When you’re a single woman, everyone wants to give you advice. We haven’t found love, so those who have feel like they’re experts, even though they were in our shoes not that long ago and probably will be again at some point. It’s nice that the people who love us want to help, but when you’re single AF, you get really sick of hearing platitudes mean nothing, like that we’re bound to find the right guy eventually. How do they know? And that’s not even the worst of the cliches thrown our way — we hear these ones way too often, as well:
- “There are plenty of fish in the sea.” Are there? Well, then where have all the good ones gone? Thanks for reminding us that there are still other single men out there, but we know that already. There might be a lot of fish in the sea, but most of those fish aren’t worth the bait. If you really want to make us feel better, find a way to sort the good fish from the bad. That’s a bit easier said than done, right?
- “I knew he wasn’t right for you.” Seriously? Why didn’t you tell us of our oblivion to his jerk status while we were still dating the loser? Instead, you just let us fall deeper and deeper in love with him until it was too late. Next time, don’t keep this little tidbit to yourself. Maybe then you could save us some heartbreak.
- “You just have to meet the right guy.” Keep saying it like it’s the easiest thing in the world to do — that really helps. We know that every guy we’ve dated so far was the wrong guy, but how are we supposed to know they’re wrong for us at first glance? Saying we need to meet the “right” guy is pretty obvious, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen tomorrow.
- “Focus on the good in your life.” We get it — we have things to be grateful for and there are plenty of people way worse off than us single ladies. That doesn’t mean we don’t have the right to complain about it every now and then. We won’t chat your ear off every damn day, but making us feel bad when we already feel like crap about being alone is just kicking us when we’re down.
- “You’ll find love when you least expect it.” Thanks for this sage advice — it really helps in absolutely no way. These are the same people that tell us we’ll find love when we stop looking and then turn around and say we need to put ourselves out there more. Which is it? Should we look for love or let it comes to us? Most of us have tried both, and — surprise, surprise! — we’re still single AF.
- “This is your time to be selfish.” Have you ever thought about the idea that maybe we don’t want to be selfish? You think we should take this time to work on ourselves, but maybe we like ourselves just the way we are. We don’t want to be selfish anymore. The single life is all about us, but we want more than that. We want to share our lives, and that’s why we want relationships.
- “Enjoy your freedom while it lasts.” We’re independent women and that’s great, but we’re smart enough to know that freedom doesn’t just disappear the second we enter a relationship — not if it’s a good and healthy relationship. We’re not interested in the type of love where our lives become entirely about the other person. We want relationships, but we’ll still be independent when we have them. We’re not naïve enough to think that relationship girls don’t have freedom too.
- “I miss the single life.” Your jealousy doesn’t make me feel any better. If you really miss the single life, you have the option to go back to it. If you can’t appreciate the guy you’re with, then send him back to the fishies. All of us single women would love to scoop up the good men you’d rather be without.
- “Maybe you should just be single for a while.” Um, isn’t that kind of what we’ve been doing? This is everyone’s advice when a woman’s dating life just isn’t going in her favor. We’ve been single. We’ve focused on ourselves, but how long do we need to do that? This isn’t advice. It’s reality, because until we all meet good men single is exactly what we’ll be.
