Photo: carballo / Shutterstock
Seeing your family and friends is great, but sometimes it just reminds us that we're alone.
By Shireen Dadkhah — Updated on Mar 02, 2023
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 have a 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 not or go 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 someone all the things I love about the world. I don't feel real if I'm not being loved.
Here are 5 unsexy truths single people are afraid to tell their married friends:
1. What you don't know is that being single means you're no one's number one 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 large demands. What you don't know is how isolating that is. To not be anyone's first choice.
2. What you don't know is that sitting down to dinner with your family, being invited to family night and dance recitals and baseball practice only amplifies the loneliness
It only highlights what I don't have. What I'm missing out on? What I don't have the option to have.
3. What you don't know is that when you tell me how hard marriage is, how much I hate that
You tell me how unrewarding it can be, and how hard parenting can be, how it's not all it's cracked up to be, that I'm lucky to not 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.
4. What you don't know is how much I crave having a family of my own
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.
5. What you don't know is no amount of friendship and companionship and family can make me part of a pair — a unit
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, to be considered the other half of someone.
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Shireen Dadkhah is a freelance writer, photographer, and blogger who writes about depression and her relationship with it.
This article was originally published at Just Shireen. Reprinted with permission from the author.