If You’re Single And Want To Feel Better About It, Stop Making This Mistake Every Weekend
The harsh truth about being single.
Kampus Production | Canva If you want to learn how to enjoy being single, you need to stop making this mistake when you're feeling lonely. And yes, it involves dating apps.
Being single can be very hard to deal with, but when you're wrapped up in your emotions and loneliness, it's easy to make mistakes that make you feel worse about your relationship status.
You’ll love me or you’ll hate me by the time you’re done reading this, but you’ll know one thing for sure — you’ll have just read a truth that you may not have considered before. I say this because it took me quite some time to figure it out, and I’m trying to save you some of that same time and pain that I endured to get here.
Being single is not easy. That’s not the truth I’m bringing you today, that is obvious. Our friends may have already gotten married, may still be married, or have found the new loves of their lives.
And, here we are, staring Thursday night down again. I don’t know why Thursday has become the trigger for our behavior, but I know that you know what I’m talking about. We pick up our phones, start scrolling through our dating apps, and feverishly check social media to see what we are going to do this Saturday night.
Maybe because we’re getting close to the weekend again. Or, because Thursday has become the new Friday for those who like to start their weekends early. Something in us snaps, and we’re determined to do something about it. Not this time. Not this week. Not again. We’re just so sick of that feeling. We want to see something finally change in our lives. Being single is not easy.
So, we jump into our dating apps and swipe right on lots of people. And, we message people that maybe we didn’t like that much the first time. Or, the dreaded, awful, and most regretted single move of all time — we text the last person we dated to say, “…what’s up.” Ugh. I cringe just thinking about it.
Here’s the truth of the matter — you probably will enjoy yourself on a Saturday night if you scramble and make some type of last-minute plans. Your goal was not to be alone, and you accomplished that. The problem? Saturday night always ends.
I have woken up many a Sunday morning feeling just as empty, just as “not in a relationship,” as if I had been alone anyway. Only I woke up feeling this way, plus, I had regrets for my actions the night before. Now, I felt 100 times worse.
Do you see where I’m going with this? Taking desperate measures on Friday only fixes your problem for Saturday. And, it doesn’t fix your problem at all. It creates new problems that you have to start dealing with first thing on Sunday.
You need to ask yourself if it’s worth it to you or not. I started doing that, and I learned that it was not. One night, in exchange for all of those days ahead, of living with something I did so I would not have to be alone on a Saturday night. There just wasn’t anyone or anything, that was worth that Sunday morning, horrifying, “what have I done,” feeling.
Susan Sparks is an author, journalist, advocate, entrepreneur, survivor of domestic abuse, and the founder of TheSoda-Pop, a website where people can go for domestic violence help and education, and to find a community of others who share the same story.