By Lauren Aldridge

Dedicated to the current loves of my life- my friends, my family, and my cat (duh). You know who you are- thank you for always being there.

“I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.”

-From “The Invitation” a poem by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

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I do not fear solitude. In fact, I cozy up to it on long, lazy stretches of morning in my warm sheets. I do not fear coming home to my sweet little balcony apartment after long nights at work and turning on my lamp in the quiet glow of dusk. It pleases me to be the source of my own light. No, I do not mind these moments one bit.

I savor these quiet times of belonging to myself- a rare and beautiful gift. There is sweetness in the simplicity. I do not have to check with anyone about dinner plans, grocery runs or rearranging my schedule to take off to the mountains for a few days.

I do not rush through time. I am not white-knuckling singlehood and praying that a man will hurry up and save me from myself as I frantically scroll dating apps. I don’t need saving- in fact, I feel quite at home in myself. I never thought I would be able to say that.

I do, however, have to remind myself to be present- a difficult enough task of its own in this day and age. When I feel the urge to hurry, when the “let’s-skip-to-the-good-part” energy appears of fantasizing about a future that has not yet come to pass, I purposely do the opposite. I slow down and surrender to the moment. Let this feeling- this urgent energy- show me what it needs to show me. I ask it what it is seeking from me. Most of the time, it was usually only asking for a nudge to come back to myself.

I sincerely hope that a time will come in my life when my mornings are pure chaos. Backpacks flying, cheerios crunched into the carpet (yikes), loud cartoons and laughter at 7 am. Yelling, “put your shoes on!” and “where are my keys??!” hilarious, sweet chaos. I will probably step on a Lego, or 10. I will be very sleep deprived and will most likely be willing to commit murder in exchange for a 20-minute nap. But I can’t wait.

**Author’s note- We’ll see how I do with feeling present and grateful when I’m running on 4 hours of sleep and covered in yogurt. Will come back and read this blog post and laugh at myself. TBD.**

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In my present day: I don’t mind cooking for one, putting jewelry on unassisted, or comforting myself at the end of an especially hard day. I can put air in my tires and fill up my own windshield washer fluid. I can make myself a spicy chai latte, and really good eggs. I love my career and am enormously privileged to find purpose and meaning in the work I do. My friendships feel like a well-watered garden, blooming and smiling in the breeze.

How lucky am I, for real?

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I do not mind any of these things. What I do mind, however, is not sharing the light of a candle with another, gazing at my opponent over a dim chess board while a record plays softly in the background. I very much mind not being able to whisper and laugh under the sheets with another sweet soul into the wee hours of the morning. I miss movie nights, laying on a loved one’s chest, and long days of road trips, stretching and wincing as we stop for gas and have breakfast in small, nameless towns we will never see again. I miss the priceless things that are created over time in a relationship- the casual intimacy of inside jokes (corny and crude), the familiarity of easy laughter, feeling safe and held in another’s arms, and being able to celebrate one another as we grow and evolve in this life.

I have come to look at my life as a gift, when for so long it felt like a terrible burden. I say this proudly; I have worked very hard to be able to feel this way. This badge of peace, hard fought from the clutches of darker times, is why I no longer fear the passage of time. I am my own quiet companion- with an invisible spiritual banner that says, “I stopped abandoning myself and life got way better!” imagine that.

Historically feeling like a burden is why I also chased relationships for so long throughout my younger years- I had no idea how to be in relationship with myself, so I tried with others instead. I genuinely thought the entire purpose of my life was to find a partner- thanks for that, the south. I buried my head in the proverbial sand of boyfriends for many, many years. Not a bad place to be, I’ll admit. I shared time in relationships with mostly (not all) lovely people. Not surprisingly, however, this strategy did not ultimately pan out successfully for me or my said boyfriends. I didn’t know how to show up for myself, let alone be a supportive partner. I crashed and burned all over the damn place. Relationship roadkill.

Don’t get me wrong- avoiding the work is super fun for a little while. It’s basically party time in there. It’s a relief to have reprieve from oneself for a bit- woohoo, no supervision! No rules!! I’m going to avoid personal accountability for the rest of time, and now I have a co-conspirator to help me do it! Codependencyville, party of two.

Unfortunately, though, we always seem to come knocking at the door of ourselves again at some point. Like an annoying karmic version of those Mormon missionaries on bikes; “Hello, I notice you still have tons of unhealed trauma and are repeating toxic patterns in your life and wrecking your relationships. Do you have a minute to talk about breaking generational curses and healing?”

We need to, at some point, decide to clean up our own messes. Ain’t that a bitch?

It is not to say that I did not have loving and meaningful relationships in my twenties- but I was also a version of myself in those relationships who was only ever capable of taking, trying desperately to fill a bottomless pit within myself. It’s no wonder we all got lost in there. I wish every person I encountered over the last decade nothing but love, and I hope you know that what we had was real. But looking back now, in my opinion, it was a fraction of what we both know we were capable of.

I am enormously grateful to have been forced to confront myself over the last year. Partially by choice, and partially by circumstance, I was finally backed so far into the corner of myself I could no longer look away. So, I began to look back. It was frightening at first in its unfamiliarity. But as I continued to look, I discovered it was more lovely than I could have imagined. The “monsters” I had felt afraid of for so long inside myself turned out to be small, quiet friends who were simply asking for my love and attention. Not so scary after all!

