Being single can suck. I get it. I’ve been single most of my life (all of my life if you don’t count the junior high relationships where it was more of a title than any kind of interaction with the other person). I am almost to my 23rd birthday and I have yet to receive my first kiss. So, if you want to talk single, let’s talk single.

I completely understand that when none of the cute love songs are relevant, you constantly feel like a third wheel and you don’t have the companionship that comes with a relationship, it’s easy to get caught up in the pity party. I’ve been attending it the last 22 years of my life. (Actually, let’s be honest, I’ve been throwing it.) I have hopped from crush to unhealthy crush more times than I care to admit. In the spirit of complete honesty, there have even been times where I realized that nothing was going to happen between me and a guy I was interested in and immediately started the search for a new crush. It was like I couldn’t exist without liking someone.

About a year ago, I started realizing just how truly unhealthy this habit of mine was. It was starting to eat away at me from the inside-out. I was constantly discontent with my life because I didn’t have a significant other to share it with, and the discontent was no one’s fault but my own. I made huge promises to my close friends that I wasn’t going to even THINK about guys, but was going to focus on other things. Then, as fate would have it, a very attractive young man walked into the coffee shop and all my resolutions went out the window. When that ended up going differently than I had hoped and it seemed like things were just going to remain in a painful state of limbo, I made all the same promises. I cut myself off from him, swore off guys, tried to tell myself I wasn’t looking for a relationship and tried to remind myself there were other things to focus on. All it took was one attractive guy simply being kind to me and I found myself right back in the cycle of falling too hard, too fast.

While nothing tragic happened between me and this guy, I realized that I was still allowing myself to exist in discontent. I swore to myself and my close friends that this was different, it was just a little crush and I wasn’t expecting anything to happen, but I was lying to even myself. I had set myself up for the expectation that eventually, he was going to break my heart. The moment I realized that was the moment I decided to change my thinking.

I forced myself to sit down right then and think about the things that made being single a fun experience.

I acknowledged that it’s nice to have a season in life where I don’t have to run my decisions by someone. That awesome job offer that seems absolutely ideal but is going to cut heavily into my free time? I took it. I spent all day out with friends and now they want to go watch a movie too? I went. And I didn’t have to text anyone and tell them my whereabouts or ask them if they were okay if I went. Being single brings you freedom to do the things you love to do.

I reminded myself that I’ve gotten to learn quite a bit about how I operate on a personal level. I’ve learned that if I’m by myself for too long, my overly-extroverted self gets pretty bummed out. I need people. I like to sing and dance in the car like nobody’s business (how else do you make getting stuck in traffic fun?). Some days I feel like doing my hair and putting on makeup, others I just want a ponytail and a clean face. I like Harry Potter a lot, and I would be sorted into Hufflepuff (thank you Pottermore for that nifty bit of info). Getting a new planner was the highlight of my month until my mom mailed me a fountain pen (aka I’m kind of a dweeb). I bake when I’m stressed out and I absolutely love to write. I get to experience all the different sides of me that are uniquely me because I am currently single.

I haven’t settled. My ideal man is not an unattainable thing. I’m also not out hunting him like he’s my prey. I have a set of standards that are necessary if a guy wants to change my relationship status, and I would much rather be single than settle.

Most of all, I feel healthy. When your life is focused on finding a guy to share it with, it’s hard to find happiness. When you start to focus on the good things happening, like that awesome job opportunity, those really cool people you get to hang out with and invest in and the amazing family who provides you with a pretty fantastic support system, you stop the internal cycle of trying to understand why you aren’t good enough for one guy or the next.

Because I had spent my whole life planning my future around a husband, I refused to let myself ever consider the possibility that he doesn’t exist. As I’ve started to embrace my single status, I’ve realized that I have a pretty awesome life as it is, so I don’t need a man to make it complete.

It’s not an easy path to go down. I’ve shed many tears over the idea of literally being single forever, but I serve an awesome God who only wants the best for me. I am content in my current state in life. I have awesome friends, an amazing family, a job I adore and I don’t need anything more than that.