Happily Single

A long time ago, I stumbled upon this post in the Frisky, about being a happy single girl. I've been single for about a year and nine months now (I'm not counting friends with benefits), but I spent most of that time desperately wanting to be in a relationship again. Even while knowing that the only way I'd be able to be in a happy relationship again would be to first be happy with being single.

I've mostly been bitter and unhappy about my singledom, but I think I'm finally moving towards a healthier state of mind. I feel content with being single, and am even embracing that status instead of resenting it. So I decided to make a list of my own reasons for why the single life is sometimes the good life:

• Owning myself.When I had significant others, I tended to think incessantly about behaving in ways that pleased them and made them happy. Significant others always have a certain amount of say concerning you, what you do with your time, what you do with your appearance... For once I'm free to do whatever I want to do, whenever I feel like it, without someone else having a say in it. And I don't have to think about anybody else's needs except my own; I can dedicate all my attention to myself and my own growth.
• Not being an "accessory". You know how there's always one person in a circle of friends who's known purely as "so-and-so's girlfriend/boyfriend"? I used to be that person. I think it has something to do with my tendency to like people who are way more charismatic, sociable and louder than I am. While I was dating my first boyfriend, he'd be very animated and charming while I'd fade into the background in the classic wallflower fashion. I often felt like his accessory or shadow, and that definitely isn't the case now. Yeah, I'm still a wallflower, but I'm not known as merely the counterpart to somebody else, and that's great.

• Friendship. When you start going out with someone, you inevitably cut down the time you spend on other things, and that's including friends. When I was dating, I always felt slightly troubled by how my relationship would encroach on my time to socialize, make new friends, and spend time with the close friends I already had. Since I got back to college, I've been spending lots of quality girly bonding time with S and F, and it's been awesome. I've also become more appreciative of my friends and how much they care for me and the nice, sweet things they do for me... you definitely don't need a significant other in order to feel loved.

• Looking Beautiful. Being single hasn't stopped me from taking the time to dress up and look fabulous, as you well know Dressing up has almost taken on a new meaning for me because I'm doing it for myself, and not to impress someone else. I'm doing it because it makes me feel good. I'm doing it to express myself and show the world who I am.

• Facebook. This may seem piddling to some of you, but instead of setting my relationship status to "in a relationship" on my profile at Facebook.com, I can set it to "married" or "in a relationship" with any of my close friends who want to be "married" to me Right now I'm apparently in a complicated relationship with F. An added plus is that some people actually believed as much, which allowed us to mindfuck with them quite a bit...
• Flirting. Simply put, I'm just a lot more open to playful flirting. Flirting that might not even lead anywhere beyond an enjoyable dance at a party; that won't give me anything except vague excitement and the sense of being paid attention to.

• Sex and exploration. Is it surprising that I've explored my sexuality much more as a single girl than I ever did while I was in a relationship? While single I've been able to experiment with being with multiple partners at a time, played with toys, become actively queer and even dabbled my toes in the BDSM pond. And I want to do more of all of that I do like knowing that I'm free to express my interest in people I find hot, even though most of the time I'm too shy to actually do so. And while I was with my friends-with-benefits, I liked knowing that I didn't have to sacrifice what I had with them when I found someone else I was interested in. Granted, there is such a thing as open relationships, but so far the people I dated weren't open to that...

• More time for life. Besides exploring my sexuality, I've been able to explore and reflect on myself. I've been traveling, keeping busy with work and projects that I care about. This term for example I'm taking three classes in culture/media/writing that I absolutely love, and I'm working two editorial internships - one of which I basically have free reign to create a newsletter from scratch, and I'm very excited about that. I'm looking for editoral/media internships here or in the UK, and I'm very much looking forward to that too. Well, not the jobsearch process, because that sucks, but the actual experience of living and working on my own

Well, there you go. I can't say I'm fully "there" yet - I still get angry and jealous sometimes, I still miss the cuddling and intimacy that comes from being in a relationship, which I think is pretty natural. But I hope that eventually I'll be able to smile and say that I'm single, and proud of it.

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