16 Reasons Why People Who Can Be Mentally Single End Up Happier Than Anyone Else

To be mentally single is very different from just being single – and few people achieve it. Being mentally single is to not be in love, in lust, in longing, in seeking, in relationship or in attachment to another person. You are, for once, completely on your own. Here, exactly why it’s so important:

1. You are finally able to define yourself entirely on your own terms. Romantic love has a way of turning us into versions of ourselves we think other people would prefer. Now, there is nothing holding you back from becoming the person you really want to be.

2. If you aren’t able to be mentally single, you will choose relationships based on proximity. You’ll end up with whoever is around – you’ll make every next person you meet the “perfect person for you” because you just don’t want to be alone. Not only will you be unable to see this, but you’ll also end up with someone who is completely wrong for you – someone who soothed your fear more than they fed your desire.

3. You will continually transfer your relationship issues from one person to the next. You’ll end up re-creating the problems of your lost loves past, never realizing that the problem isn’t who you’re meeting, but what you’re carrying.

4. It forces you to address the reason you feel you need someone else to exist happily.

5. If you never address the reason you feel you need someone else to exist happily, you will never actually be able to exist happily.

6. There’s a reason so many stories and books are written of people who go on journeys after devastating heartbreak. There’s a reason why lost love is the catalyst for so much tremendous change. It is because there is an acknowledgement that real, lasting, profound love has to come from within you, not just from romance. This is the big game-changer.

7. For once, all of the energy that once went toward making someone else happy – being concerned with what they want, what they like, whether or not they like you – goes exclusively to yourself.

8. If you are like most people, that is a ton of energy – and it will transform your life.

9. You drop the storyline. You change the narrative. You embrace the fact that you don’t know what you want or who you’ll be with. When anything is possible, everything is possible. You broaden your prospects not only for your romantic life, but for everything else: where you’ll live, what you’ll do, what you’re working toward.

10. You stop waiting for someone else to save your life. You learn to do things for yourself, and by yourself. Sometimes that means the practical stuff – living on your own and what not – but most of the time, it’s the mental stuff. How you learn to genuinely enjoy your life without being fueled by someone else.

11. You can give yourself space to fall apart. This is something few people talk about when they talk about love: romantic relationships tend to force us to hold it together for the sake of another person. Most of the time, this is a great thing. But it backfires when what you really need is to unravel your life and start over, feel long-withstanding, unresolved emotions, and so on. (If a relationship is making you feel unable to keep it together, it means something needs to come apart.)

12. You are able to dismantle the mania you have constructed around love. When you don’t approach your relationships from a place of intense “need” you also no longer have to feel jealous, or inferior, or as though you’re in competition with other people.

13. You begin to understand that no relationship is a “failure.” You learned what you had to learn, and then you were set free to find a better fit. Love isn’t a matter of being selected because you are the best, it is finding a match that is best for you. Your worth is not deteriorated because you found yourself mismatched.

14. You learn how to let go without moving onto something else. That is how you truly release something, and if you can do it with the hardest thing of all – another person – you can also do it with other experiences, too.

15. There are so many things to fall in love with. You can experience that warm, inspired feeling for so many things in life. You no longer sit around believing you can only feel that way about a person.

16. There is a feeling greater than romance, and it is freedom. It is no longer being mentally tied to someone else.