6 Relationship Truths Single People See More Clearly Than Couples Who Have Been Together Forever
wilson montoya | Unsplash Sometimes being single is great. Sometimes I just want to shout, "You don't get it!" to this couples-centric world. Sometimes I love being single. I don't have to answer anyone. I don't have to fight with someone about something that I want to do.
I also don't have to worry about whether someone is cheating on me or going through the trouble of going through a divorce. And yet, I'm still lonely. I don't have anyone to have super annoying pet names with. I don't have anyone to share my life with or to show all the things I love about the world. I don't feel real if I'm not being loved.
I'm not always so cynical about love; I just see these hard relationship truths with a clearer angle sometimes.
Here are the six relationship truths single people see more clearly than couples who have been together forever:
1. Being single means you're nobody's top priority
That means you will be passed over for the family night, baseball practice, and dance recitals. Your needs and feelings will be set aside in favor of husbands and wives and girlfriends and boyfriends and little people with great demands.
What you don't know is how isolating that is, to not be anyone's first choice.
2. Being single can make you realize that 'being included' only makes the loneliness worse
Aman Jakhar / Unsplash
Sitting down to dinner with your family, being invited to family night and dance recitals, and baseball practice only amplify the loneliness. It only highlights what I don't have, what I'm missing out on, and what I don't have the option to have.
That's very normal, career and life coach Dr. Ruth Schimel explains: "Feelings of loneliness can occur even when you're not alone. You can be with someone you love, family, friends, colleagues, or in a community and still feel lonely."
3. Being single can make it hard to hear couples complain about how difficult marriage is
When you tell me how unrewarding it can be, how hard parenting can be, how it's not all it's cracked up to be, that I'm lucky not to have to answer to anyone, it makes me hate you just a little bit. You don't know that you're undermining my feelings. By saying those things, you're saying I don't have the right to feel the way I feel.
But "having a partner doesn't guarantee that you will not be lonely," cautioned psychologist Dr. Margaret Paul. And "some people who are in relationships are even more lonely than many single people."
4. Single people often crave having a family of their own
Brooke Balentine / Unsplash
You don't know that I love coming to family night, baseball practice, and dance recitals. You should be putting your family first. I don't have a family of my own to put first. People who navigate this painful gap between wanting a family and not having someone to build one with experience grief before any decision is made.
Life coach Sarah Kowalski explains how normal this feeling is: "There's often grief involved in letting go of expectations. If you don't allow yourself to feel your feelings, whatever they are, it will only take longer to move forward."
5. Single people are never a unit
No amount of friendship, companionship, and family can make me part of a pair. It can't move me up on the priority list. It won't erase my loneliness or isolation. I will never have someone to come home to or be considered the other half of someone.
6. Single people sometimes feel unlovable
Yeah, I've had some awful dates that at least turned out to be funny stories to tell at dinners, and none of the guys I've gone out with have been stellar gentlemen, but I don't know how many more cringey first dates I have in me.
One study from The Rosie Project found that women will kiss an average of 15 men, have two disastrous relationships, and have their hearts broken before they will find the one.
I'm an outlier, I guess. I'm starting to think that being married and starting a family just isn't in the cards for me, even though I want it so badly.
Shireen Dadkhah is a freelance writer, photographer, and blogger who writes about depression and her relationship with it.
