How To Stop Hating Your Single Life

If you hate being single, it sucks, I get. But if you love your single life, well, this isn’t for you.

When you speak to someone about your single life, when you’re looking for a sympathetic ear for your situation, sometimes you don’t get it. And, when you’re about to lose all hope in humanity, you’re met with advice that doesn’t help.

“Just get over it.”

“Learn to live with your situation.”

“It’s not the end of the world.”

Yeah, thanks, but that isn’t going to help you. And it sure invalidates what you’re feeling.

I’ve heard it all before, too. Some years ago I broke up with my ex, and despite instigating the split, I was hating life. I couldn’t handle how different my life was or how potent the loneliness was to my happiness.

And the more people told me to get over it, the worse the hatred for my single status become.

Let’s be real here. You can’t stop hating your single life in an instant. It takes time, patience, and a willingness to embrace your single situation.

Here are practical methods and ways of thinking to make that adjustment a little easier.

Quit complaining

Complaining isn’t anyone’s friend.

No, we’re not talking about healthy communication about your situation. Or productive therapy, where you talk about your situation, with health professionals.

We’re talking about whingeing, non-stop, unproductive venting about your situation.

It’s not that people don’t care about your single life. When they tell you to quit complaining, it’s because you’ve hit your complaining threshold. They’ve run out of patience for your situation, in the same way, you run out of patience for their situations (even if it has nothing to do with their romantic relationships).

We need to remember how contentious complaining is. Even if we have a valid point, we’re conditioned to admonish and reject complaining as socially acceptable.

But let’s forget other people. This is about you.

Complaining won’t solve your problems. No matter how loud or persistent you are in your complaint, it won’t change your single status, or how you feel about it.

It’s an exercise in futility. A waste of time.

Forget sympathy

I realized, during the time I was hating my single life, a stark fact about the people in my life. They didn’t care that I was single or my subsequence loathing for it.

I liked that they didn’t care I was single. It was good to know they loved me, no matter my marital status. But realizing they didn’t care about how much I hated it, quite frankly, sucked.

Here’s what I learned about that; whether you think this or not, people believe you’re single by choice. And if you’re there by choice, you don’t deserve sympathy for being miserable about it.

It’s a warped way of looking at things, especially considering we can’t 100% control our dating life. But that’s human beings for you. They think things about us that aren’t true.

I couldn’t change people’s minds on the topic. That would be another waste of time. I learned to accept this was how other people perceived my situation and curtailed my expectations.

I knew straight away that the much-needed sympathy I craved for my situation would never eventuate.

If you need sympathy to feel happy about being single, you’ll be waiting a long time, I’m sorry to say.

Channel your energy elsewhere

There is nothing like a healthy distraction in these circumstances. And I stress; healthy.

Part of hating your single life comes from the constant reminder that you’re single. If you’ve recently endured a break-up, which is when I hated my single life the most, everything reminds you you’re alone.

I decided during the height of my loathing, I would throw myself into my studies and work. This worked perfectly. Not only did I ace my subjects at university and earn more commission in my retail job, but I also cared less that I was single. Being single didn’t even matter anymore.

It helped me find a new perspective on life. It helped me see how good life could be without a person by my side.

Sometimes we need to change the scenery, and change our focus and priorities in order to adjust and better accept our situation. It’s not about finding a distraction that doesn’t help us deal with our emotions. It’s more about channeling our frustrations into positive and productive behaviors.

Set solo goals

When you’re in a partnership, we tend to make life goals as a couple. We plan on:

• Buying a house, together.
• Having kids, together.
• Planning a holiday — An insignificant life goal in comparison but we still plan these as a couple.

And then suddenly you’re single and you wonder how you’re going to reach those life goals, or any life goals, on your own.

That feeling is completely normal, by the way. It’s part of hating your single life. You don’t quite know how to get from A to B without the person beside you.

You don’t have to ditch your goals, but it’s best to reset them to solo goals. Whilst you’re at it, set some goals that are for you, and that require only you to complete them. It helps that mindset shift we were talking about.

Once you reach one of those goals, the idea of missing a partner in your life should dissipate.

Stop hanging out with single people like you

Ok, so you don’t have to ditch all your single friends.

But you could see this as a way of thinking about things differently during this short-lived time of your life.

Hate breeds hate.

If you’re hanging with single people who also hate their single life, you tend to encourage the cycle.

It’s nice to think maybe you could work on the problem together and help each other find a way of loving your single life again.

But in reality, most people tend to hold each other back. Misery loves company and all that.

If you can be of support to each other, that’s great. However, if you feel the toxic mindset breeds around other people, keep your distance until you feel better about it.

A little self perseveration never hurts.

Stop defining yourself by your marital status

I hate labels. In this situation, I hate them the most.

But as we get older, we rely on them more than we admit. And when we’re single, we can obsess over them. Or, if we’re unlucky, other people do it for us.

I would like to think we’ve moved past the times where your relationship status was a label worth noting. I often think we moved on past separating the singles from the couples. People are just people.

And then someone comes into your life and spoils that idea, introducing you to their new partner, for example, as their “single friend”.

We need to stop the cycle. If we’re to move past this, we need to stop representing ourselves as a ‘single person’ and let this define who we are.

You can do this by:

• Avoid introducing yourself as single.
• Avoid other people defining you as a single person.
• Remind people how little your dating status has to do with who you are.

It’s not that being single is something you should hide. Instead, it’s a constant reminder of a situation you can’t stand.

It won’t help you move on with people constantly talking about it.

Stop listening to people who say the coupled life is better

I love my married life. I also loved my single life. But my aim in life has never been to enjoy my life based on whether I’m with someone or not. My aim is to love life.

When people ask me if I prefer married/taken life to single life, I say the same thing. They are all just life.

I wholeheartedly believe that, too. No situation is better, more enjoyable or worthy than the other.

Some people won’t share my opinion on this. They will fight tooth and nail to convince you the coupled life is better.

They can pull out every pro and con in the book, but it won’t help your path to happiness.

Stay away from people who taint your already clear and honest view of the world. They do more harm than good.