If you’re currently single and it doesn’t feel positive, know that you’re not alone. There are so many that have or currently feel that way today. I know how you feel because I haven’t always had an empowered relationship to being single.
For most of my life, I felt like I was running out of time to hit all of these life milestones that didn’t feel right to me. I hated feeling like I was behind all of my friends and my cousins, but I learned that staying in the wrong relationship was far worse than learning to be empowered on my own. This is because I was betraying my own values and I felt worse about myself over time.I know how hard it can be to trust the timing of your life, but my best advice is for you to lean into this season of being single. You have someone very important to get to know, and that’s yourself.

The most frequent misconceptions about being single fall into one of the biggest patterns, and that is the thinking that being single means there’s something wrong with you. Many people carry the belief that not being ‘chosen’ by someone must mean that we’re not good enough, and  that couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is that our relationship status doesn’t say anything about our worth. It doesn’t say anything about your happiness. I’ve known plenty of people who are miserable in a relationship, just like I’ve known plenty of people who are full of joy while single. As a society, we put relationships on a pedestal, as if our life isn’t complete until we find someone. We think of being single as a phase to be rushed through in an effort to find a partner rather than viewing it as a powerful opportunity to build a deep and lasting relationship with yourself. There are benefits to being single.

 You Get to Meet the Real You
Without the pressure of performing for someone else’s affection, you get to meet your authentic self while you’re single. This helps you identify your true core values, preferences and opinions without the bias of what someone else thinks about you.
 Your Patterns become More Obvious
When you step back from the dating game long enough to get a little perspective, you can finally see the cycles you keep repeating and can explore where they come from, their life story.
 Time to Nurture Friendships
No matter how badly you want to meet a soulmate, we all need a strong community to thrive and not just one person. You can devote your single time to building new community or strengthening the relationships that are already in your life.
 Only Think of Yourself
Here, you can travel when you want, live where you want, decorate your home how you want, watch what you want, and exist how you want without taking another person’s opinion into considerations.
 De-Program Beliefs
When you’re single, you can take time to unravel old programming and get honest with yourself about what you really want and believe. You get to envision a new set of possibilities, rather than living in the pre-prescribed template that was handed down to you by your family/culture/society.
 Self-Care and Self-Reliance
When there are no distractions then you can meet your needs, you become really clear on what you actually need and how to make it happen. Being single is a great time to invest on yourself.
 Personal Growth
Extended periods of being single can give you more time to invest in your hobbies, career goals, passion projects and health goals.
 Healthier Future Relationships
The more you invest in getting to know yourself and your values while single, the more likely you are to choose the right people for you in the future. You’ll have higher standards, healthier boundaries and stronger communication skills to bring with you that last.
 Find Deeper Meaning
We’re taught that the magic formula of finding a person and settling down will bring us joy. When you’re single, you’re forced to find that joy and fulfillment elsewhere first, whether that’s in nature, spirituality or connection to a higher purpose. You stop outsourcing those feelings to someone else.

Not feeling lonely when single can seem difficult, but when we have to acknowledge that loneliness is a normal emotion, just like sadness or anger or joy, then we learn that it’s okay to feel lonely sometimes. If you’re feeling lonely most of the time, that often signals more than just an effect of being single.

Chronic loneliness is a symptom of disconnection from our authentic self. It’s important to become curious about that deeper loneliness, because even being in a relationship would likely not “fix” that feeling. You can still feel lonely in a relationship or even in a group of people if you’re not connected to yourself. The truth is, it’s usually an attempt to mask deeper pain. The pain of feeling like we’re not good enough, the pain of worrying that we’ll be abandoned, the unprocessed pain of our childhoods. It’s not a bad thing to seek love, but when we put our lives on hold and our entire identity to our relationship status, we’re making another relationship, another person to be greater than ourselves and that takes away our power and self-identity.

As challenging as it can be to confront those deeper wounds, if more single people did that, I think we’d see far more healthy relationships. I wish more people would build a deep relationship with themselves. That is what is meant to be. Being single can create one of the most transformative chapters of our lives. 
It comes down to being honest with yourself about your patterns, your emotions, and what parts of you need healing. Choosing to show up for yourself in this way sets the stage for all of your present and future relationships to flourish and to find the happiness that is meant for you.