Being single is only good if..

[AMessAMess]

So I know there is a lot of push now for women to stay single and embrace being alone but does anyone else feel like being single is only good when you have loads of friends/ family and just a large support network? If you don’t have that I can be painfully lonely. I never felt lonely in my 20s I had a great social life and friends was out most weekends and never really felt bored or lonely and if I did I would just date or meet someone, for reasons I won’t go into I don’t really see these friends anymore and social life is non existent makes it much harder to enjoy being single. How do you enjoy it if you have limited friends/ family

Yes being single needs good friends not hundreds of acquaintances but a few solid friends you can call on if needs be .

I don't think there is a push to be single and I don't think it's always a choice either.

Meeting the right person can be difficult.

What I read in your post is that your finding things difficult perhaps because of a lack of people to do social things with?

I guess to make new friends you need to put yourself out there and that's how always easy.

Everyone's different, but for me friends and family aren't a substitute for a partner. The intimacy and companionship you should get from a healthy relationship just isn't replicated by other types of connection. Family are there by 'default' - you can't chose them, and you can't really change them either. But a partner is someone you've chosen, who's also made you their choice, you're both equals in that regard.

I also think it's better for children to be brought up in a home with two loving parents together. Part of raising a child is teaching them what a healthy relationship looks like, so their own parents relationship is the biggest influence there. Obviously better to be single than in a bad relationship, as that's a terrible example to set them.

So get out there and make some! A relationship is not a substitute for friendship

I've had some relationships, but never to the point where I've married or cohabited, and mostly, through circumstances of work or other things, they've been distance relationships. So I've had to work on friendships and building a support network. I've got long term friends from school, uni, shared houses in my 20s, workplaces, even online places like here. I go to evening classes and exercise classes. If I'm invited somewhere, I'll almost always go, unless I'm already doing something else. If I didn't do this, I probably would have sunk off people's radars, and I think it is different from couples, where they're more often invited out because they're a couple. But I'm rarely bored, not often lonely (time to myself is important, because I'm used to having it,) and when I've been dating, they have to fit round the rest of my already busy life, not be a substitute for it. If they think they should have more of my attention,they need to earn it. My friends have.

I think overall it's a good thing that women are learning to be emotionally and socially self sufficient. However, we're all different and nobody should feel pressured to be single if that isn't for them. On the other hand it is a good idea to take a pause and a reset after a relationship, especially a bad one, so we're better at weeding out the duff men.

Well….. as proven by the many threads on here around that subject, making friends isn’t always easy.
Its never as simple as ‘go out there and make some friends’.

Op I don't think it's so much a push to be single for women as an acceptance that women are no longer required to have a relationship to be complete. So many women jump from relationship to relationship or stick out shitty relationships because being single is seen as sad or socially unacceptable.

These days we can have our own careers, pay our own bills and often being single is easier than ending up in a relationship where we're just expecting to do the cooking and cleaning and life admin because we have a vagina

OP were close in age. I’ve been single for just under a year. Live in a foreign country, no close friends (here or at home). Until recently I was very happy with this. I was previously in a great but complicated relationship so the freedom to breathe and not be weighed down by difficult aspects of the relationship was great. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how lonely I am. Some weekends I could go 24/48 hours without talking to anyone if I didn’t actively try (apart from my dad and sisters on WhatsApp). I’m doing Christmas on my own here this year. It was my choice (back in September) and I was fine with it, but now when I think about it I get this overwhelming feeling of sadness. I went on a date on Saturday and I’m still smiling, it was just so nice to be with someone.

You ger used to it in the end and reach a point of peaceful contentment. Until I was 39 I had never lived alone, only with family, flatmates, and a series of boyfriends. Soon as he moved out I could not bear to be alone and I threw myself into a campaign of finding someone to live with. Twenty years later I still had not found anyone, and one day I realised that if I met someone I would not WANT him to move in. I had got set in my ways and actually enjoyed having everything my own way all the time.