If there is one thing that seems to consume people more than my lifetime than sports, dining, celebrities, and politics, it would have to be relationships. Being one of the most basic components of all living beings, finding one’s “mate” for reproduction (producing or adopting children in this case), having physical, emotional, and mental intimacy, and finding a lasting companion for life tends to be an obsession that I’ve noticed has enwrapped society for quite a bit of time. Today, there are endless social media pages, dating organizations (online and off), articles, songs, and magazines that dedicated themselves to helping people document and find their own “love story”. Giving that the ability to find relationship partners is easier and quicker than ever with the rise of the Internet, there is more pressure than ever to find your “soul mate” or in finding best relationship possible. Given this entire obsession, I feel that people forget that sometimes the best strategy to help solve past relationship problems is to remain single for a while or to loosen the focus on finding a relationship. While I assume that it’s probably one of the best feelings in the world to find that “other half” of a person that is compatible with you in every single way, I feel that the journey to finding a spouse or partner is just as important as the desired outcome. While I myself am a single, straight male in college, here are several reasons how choosing to be single has benefited me and can benefit you in the short run.

1. Being single gives you time to figure out what you are looking for

One of the biggest things that I’ve noticed becomes a problem in several relationships that I have seen is that some people try to get into relationships with other people they care about without knowing exactly what they are looking for in a person. While a lot of people do this out of the “blindness of love” and claim that being in a relationship helps them figure out what they are looking for in a person, they also forget that being single can also help you figure what you are looking for in a reliable partner. While having relationship experience is incredibly valuable, being single gives you the ability to spend some honest time with yourself and figure out what qualities you are looking for in a reliable partner that will allow to live a healthy relationship life. While you can do this in a relationship as well, you do have the run across the additional emotional pain if you find that your boyfriend/girlfriend don’t ultimately meet the qualities you are looking for. This gets particular harder the more serious/deeper the relationship goes, and can have life-chanting consequences if kids, finances, and legal issues come into play when it comes to splitting up with a spouse or serious boyfriend//girlfriend. This is where deciding what you are looking for while you are single can be incredibly valuable, as you avoid all these tangible consequences while figuring yourself out on the relationship path. I personally have had to deal with some of this emotional pain when I broke it off with someone I was seriously involved with, and frankly it took me a great deal of time to get over it. From that experience however, I found that I could have saved myself and my partner from that emotional stress if I had spent more time developing a concrete idea of what I was looking for in a relationship. While love is indeed blind at times and will lead you down a different path then intended, you will find that you can control what you are looking for when it comes to lasting companionship.

2. It prevents you from become dependent on relationships

This is one of the biggest reasons why I personally decided that I should start taking my focus off of relationships. I noticed that in the past, I would become consumed with the concept of wanting to be in a relationship. When I watched other couples who had developed a strong partnership with one another back in high school and in college, I become jealous when I was unable to find that with some of my relationships. While I will admit that I did date a girl for a little while back in high school and she and I developed a close bond, I found that there were other aspects of my life that I ignoring because of my relationship that I realized I needed to intend to. While I did break it off with her, I became obsessed with trying to fix what I thought were my failures in that relationship. Because of this and my preoccupation with trying to find the best relationship possible, I found myself constantly trying to get in a relationship. In the end however, I realized that the best thing about being single was I realized that I was more than the sum of my past relationships. This is where being single helped me the most, and I feel could help other people. If you are constantly worried about being with someone, its not honestly going to help you get to where you need to be. If you feel that this is a problem for you, take the time in your single life to realize that there is more to relationship life than just being in romantic relationship.

3. It clears out the myth that people who are in relationships have things “figured out

This one is another one that plagued me for some time as well. Since I came to college, I noticed some of my buddies, who graduated high school being single like myself, got girlfriends within their first semester of college. This is where my jealously hits me again, as I felt my buddies “knew something” that I just wasn’t understanding when it came to relationships since I was still single. The reality was however, was that a lot of them had to go through some emotional rough waters before they emerged into the relationships they have now. They had to go through a lot of the same questions and confusions that I had, and still had more questions about what was right for them. I noticed that only difference between them and me was that they were in a different place in their relationship life than I was at the exact same time. I also noticed that they spent a lot of time showing concern/ worrying about their relationships and had to take away some of their focus to make sure their relationship was healthy. I understood that they didn’t have things “figured out” and are just in a different part of the process of “figuring it out”. In the end, it doesn’t matter if you’re in a relationship, single, or even married, everyone is in the process of “figuring it out” If you are single and can’t see how being single can actually be beneficial towards your relationship experience , then I was suggested keeping this mindset in perspective.

4. You have more freedom and independence to be with who you want to be

In the end, I feel that this is the best mindset for people who are single. While I need to mention this article is mostly designed for people who are in between relationships or are still looking to be in relationships, being single ultimately gives you the freedom to find love in which a relationship cannot. Relationship, are about commitment and sacrifice for the sake of pursuing a partnership, and are healthy if they benefit the lives of both people getting involved. If you aren’t ready for commitment and being with one person, then I would recommend staying single for a while. When you are single, there are endless possibilities as to what can be. While your ultimate goal may still be to be in a healthy and long-fulfilling relationship, you should see be single as a part of the journey. Just remember that all experts were once amateurs, and that being single is a part of the process of finding your “lifelong” companion.