“I'm perfectly happy alone.”
That is the story that I hear as a dating and relationship coach from men all the time.
I'm perfectly happy and alone.
I love my life.
I love being single.
I love to travel.
I love my friends.
I love my pets.
I love my freedom.
I love not being accountable to anybody.
I love my work and my hobbies and my passions.
By the way, I'm not going to tell you that you don't love any of those things.
What I will do right now is call complete bullshit on the idea that you'd rather be
alone than in love.
Now, this is something that's permeated the culture for a long period of time.
And this idea that it's better to be alone or better to not admit that you have feelings
or longings for the idea of ideas of partnership.
And the problem is, you're not just lying to your friends about how much you want to
be in love.
You're lying to yourself.
You're convincing yourself that you'd be happier alone for the rest of your life than to be
loved and cherished and taken care of.
We've got to put an end to that right now, because you're really capping your own happiness
in life.
Fact is, longitudinal studies have shown since Harvard did a longitudinal study that lasted
for 84 years.
You could Google it.
It's true.
Happiness is love.
Full stop.
That was their conclusion.
I could cite a study that talks about how happily married couples are the happiest people
in the world, people who report that they are very happy.
Twice as many people who are married report that they are very happy than single people.
So we're not even talking about something that's debatable.
All you have to do is ask yourself if you looked at the situation and said, hey, am
I perfectly content being alone for the rest of my life?
Going out to dinner by myself?
Traveling by myself?
Going to sleep by myself?
Eating by myself?
Having no one to talk to at the end of a hard day?
Someone to pick me up, right?
I don't know anybody who thinks that's the pinnacle of what there is.
So how did we get here?
Well, the answer is actually pretty simple.
If you have had a series of terrible relationships or dissatisfying relationships or just disappointing
relationships, relationships that ended, relationships where you felt unseen, relationships where
you felt unheard, relationships where you were abused or neglected or criticized or
insulted.
That describes relationships to you.
If relationships equal pain to you, then you've drawn a conclusion.
Well, I'd rather be alone than being in a relationship, and that's perfectly logical.
Of course you'd rather be alone than in a relationship if relationships equal pain.
But what I'm trying to suggest is that just because your history has been relationships
equal pain doesn't mean that defines relationships, doesn't mean it defines marriage.
Not at all.
And that's like saying I'd rather be homeless than be in a house that has a leaky roof from
time to time.
That's not true.
No one would say that I would rather be unemployed than have a job.
That's not true.
You'd rather be unemployed for a brief period of time than to have a job that you hate.
But under the idea that you're eventually going to get a job that you like a lot better.
That's a really better comparison.
So when we tell ourselves this story that I don't want to be in a relationship that
is born out of fear, that is borne out of pain, that is not borne out of abundance or
possibility of what's out there.
I talk to any happily married couple and if you don't know any, you should probably get
to know some.
We exist.
Again, I want to acknowledge what's wrong with this picture and.
Lots of people are in bad relationships.
I've read a statistic that two thirds of people in marriages are not happy.
Let's say that's true.
That just means that those people either shouldn't have been married or should be divorced.
That says nothing about the nature of marriage itself.
That's someone who made a bad decision and just doubled down on a bad decision.
All right.
And then after that bad decision, they've come to this conclusion that, oh, marriage
is terrible.
Over 50% of women who get divorced don't want to get remarried again.
Two thirds of divorces are initiated by women because a lot of men are terrible partners.
So then we become this false conclusion.
I don't want to be married again.
Here's how we're going to get through that.
And let's say I'm going to play God for a second.
I can make anything happen.
I'm going to send you a man.
And that man and guarantee is going to make you happy for the rest of your life.
To have to hold, sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, till death do you part.
This guy is going to be the rock of your life.
The foundation upon which you build.
Everything is going to be by your side.
You're going to grow old together.
Going to be that cute little couple in the park.
Going to be holding hands.
You're going to die peacefully in your sleep when you're in your nineties.
That's your husband.
And I just gave him to you.
Do you turn that down?
Is there anybody in the world who wouldn't want that?
And there's probably a couple of people in the world.
That's not the point.
That's the exception rather than the rule.
But if I could really say you could have that, would you rather say, nope, I would rather
be alone?
No, you can't.
So if that's a possibility and you're anchoring yourself here, we have to talk.
We have to get past that because you're limiting your life.
I wrote something once upon a time.
I'll do it for you here.
It's a really simple visual.
If you're unhappy being single, well, that's what's challenging.
Yes you should be happy with your single life.
You should fill it up with things that you love and people you love and stuff that gives
you meaning and purpose outside of a relationship.
That's true.
So there's unhappily single and then there's unhappy in a relationship, unhappily married,
unhappily dating.
Right.
That's down here.
These are the states that we don't want to be in.
So then you get out of your bad relationship.
And now where do you go?
You're here.
You're happily single.
You built a life that you're proud of.
You do enjoy your independence, freedom,hobbies, passions, work, pets and travel.
And that's better than this.
That's right.
Right.
But what's up here?
This is happily married.
This is happy in a relationship.
So you're kind of just reaching your ceiling when you say I'm fine being alone.
You love it in comparison to being in a miserable relationship.
You don't love it in comparison to having someone who makes you breakfast on Sunday
morning.
Who gives you toe curling orgasms.
You don't love it in comparison with having a guy to snuggle with every night or to make
you laugh or to be with you when your father dies.
Please.
So I know this is a little bit of a rant.
I know someone is going to get really defensive about it, but if you're being defensive about
it, I really want you to take the time to consider.
If you want to be alone for the rest of your life, that's fine.
It doesn't change anything over here.
If you really, really prefer doing everything alone to doing something with someone, building
memories with someone, sharing a life, creating something that's bigger than you if you actually
prefer that, God bless you.
But I suspect if you're triggered by this, if you've told yourself the story and you've
told everybody else, you're happier being single.
It's because you're really afraid of loving.
You're really afraid of getting hurt.
You're really afraid of putting yourself out there and giving your heart to someone.
But unless you do it, once you put yourself out there, unless you make yourself vulnerable,
this is the best you're ever going to do.
You're never going to achieve what everybody else has achieved.
You're never going to have the happiness and the togetherness and the partnership and the
passion that the happily couple of people in the world have.
And I think that's a shame.
I am Evan Marc Katz, the dating coach for smart, strong, successful women and your personal
trainer for love.
I challenge you to push through this narrative that you're more happy being alone than you
are being in love.
You're not.
So stop believing it and do something different to get a different result.
Thanks.