Your Singlehood Will Never "Make Sense."
Stop asking it to.
Welcome to Cheaper Than Therapy, a newsletter by Shani Silver.
Personally? I’d love to know. I’d love to know the precise reasons I have remained single throughout my adult life while my peers have all partnered up. I want to know all my little Sliding Doors moments, and every twist of fate that has kept me separate from literally any human man I might have feelings for. I imagine it would feel like the big reveal at the end of a mystery movie and I fuckin’ love mystery movies. There’s probably a great deal of satiating relief waiting for me in all the quiet little reasons I’ve never connected with someone and fallen in love. I will never, ever know them, and darling neither will you.
One of the essential parts of reframing your thoughts and feelings about singlehood for the benefit of your wellbeing is letting go of the need to know why you’re single. Single women have a habit (understandably so) of looking around every corner for “reasons” that can explain why we don’t have a romantic relationship. This isn’t shocking, because human beings tend to seek out solutions when we’re faced with problems. The world still registers singlehood as a problem, so naturally we will often find ourselves looking for answers, if not full to-do lists that can solve being single. If it worked that way. It doesn’t.
You aren’t having trouble finding someone because there’s something wrong with you. Think about how long you’ve operated under that assumption and how many different “wrong” things you’ve tried to fix. Do you honestly believe that after all this time and focusing on this many different “flaws” or varied approaches to dating that the problem is still somehow you? Do your partnered friends strike you as perfect? Did they meet their partner because of some precisely executed “dating strategy?” Have they somehow “worked on themselves” more than you? Or was it never really about working on yourself to begin with? Maybe working on yourself was just an exploitable vulnerability in lonely women who want a fucking family. Maybe that’s it.