I think one of the strangest things about being human is that you will spend your entire life with one person.
You.
People will come and go.
Some will stay for decades.
Some will stay for a season.
You’ll have parents, friends, children, partners, coworkers, neighbors, acquaintances, strangers who briefly become important and important people who eventually become strangers.
But there is exactly one person present for every single second of your life.
You.
You are the only person you can never really leave.
Which makes it kind of strange that we spend so much time learning how to have relationships with everybody else and considerably less time learning how to have one with ourselves.
Alone and Lonely Are Not the Same Thing
We use those words almost interchangeably.
They aren’t.
You can be alone and perfectly content.
You can also be sitting next to somebody you love and feel profoundly lonely.
You can be single and connected.
Married and isolated.
Surrounded by friends and feel unseen.
Home alone on a Saturday night and having the time of your damn life.
Company and connection aren’t the same thing.
And neither are solitude and loneliness.
Loneliness is a feeling.
Being alone is a circumstance.
Sometimes they happen at the same time.
Sometimes they don’t.
And I think confusing the two has made us unnecessarily afraid of being by ourselves.
And that fear doesn’t just shape how we feel about solitude. It shapes how we think a life is supposed to look.
Especially when it comes to romantic relationships.
Why Are You Still Single?
There’s something particularly interesting about the way we talk about singleness.
We tend to treat being partnered as the default destination.
Single people get asked:
Are you seeing anybody?
Have you met someone yet?
Are you putting yourself out there?
And my personal favorite:
Why are you still single?
As though singleness is a technical malfunction somebody should probably come look at.
Meanwhile, we don’t routinely ask married people:
“So why are you still married?”
Imagine asking somebody that over Thanksgiving dinner.
“Well, you’ve been married eleven years now. What’s going on? Have you thought about putting yourself back out there?”
We’d think that was insane.
Because partnership is treated as a satisfactory condition requiring no explanation.
Singleness is treated as a temporary condition we’re expected to justify.
And I’m not sure why.
A Relationship Is One Piece of the Pie
Sometimes we talk about romantic relationships as though they are the thing that makes a life complete.
Find your person.
Settle down.
Get married.
Build a life together.
And those things can absolutely be beautiful.
But I don’t see a romantic relationship as the whole life.
I see it as one piece of the life pie.
A potentially wonderful piece.
But still one piece.
There’s family.
Friendship.
Career.
Purpose.
Creativity.
Community.
Travel.
Money.
Health.
Hobbies.
Learning.
Adventure.
Peace.
Spirituality, for some people.
Whatever else makes your particular life feel like yours.
And none of those things become consolation prizes simply because you don’t have a romantic partner.
You don’t have to spend your single years sitting in the waiting room of your own life.
You can build something.
Learn something.
Go somewhere.
Make money.
Make friends.
Make memories.
Change careers.
Start businesses.
Take yourself to dinner.
Decorate your home exactly how you want it.
Discover what you actually enjoy when nobody else’s preferences have to be considered.
You can build an entire life.
And if romantic love eventually becomes part of it, beautiful.
Add another piece to the pie.
But I don’t think every other part of your life should be treated like filler until somebody shows up.
There are too many ways to create a fulfilling life for one unchecked box to automatically make the whole thing incomplete.
This Isn’t an Argument Against Relationships.
I’m not arguing that relationships don’t matter.
They do.
Love is beautiful.
Partnership can be beautiful.
Friendship matters.
Family matters.
Community matters.
Humans need other humans.
There’s something special about being known by another person.
There’s something special about building a life with somebody.
There’s something special about having people who show up for you and people you get to show up for.
I’m not interested in becoming so independent that nobody is necessary.
I’m interested in being whole enough that somebody else doesn’t have to be responsible for making my life worth living.
There’s a difference.
You can want companionship without treating your current life like an incomplete draft.
You can desire love without believing its absence means something is wrong with you.
You can hope somebody wonderful comes along without putting your entire life on hold until they get there.
Do You Actually Like Yourself?
We talk about loving ourselves all the time.
Self-love.
Self-care.
Confidence.
Affirmations.
Boundaries.
All of it.
But I wonder if there’s a much simpler question underneath all of that:
Do you actually enjoy your own company?
Not:
Do you think you’re attractive?
Not:
Do you believe you deserve good things?
Not:
Can you say nice things about yourself in the mirror?
I mean, do you like hanging out with you?
Can you take yourself somewhere?
Can you sit in silence without immediately needing somebody to fill it?
Do you know what makes you laugh?
Do you know what interests you when nobody else’s preferences are involved?
Do you know what you believe?
What you like?
What you want?
Who you are when there’s nobody else in the room to react to?
Because maybe one of the simplest tests of loving yourself is this:
Do you like spending time with the person you’re supposedly in love with?
Loving Yourself Doesn’t Mean You’ll Never Feel Lonely
And this is where I think some conversations about self-love go too far.
You can know yourself deeply and still get lonely.
You can love your own company and still wish somebody were sitting beside you.
You can be perfectly capable of taking yourself to dinner and still want somebody across the table.
You can have friends, family, hobbies, money, purpose, and a life you genuinely enjoy and still desire romantic love.
That doesn’t mean your relationship with yourself has failed.
It means you’re human.
Knowing yourself doesn’t eliminate the desire for connection.
It just means loneliness doesn’t automatically make you afraid of your own company.
There’s a difference between:
I wish somebody were here.
And:
I cannot stand being here with myself.
One is longing for connection.
The other might be telling you something about the relationship you have with the one person who isn’t going anywhere.
The One Person Who Stays
People will come into your life.
I hope some wonderful ones stay.
I hope you love people deeply.
I hope you’re loved deeply in return.
I hope you experience friendship, romance, family, community, and all the beautiful things that happen when human beings find one another.
But through every version of that life, there will still be you.
When the room is full.
When the room is empty.
When you’re partnered.
When you’re single.
When somebody chooses you.
When somebody doesn’t.
When somebody arrives.
When somebody leaves.
You remain.
So maybe being comfortable alone isn’t preparation for a life without other people.
Maybe it’s preparation for a life in which your relationship with yourself isn’t dependent on whether somebody else happens to be standing beside you.
The goal isn’t to never feel lonely.
The goal isn’t to never need anybody.
And it certainly isn’t to convince yourself that romantic love doesn’t matter if romantic love is something you want.
Maybe the goal is simply to build a life that is already worth living.
A life with enough pieces that no single one has to carry the weight of making the whole thing meaningful.
And a relationship with yourself strong enough that when you are alone, you are still in good company.
Because when everybody else has left the room, there is one person who will still be there.
You.
And since you’re the one person you’re guaranteed to spend your entire life with,
you might as well make sure you enjoy your company.
tianicolespeaks 
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