Do you fear ending up alone forever?
Do you have a deep-down gnawing sense that you’ll never truly be happy until you find your life partner?
Well, what if a magic fairy came along and promised you, with absolute certainty, that you would end up alone forever? That you would never find ‘the one’, and you would never have a long-term intimate relationship ever again?
For the anxious, busy mind, this might seem like a terrifying and abysmal piece of news to receive.
No one to share your inner most thoughts with? No warm body to wake up next to in the morning? No one to grow old with? How awful!
After the shock and awe wore off of this new truth settling in to your consciousness… something interesting might happen, if you’re open to it.
If you took on the fact that, “Okay, fine, I’m going to end up alone forever,”, eventually you would think to yourself, “So now what?”
Now what, indeed.
I think that this is one of the most important thought exercises that we can take on as individuals.
What if you knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you would be alone forever, romantically speaking?
Well, eventually, you would come around and think, “How can I make my life as satisfying and fulfilling as possible, despite my chronic-singledom?”
And this is a very valid, and important question to ask.
How Would You Make Your Life Tolerable If You Were Alone Forever?
Ultimately, you would need to take responsibility for how enjoyable your life is for you.
What are your needs? Are you aware of them? If so, are you putting in the effort to get those needs met?
In an ideally interdependent relationship, each partner would roughly be getting their own needs met approximately 80% of the time (through career, hobbies, friendships, etc.) and 20% of their needs met through their primary partnership.
Obviously these numbers will fluctuate from couple to couple, and through different phases of how the relationship is going.
Maybe when there are newborn children in your family, you lean on each other less (or more) because your attention is being poured into your hyper-dependent child. Or maybe you or your partner get diagnosed with a challenging illness and one needs more support from the other and the giving/receiving quotient becomes lopsided for a while. Fine.
But, again, if you knew that no one was ever coming to save you and that you had to get your own needs met independent of a romantic relationship, how would you adapt?
How To Make Your Single Life As Amazing As Possible
Maybe you know that physical touch is important to you, and so you schedule weekly massages, get regular haircuts (with scalp massages), and enlist the help of a friend to cuddle with you occasionally while you watch a movie.
Maybe you love physical exercise, but can’t consistently find the motivation to get yourself to the gym. Instead of waiting around the parking lot at your local gym for your future spouse (toting a tub of protein powder as bait), you should find a way to make your relationship with exercise intrinsically rewarding and positive.
Again, the point of this thought experiment isn’t to make friends with the idea of being alone forever, as much as it is to see where your mind might like to be lazy and lean on the excuse of, “Once I find the right person, I won’t have to do any of this for myself, so I might as well not even begin to work on it in the mean time.”
Is It Even Possible To Be Alone Forever?
No. No it isn’t.
Humans are a social species. We need each other to thrive (and to survive).
Even if you are romantically alone, no one can ever truly be alone forever. Unless their mind makes them believe they are.
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
John Milton
You can have a thriving social life with a close-knit circle of friends who love you and have your back. You can be heavily invested in the lives of your family members. You can be an amazing aunt or uncle to your siblings children, or surrogate aunt/uncle to your friends children.
You can volunteer. You can build better relationships with your co-workers, industry colleagues, or employees. You can become a pillar of your community.
We don’t have control in our lives, we don’t control what happens to us. But we can always control how we respond to what life serves us. Even if your path does unfold in a way that has you in long stretches of single-dom, you will only ever actually be alone if your mind convinces you that you’re alone.
Human connection is all around you. All it requires is for you to extend to it and invest in it.
How To Date Yourself
First, become intimately aware of your needs.
Take out three sheets of paper. At the top of each sheet of paper, write the following:
– Things That My Best Days Have Consisted Of
– Things That I Do That Make Hours Pass By Like Minutes
– The Things That I Used To Love Doing That I Stopped Doing (For No Good Reason)
And then write anywhere from 20-100 things per list. Really sit with these prompts and give them your undivided attention.
Then, pick out a handful of the highest leverage things (aka the highest ROI of effort to happiness ratio) that you could do over the next couple of weeks, and then actually do them.
I did this exact exercise a few months back and realized that I missed playing music with friends, skateboarding, and doing gymnastics. So I started incorporating all three of those things into my weekly calendar, and I’ve been loving it.
In Conclusion…
Ultimately, this is the only piece of advice that I really believe in when it comes to calling in the one – build a happy single life.
Make your life brim with so much passion, enthusiasm, and joy, that regardless of whether or not you are meant to be in partnership with someone, your life will be amazing in it’s own right.
Do this, and your lonely nights won’t feel so lonely anymore. Because you will be surrounded by people who love you, and you will enjoy your own company.
Why pour your energy into one person when there are billions you could positively impact in the same way? And while, yes, it could be argued that even loving one person deeply is the same thing as loving all people (because we are all divine manifestations of God, blah blah blah), it still feels flat and overly egoic and ‘special’ to only treat one person in this manner.
The point of life isn’t to find that one special person that you can pour all of your love into… it’s to become the thing that you’re looking for (love, tenderness, compassion, kindness, etc.) and live out that core value throughout all of your daily actions.
Dedicated to your success,
Jordan
Ps. If you enjoyed reading this article, you will also love checking out:
– Are You Willing To Be Awake In Your Relationship?
– 21 Of The Best Self Care Practices Ever
– 9 Ways Anyone Can Instantly Be More Attractive
– The Ultimate Guide To Male Grooming: 50+ Head To Toe Tips
– 11 Ways To Be A More Attractive Man (or How To Fight Entropy 101)
