I Love Being Single and Here’s Why You Should Too

The following is adapted from A Single Revolution by Shani Silver.

We don’t have to hate this. We don’t have to hate being single. Has anyone ever told you that’s allowed? Being single doesn’t have to be a thing we fear, despise, or have shame about. It’s possible to love this single life, to arrive at a place in your mind and heart where you value it so much that you refuse to give it up for anyone unworthy of you. I know it’s scary to think about loving being single, because of the negative repercussions we’ve been led to believe come with it. The good news is, they’re all nonsense. The negative narratives and limiting thoughts we have around singlehood can be rewritten, and you’re already reading the book that’s going to help you.

Don’t be afraid to love being single. It doesn’t mean you’ll be single forever.

You know what being unhappily single feels like: the wanting, the searching, the dismissal, the rejection, the confusion, the exhaustion, the unfairness, the loneliness, the shame, the longing, the jealousy, the sadness, the nothing. The misery of being single — and the knowledge that it will all go away, and everything will be better, when you find a partner. And then you can’t find a partner. No matter what you try, for how long you try it, you can’t find someone. For months, years, or decades. I guess the most helpful thing for me to say from the start is that you’re not alone.

I’m Shani Silver, I’m thirty-nine years old, and I’ve been single for thirteen years. I’m going to teach you how to not wince at that. I’ve been writing, podcasting, and building a community of single women for a long time. I’m in this world, and I know how it feels. I know how low being single can bring us, and what it’s like to be willing to do anything to escape the shame of singlehood. I also know what it feels like when anything still doesn’t work.

There’s a way to feel better about being single that doesn’t require anything other than you — just as you are. Not after you “work on yourself,” or “learn to love yourself.” Right now. For extra grins, you should also know that being single isn’t actually bad.

Society is Wrong About Being Single

How do we talk about singlehood? What are the words we associate with this time in our lives? I think of wrong, bad, flawed, sad, pathetic, and desperate, for a start. That’s how we’ve heard singlehood discussed and depicted. “Single” itself is a negative term, one so baked into our society as indicating lack that those experiencing singlehood believe there’s no other way to see it. Singlehood is an assumed negative in need of repair via a relationship. It’s so easy to casually accept society’s view of singlehood and essentially never give it a second thought — or an original thought. In our society, the default state of single is wrong.

I hope it comforts you to know that there is most definitely another way to see singlehood, and another way to live it. I live happily single every day, while still wanting a relationship and looking forward to one. At the same time, I also don’t feel so compelled to find a relationship that I make myself miserable with the search. It is possible to breathe, to let go, and to relax. If you’re ready to stop being unhappy just because you’re single, you’ve come to the right place.

This will all sound new, different, and maybe uncomfortable at first. It’s okay if it takes time and practice to change the way you think and feel about being single. This doesn’t have to be an instant, overnight thing. Whatever pace you’re on is perfect. It took me a decade, trust me — you’re already doing great.

I’m not going to tell you my dating and singlehood horror stories, because you’ve already heard them. You’ve already lived them. They’re not entertainment. They’re not dinner party conversation. They’re tiny traumas that add up over time, and we don’t deserve them. We have so much more to talk about than the terrible things that happen in the dating world, but for some reason, singles as a community never really talk about anything other than dating. So I’m in a bit of a rush to get started.

Imagine the deepest, darkest pit of singlehood despair, and then imagine living there for a decade. That was me. When I say I understand, when I say I sincerely needed to hear everything I’m about to tell you, please believe that I’ve been through it — because I believe you.

If you’re a single woman of any age, but especially over thirty, on one side, there’s societal single shaming, and on the other, there’s an exhausting, belittling, and punishing dating culture. Single women are stuck in the middle. That is, quite frankly, fucked up.

Single women are not less. We are not lower status or class. We have the same value as any human being currently coupled. But the world tells us something different, every day, so we feel low. We come to understand that the only way out of singlehood unhappiness is finding a partner. But what if it’s not?

For ten years, I hated every waking moment of my single, swiping life, until it exhausted me to the cliff’s edge of madness. Instead of losing it, I decided to change my mind. I decided to find a way out of single misery that didn’t involve finding a boyfriend. I found it, and I’m bringing single women with me, because swiping isn’t working for us — but this is.

Removing the shame and stigma of singlehood for yourself is thoroughly life-changing. When we love our single lives, we stop exhausting ourselves by treating every waking moment as an opportunity to find a relationship. We stop staying in relationships that aren’t working, because singlehood is no longer something that sounds worse. We stop feeling crushed when a “match” or a first date doesn’t turn into more, because we’re not hanging every hope we have on them. We don’t force ourselves to have feelings for people we feel nothing for, because we don’t have to. We set ourselves free in countless ways, and we begin to live a life unburdened by the negative narratives of singlehood.

We as singles can debunk the bullshit, reframe the reality, and see the value in our singlehood before it’s gone. That is possible, and that is allowed.

Give Yourself Permission to Live Fully

I’m often asked for my “lightbulb moment,” the second I knew I wanted to change the way I thought and felt about being single, as if a switch flipped and suddenly everything changed. In reality, it wasn’t just one moment — it was a series of moments that took time to come together into a completely changed way of looking at single life. If you want to know the first time I ever considered that feeling better was possible, imagine this:

I was visiting home in Fort Worth, Texas, sitting in the backseat of my mother’s SUV. We were running pre-Thanksgiving errands. There’s nothing like sitting in the backseat as a thirty-something to spark contemplation of your entire life. At that point, I’d been dating to zero avail for six or seven years at least, and I was in a pretty low place mentally and emotionally. Squished in between the dry cleaning and the bulk artichoke dip from Costco, a thought rose up in my brain like a weather balloon.

“You don’t have to find someone for your life to start.”

There it was: permission. Permission to live fully, to live real. I’d never had that before. Until that moment, I never thought I was a valid adult, because I was single, and therefore missing a key component of adulthood — a relationship. It would take several more years and several more lightbulbs, but I got there. I changed my perspective, and I found a life I love without having to find someone else first.

For more advice on being comfortable with being single, you can find A Single Revolution on Amazon.

Shani Silver is an author and podcaster from Fort Worth, Texas. Her name is pronounced like “rainy” with a “sh.” In April of 2019, she launched A Single Serving Podcast to change the narrative around being single and to help single women shed both societal shame and a digital dating dependency. Shani wants single women to know that it’s possible to feel free and optimistic about singlehood. To love single life and desire a relationship at the same time. After thirteen years single and three years dating app free, she’s living proof.