you want, like a partner, for example.

It just doesn't.

It might make you stronger and happier overall, but it's doesn't always mean that it sends you a life partner.

And you can be perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, all the while still wanting someone who takes care of you sometimes.

Like, I don't need to pretend that I'm miserable to prove that I want a relationship.

And I don't need to pretend that I don't want a relationship to prove that I'm happy with my life.

Both of those things do exist in my life.

Day to day, week to week, month to month.

And you know, this is kind of like the.

No.

Like to stand on and maybe a little bit of like a never again.

So something that we can even take away ourselves.

Like I want us to stop like doing this, using one part of someone's experience to invalidate another part.

You know, stop telling single people who are lonely that they must not love themselves enough.

And stop telling people who are happy single that they must be lying to themselves.

And stop telling people who want children that they should just simply enjoy their freedom because they have all this time.

It's like, dude, I'm as busy as you are, if not more.

Stop assuming that because someone wants something they don't currently have they're incapable of appreciating what they do have.

You know, I love dancing, so let's go ahead and do a little dance, and I'm just gonna give you a little note to self.

And this is not really even a question.

It's just that sometimes we judge ourselves for having feelings that don't fit the version of ourselves we've worked so hard to become.

You know?

So maybe you've spent years becoming more independent, more confident, more comfortable alone, you know, and then maybe you go through a phase where you're just feeling lonely and you kind of think, okay, I was past this.

Or you kind of think that, like, maybe you're failing in a way.

I don't even know, just, like, feeling negative about it, basically.

But again, growth doesn't mean that you won't experience those feelings again.

Those are normal human feelings.

And we feel them more, I think, because we are single.

Well, I guess people in shit relationships probably feel that even more than us, so there's that.

But sometimes confidence can actually mean admitting that you want love without feeling embarrassed about it, without feeling ashamed about it, without feeling or thinking that you have to be this person who doesn't need anybody else.

And, like, being confident can be that.

You just tell people, hey, this is exactly what I believe, and this is exactly what I feel based on my lived experience.

And it's a true lived experience.

Always get up again.

Okay, let's get to our glow.

Up.

So here's the challenge for this week.

Just the next time you catch yourself thinking in, like, absolutes, just try adding the words.

But also, so I'm happy being single, but also, I want a relationship.

I'm proud of how far I've come, but also, I'm disappointed that I'm not where I thought I'd be.

I'm grateful for my life, but also I want more.

I'm independent, but also, I do need support sometimes.

And just notice how those, like, sentences give you permission to be a whole person instead of forcing you to just fit into some weird box that society or other people or maybe even you at some point thinks that you kind of have to be in because it's okay to feel both of those.

And a lot of times people do feel both of those feelings, and it's time that we kind of start talking about it more openly.

Okay, as always, thanks so much for listening.

As always.

Even if we're late, we're right on time.

And even.

Even if you don't believe that this is exactly where you are right now.

So you can sulk in whatever situation that you're in, but also start making some changes.

As always, thanks so much for listening.

I really appreciate you being here.

Please let me know if you want to hear more of something, less of something.

If there's any way I can make this podcast experience better for you, email me at all about being singlemail.com or drop me a voice note at allaboutbeingsingle.com and I will talk to you next Tuesday.

Have a good rest of your week.