I’d Rather Not Love Again and Stay Forever Single
Let Love Be Your Teacher When It Feels Like A Curse
Since my last relationship last year, I’ve felt completely disinterested in the prospect of dating again.
I’m on the dating apps, but each time I match with someone, I think to myself, “Do I really want to do this again?” and the answer is always no.
Why risk my sanity and my sense of independence for another relationship or half-baked situationship?
Why take the time getting to know someone else if it will just end like the rest did?
Why put myself out there when I can stay in my comfort zone alone?
The prospect of love right now feels like throwing myself into a fire, and I’d rather extinguish any flame before it catches.
When you have a history of relationships that have left you feeling broken, rejected and unworthy, this can often become our mindset.
After my father died when I was 4, I watched my mum go through many insecure and dysfunctional relationships until she gave up on the prospect of experiencing love again.
I wonder if I’ll follow in her footsteps , only without the happy marriage she had with my father before he passed.
Love-Avoidance and Feeling Jaded
Following the end of a relationship, there is a lot that needs processing, and it’s important that we take this time to mend and tend to our sense of self.
If you’re someone who is prone to self-blame and regret, it’s easy here to judge ourselves and allow love to jade us:
If you were rejected, you take this to mean you are unworthy.
If you made a mistake, or if love made you uncomfortable, you take this to mean you can’t sustain love.
If you fell in love with someone who mistreated you, you take this to mean the same will happen again.
These judgments weigh on our consciousness and devalue our sense of self.
They feed fear and shame, and after a time, we decide to give up on love completely.
We might claim it’s better to be independent, but how much of it is true, full-hearted independence, and how much of it is just love avoidance?
To avoid love because we believe ourselves unworthy is to move through life in the shadows, thinking back to the love we couldn’t hold and the times we suffered — or made others suffer — in fear of it happening again.
Being single with this mindset isn’t fulfilling or satisfying. It’s painful and isolating.
Allowing Love To Be Your Teacher
I can’t say I’ve been happy this past year. I’ve spent most of it mulling over and cursing myself for the failures of my last relationship.
I haven’t grown because of this; I’ve contracted and doubled down on my limiting beliefs.
And I’m not writing this article to say you need to go out and find another relationship. I know I need to do some work on myself, and maybe being single is exactly what you need right now.
But how is your alone time being spent?
How are you thinking about and processing your past relationships?
This is what matters.
Use this time to dismantle your limiting beliefs.
Use this time to practice self-acceptance. We all make mistakes; it’s part of being human.
Use this time to find happiness in your life, where previously you looked for it in others.
Use this time to accept the parts of you that you hoped someone else would accept before you were rejected.
Use this time to nourish platonic relationships, explore new hobbies, and try new things.
Supposed failures in love are only failures if we see them as that. When we do, they jade us.
When we begin to see love as a source of growth, and not a mirror to our unworthiness, we open a Pandora’s box of possibilities for our future.
When love comes again — which it undoubtedly will — we’ll be ready for it.