My life today is full of romance of the sweetest kind. I am not numb to the whimsy and beauty I experience in my days- the colors of the foliage in my neighborhood, changing with the seasons. Swaying in my kitchen to Lake Street Dive as I stir red pasta sauce simmering on the stove. Sprinkling crunchy sea salt on a bowl of fat strawberries in the fresh morning light. My life is sweet like honey.

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My life as a single woman is a satin shawl of romance; I don’t think I could ask for anything more from this chapter of my life. But if I’m being honest, I still crave deeper. I seek an exquisite red flame. I seek passion on all fronts- physical, mental, and spiritual. I seek an amazing love; a love that shakes me to my core and wakes up every particle of my being. I have felt glimpses of this type of love, no doubt- but it was always overshadowed by, well, the shadows. Wounds that had not yet been cleaned or dressed. My pain leapt and danced in the flame with the souls I shared time and space with, and for that I am so sorry. If anyone I have dated is reading this- I can’t take it back, but I feel it just the same.

“I will take care of me for you, if you will take care of you for me” -Jim Rohn

I have come to realize that love is a powerful force, binding and altering us in innumerable ways on a cellular level. Love is beautiful and gut wrenching- sometimes at the same time. The joy of loving another soul; the pain of not being able to. The Earth-shattering sudden loss of it that rips your foundation out from under you. The exquisite unfurling of new love, when every particle of one’s being is lit up from the inside like Rockefeller center.

I have seen the transformative power of love work its way through my own life, when I finally chose myself and never looked back. I see how it continues to transform as I keep working on myself. I can only imagine what love hopefully has in store for me in a future connection with another. A connection where there is no room for the shadows, because it is already so filled up with light.

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I am prepared to be patient. Core-shattering, cell-altering love, it turns out, does not lie around every corner. I don’t mind. I’d rather wait for the real thing. Of course, there are plenty of cheap imitations to go around. Beware of those. I’ve never been a girl for cheap knockoffs.

In this season of my life, I am learning the art of balance. To love myself completely is to honor the duality- the joy of solitude and the hope of future connection. I am learning that being single is not a waiting room for partnership—it is a chapter, rich and full in its own right. The love I seek is not absent; it is here, in the quiet moments, in the wild freedom, in the steady rhythm of my own heartbeat.

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In the next section of this piece, I share some reflections on navigating the dating realm. Please keep reading if you are interested. As always, I never want to feel like I am giving advice- these are merely things I have picked up along the way that I want to share. I encourage you, per usual, to take what resonates with you and leave the rest.

How To Be Single: From a Millennial Cat Lady

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How to be single. Gosh, where to begin. What an overplayed-out theme. But as a relationship therapist and single woman in her 30s, I do feel this makes me at least a little qualified to weigh in on this topic.  So, I figured I’d throw my hat into this already oversaturated ring. There are a million and one ways to navigate the dating realm- as long as you are respectful and honest, I am pretty much of the opinion that you can and should do whatever the heck you want. But what do I know?

Here are a few tidbits that have stood out to me.

• If you are freshly single, you deserve to have some fun. Go enjoy yourself! But please communicate this with the other person(s), instead of wrecking ball-ing your way into someone life and heart who might actually want a relationship. If you are freshly single, I can pretty much guarantee you are neither emotionally available nor “ready”. Go to therapy please!

• Communication is key. We are all adults here. Please act like one.

• Ghosting is the easier choice, but the shittier one.

• Do not become overly attached to any one outcome. As icky as this is to hear, nobody owes you anything. In theory, you are hopefully choosing to date decent and respectful people who will let you know what is on their mind. But you are never entitled to anyone else’s thoughts or feelings. If someone shuts down and doesn’t communicate or pushes you away, it’s probably information that this is not a person you would want to be with anyway. Decent, respectful people don’t typically treat others badly- if they are, tell their ass to go to therapy instead of trying to fix them.

• Mantra: High standards, low expectations. Lazy communication? Was flaky, vague, or noncommittal? Didn’t text me back? We simply say, “I guess that’s not my person then,” and move on. Do not chase somebody who is showing you through their actions that they are not invested in you. Full stop.

• Do not send novels via text!! I’m looking at you, ladies (and some of y’all men) stop that! Nobody has the time or energy to read your PhD thesis on why their behavior was not okay. If you have to explain, cajole, or convince someone how to care for/ treat you well, that is not your person. Trying to force them to be is making it worse and hurting you in the process.

• If they do/ say something that feels hurtful or disrespectful, ask yourself, “Would my future spouse and theoretical mother/ father/ etc. of my future children behave in this way?” If the answer is “no”, that is not your person. Move on.

• There are good people everywhere. Just because it’s not your future spouse and theoretical mother/ father/ etc. of your future children does not mean you can’t have a nice conversation on a pleasant date. Don’t continue to waste your time, but also be kind. Dating is hard. We’re all doing our best out here.

• Listen to your intuition no matter what. She never lies. Have your own back.

Last, but not least- try not to gloss over this time in your life. Being single is really pretty awesome in a lot of ways- no arguing over whose turn it is to take the garbage out, justifying how/ when/ where you spend any of your money, and not being forced to sit through ANY of the Marvel cinematic universe franchise.

Do not rush this chapter. It is a sweet one, and shorter than you think.

Thank you, reader, for making it all the way to the end! This was a long one. Wishing you well on this crazy journey we are all on- whether you are single, in relationship, getting out of one, or just took a vow of celibacy (my content is probably not for you, if that’s the case- I use way too much profanity). Be good to yourselves, and life will be good to you.

Here’s to love!

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