Single, Childless and Unbothered … Sort Of

Navigating adulthood against societal, familial and my own expectations

Photo by Jeffery Erhunse on Unsplash

We are days away from February, which is a month representative of love, connection and reflection - and if you’re based in Canada it’s also frick’n cold! For me February has me contemplating how my life continues to be one without an intimate relationship. No one to meet me at the door when I arrive home at the end of the day.  No one to remind me that I’ve been missed or thought about in any conceivable way. No one to keep me warm during these dry, cold, bitter, winter nights. And for the majority of my adult life this has been my reality. 

So I decided to close off the end of 2022 by revealing to my therapist and my closest friends (aka my other therapists) that I want to focus my energy on relationships in 2023. Not surprisingly, I was met with an overwhelmingly positive response and only a slight twinge of concern. If I’m being honest, even I questioned how fully committed and intentional I would be once I made this plan known. As much as I love a challenge, I despise feeling like I am being set-up to fail; so being vulnerable and setting myself up for a challenge  with no guarantee of success, is putting my fight or flight response to the ultimate test. But there is just something about 2023 that is making me feel finally ready to really take this on.

For years I had been so focussed on achieving only tangible things I could manage and control, such as my education and my career goals. I was fully leaning into my independent era and attempting to create an existence that emulated a mash-up of my favourite fictional characters: Olivia Pope from Scandal and Molly from Insecure. However, much like Olivia, Molly and other career driven characters I aspired to be, this sort of sharp and limited focus left me with little to no time to forge meaningful, intimate relationships with a partner. And as much as I cherish all of my friendships, I am no longer certain that it is enough of a replacement. 

There is something to be said for having ‘your person’- someone that you can share your deepest thoughts, fears, and aspirations. A person who isn’t a clinical psychologist that you pay hundreds of dollars a month to; your equal who can provide you with guidance on the things you may be struggling with or recognize when you need cold, hard honesty. Of course it feels great to come and go as you please, and to not be weighed down by constant consideration, or negotiation on all the decisions made within a day. But what is the point in getting all the things you want in life if you have no one to share it with?

With these things now at the forefront of my mind, I had to be honest with myself and begin thinking about how I would navigate this journey. It may seem completely irrational but I was truly concerned that once I shifted my personal goals from career to love, I would transform back to my childhood self and be completely consumed by the pursuit of a relationship (i.e. less Molly from Insecure and more Joan from Girlfriends).

As a child and adolescent my world was consumed by my schoolgirl crushes. Once I felt the rush of one of my crushes reciprocating my affection, there was no turning back. I overloaded my many diaries and journals with lists upon lists of all my classmates, celebrities, and literally any other remotely attractive teen boy I became infatuated with. 

My first diary entry at age 9. “There is a boy named Andrew and I think he’s cute. All my friends know about him. But I don’t care.” 

Every moment of every day served simply as the window of time I would spend percolating on how to amplify the euphoric feeling of being in love… or what I thought was love. 

• What new ways can I show this person how much I cared for them?

• Who else can I share this amazing feeling with?

• Why is this feeling subsiding?

• How do I protect this feeling as long as humanly possible?

• Is this the best that there is?

By the time I was in my early twenties, I was regularly responding to “u up” texts in the middle of night and constantly being reminded that the feeling I was chasing just never felt quite as good as the initial magnetic attraction. I endured relationships like a drug addict chasing their next fix. It only ever felt amazing at the beginning and always became a problematic entity in my life that negatively impacted my relationships with friends, my work ethic, and most importantly, my self-worth. By the time I enrolled in college I knew it was time to make a change. No more boys. I would be a career girl!

Switching gears at that time in my life was emotionally and mentally difficult for all the reasons any young woman might assume. Between the pressures from my family and the power of the media, I was really concerned that I was doing something unnatural by not centering romance at that point in my life. But I was extraordinarily exhausted by the pursuit and failure of love and truly felt I had no other options but to pivot. 

This new shift in my focus on personal success provided me with the kind of gratification incomparable to anything else I had ever felt before (not sure if this is pathetic and sad but it was very true). While relationships had always kept me insecure, uncomfortable, and constantly uncertain, my post secondary education consistently kept me satisfied with the regular validation I was receiving for my grades, school assignments, and the various milestones I reached. It was a simple equation with few  variables; work hard, then be rewarded. Yes, there were moments where I would go back and forth with a professor or teaching assistant about a few grades here or there, but more often than not, the outcome was worth the effort. I eventually took that same determination and tenacity to my employment pursuits. 

Much like my education, my career goals were coming to fruition exactly as planned. I was moving up the corporate ladder, hobnobbing with the beautiful people, and achieving many of the things I thought I had always wanted. Then without notice or preparation the world stopped. 

The pandemic forced us all to put a pause on all of our regular day to day experiences. A pause on many things that gave me purpose and kept my head above water. A pause on the distraction factory that was my life. No more hosting girls nights for my girlfriends. No more casual drinks with colleagues. No more expensive dinners at new hotspots. No more travel for cultural experiences or family connection. 

My ferris wheel of life had abruptly stopped and I was standing all alone.

It wasn’t that I was no longer happy or grateful for the life I had built for myself. This is the same life that offered me the luxury to travel around the world, to create amazing memories with my family, and build new meaningful friendships. But it made me question whether this life I built was still going to be enough. 

I no longer want my fear of potentially being absorbed in a problematic, soul-sucking, toxic relationship to keep me from being in a great, loving, purposeful one. And if by chance my efforts to secure an intimate relationship go unresolved this year, I am confident I will not only be ok but I’ll continue to find ways to be fulfilled because like Maya Angelou has so eloquently said, “I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me.”

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