It usually takes about a year of being single to feel comfortable living this way. When you reach this point, though, it’s seriously awesome. You learn to enjoy the small and big moments in your life, you forget the timeline about when you’re supposed to meet your perfect partner, and you become actually happy. Here are some of the awesome things you learn when you’ve been single for an entire trip around the sun:
- You would be okay if you never met “The One.” You still want to be in love again and hope that there’s someone out there who you can share your life with. At this point, though, if you never met the right guy, that would honestly be just fine with you. It only took being single for a long time to figure that out. After all, you’ve survived this long and you’re happier than you ever thought you’d be.
- You need to go on fewer dates, not more, if you want to find love. At first, it’s really tempting to schedule as many first dates as you possibly can. You have your mom’s or BFF’s voice in your head telling you that “dating is a numbers game.” Then you realize that when you go on a ton of dates, you go on a ton of horrible dates that make you want to die. After being single for so long, you realize that once you start looking for quality guys, you just might be successful.
- You’ve changed more than you realize. This could be something as small as realizing that you’re more open-minded about your type or as big as realizing that everything you thought you wanted in a guy and a relationship is totally wrong. This is totally inevitable since you’ve had so much alone time to think about what you want. Don’t be so stubborn that you don’t honor these changes.
- You can hate being single and still have bad dating luck. It would seem like these two things wouldn’t go together, right? In a perfect universe, you would meet the right guy as soon as the newness wore off of the whole single girl lifestyle. Unfortunately, that almost never happens. You’re going to have a few more awful dates before you finally get lucky, and that’s actually okay.
- You will start to love your journey. It’s impossible not to compare yourself to your best friend, who met her boyfriend in college and is now happily married. The longer you’re single, especially after you hit the year mark, the more you begin to love your personal journey. You just know that those crappy dates are going to turn into something amazing sometime soon.
- You figure out how to control what you can. While there’s a certain element of fate and destiny involved in finding love, there are still things that you can control. If you never meet guys in your everyday life, it would probably be a good idea to ask your friends if they know anyone single…. or to head online. Whenever you start seeing someone new, you figure out that you can only control so much, and when things don’t work out, you’re not totally devastated.
- You realize that most people settle in some way. It sounds depressing, but in some ways, it’s just common sense. If you wait to meet a guy who matches up with every quality on your list, you’re going to be waiting forever. You’re going to have to settle on some aspects, although it’s up to you how much you’re prepared to deal with. This doesn’t mean that you have to date someone you feel absolutely nothing for — it just means that you have to be more open-minded about the type of person you’re looking for.
- You let go of all your dating regrets. You finally understand that all those almost relationships could never have been anything more. You don’t wonder “What if?” about all the first dates that never turned into second ones. And you definitely don’t regret getting ghosted and even doing the ghosting yourself. This is an awesome state of mind to find yourself in, and it generally hits around the one-year mark.
- You’re more excited than anxious about the future. You’re excited about the possibility of being in the right relationship because you’re not bitter and you still think that love exists. Even if that takes forever to happen, you’ve crafted a life for yourself that makes you happy no matter what your relationship status may be. You probably never thought you would be here, and yet here you are.
- You realize you’re whole all on your own. You’ve always prided yourself on your independence and self-sufficiency, but being single long-term has made you realize just how amazing you are all on your own, no guy required.
