You Deserve More Than The Minimum
If no one's told you lately.
Welcome to Cheaper Than Therapy, a newsletter by Shani Silver.
When we are desperate for reasons, because nothing has “worked,” when we are desperate for company, because we’ve been endlessly alone, when all the lack and longing of singlehood add up and we are far beyond the stretches of our sanity, we will absolutely settle for the bare minimum and I wouldn’t blame us. Yes, there are lows within single life that tell us “something is better than nothing” and you’re not a failure for listening to them on occasion. Let someone who has known the company of a human man in the last decade judge me, I dare them. It’s understandable that we’ll settle for less than what we want because we’ve never seen what we want show up and as we age through life it starts to feel like maybe what we want doesn’t exist, so why not take what does exist? You can see how the thought process tracks. The issue for me is that the bare minimum from someone never feels better than saying no to it. We’ve been trained to believe the exact opposite.
You have the ability to say no to things that are less than what you authentically want. I know how often it feels like you don’t have that ability, and I know how tempting it can be to tell your better judgment to fuck off just so you can have some company—any company—for a moment. But I would ask you to remember how it makes you feel afterward, sometimes even during, and then ask yourself if that’s really all you think you deserve to feel. I also want you to ask yourself if the peace and freedom of being single really feel worse than the guilt of settling for someone who only gave you scraps. Settling isn’t accepting what’s available, it’s giving someone you don’t actually want the opportunity to make you feel ashamed of yourself. I am well aware of how harsh that sentence sounds, but I’d rather type it so that you can read it in the hopes that you never have to experience it firsthand instead.
Settling never feels good because half your energy is spent convincing yourself you’re not settling. Settling is preventing yourself from living fully just because you found something that let you live a little. Are you okay with a “friends with benefits” situation, or are you just tired of never having sex? Are you okay with always being the one to text first, suggest plans first, the one who keeps the conversation going by asking the next question, or do you know if you didn’t do those things you’d never communicate with men at all? Are you really okay with only hearing from a guy when he’s bored, lonely, or horny, or do situationships just seem better to you than never having a guy in your life at all? You’re not weak for accepting the meager comforts of settling. Life is a bitch for not showing you something more.