The key to happiness is something that pretty much anyone with a beating heart would like to obtain, but if it was as easy as just a thing you could find with the right directions, we would all be ecstatic, all day, all the time. In reality, it takes a little more than a fun game of hide and seek.
Being happy is a personal feeling, that means different things for different people. And for some, being both single and happy can feel like a mountain they will never be able to climb.
Some people enjoy being in relationships, sharing their lives with someone and as a couple. Others enjoy being single, cherishing their freedom, and meeting different partners. Within these two scenarios, happiness has a place depending on the individual, their desires, and their personal experience.
That being said, coming out of any relationship, long or short term, can be difficult. But it does not mean that happiness is unattainable when you are single. Far from it in fact: it just looks different.
So here are five tips that might help you to be both single and happy.
1. Get to Know Yourself
Being single and spending time with yourself doesn’t have to be the worst thing you do in a day. Whether you’re just getting out of a long-term relationship or you’ve been single for a while, this is a great time to get to know yourself a little better. When you’re in a relationship, you’re spending time getting to know another person, learning their habits, likes and dislikes etc.
But you’re also always in a relationship with yourself: And what better way there is to eventually find something or someone that makes you truly happy then by first discovering what makes you smile when you’re by yourself? Being single also allows you to review past relationships, and consider which experiences left you feeling like your best self. Figuring that out can get you a whole lot closer to getting to know who you really are.
2. Choose Your Own Adventure
OK, so it’s undisputed that the upside to being in a relationship is having someone to do things with, which is fine if you both like exactly the same activities, but that’s not always the case. And when you’re single, you don’t have to compromise on activities; on the knitting you like to do in the morning, or the TV shows you like to watch in the evening.
Maybe you’ve always wanted to go on a murder mystery tour but were never with a partner who wanted to do the same? Now you can! The world is literally your oyster (finances willing), and you don’t have to confer with anyone else but yourself about what activity you want to do next.
3. Meet New People
Being single doesn’t mean that you need to spend all your time alone. It’s a great time to date. In fact, it’s encouraged. Dating is an activity all its own – kind of halfway between beginning to be in a relationship and just making friends.
If you’re not looking for anything romantic and you just want to widen your social circle, then you can do that too. Try joining group activities you enjoy, whether that’s a sport in the weekend, a creative activity, or even just a weekly salsa class — where there are things to do there will be people! Even better, you’ll find people with at least one common interest with you, if you meet them doing the things that you already enjoy doing.
4. Spend More Time with Your Friends
Sometimes, relationships can be all-consuming of time and energy. We’ve all done it – met someone new and spent the entire honeymoon period with that one person, sometimes having less time for friends and the things we used to do before we got into a relationship. So in some ways, the beauty of being single is returning to your friends and kickstarting your social life again!
What’s better than having a drink and a giggle with that familiar group of friends, sharing inside jokes and laughing harder than you have in a long, long time? A lot of the time being single means being more available, and even ready to be a friend’s plus one when neither of you can be bothered to go through the rigmarole of finding a date!
5. Have a Think about What You Want
This one seems vague but can be somewhat life-changing. So maybe you’ve had a series of relationships, brief or long, and you’re looking back on your choices of romantic partners. Now is the time to assess what worked and what didn’t. What do you want the future to look like now? Are you ready to enter into another relationship? Or would you prefer to spend some more time being single, finding things out about yourself, and fostering the most important relationship in your life – the one you have with yourself?
When you’re single, you have a lot of time to reflect on your experiences, on your mistakes, on the lessons you’ve learned, and then hopefully, what you want to do next eventually. Perhaps, you don’t know yet, and are no closer to figuring it out. And that’s oh-kay. You’re free and you’re not beholden to anyone else’s time but your own. Savour it, before you take that next step, whatever it might be.
Being single and happy are by no means mutually exclusive concepts. In fact, they go hand in hand, but there is no one way to do them. So here are five ways, though there are probably five hundred more. The point is, you need to discover what makes you most happy, how to enjoy your singledom, and then go on from there. You might stumble along the way, you might find at times that you don’t enjoy it, and those are the times that you need to be the most patient with yourself.
Being single and happy is possible, achievable, and a journey that is entirely your own.
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