How to Be Single and Happy: Science-Based Strategies for Keeping Your Sanity While Looking for a Soul Mate

by Jenny Taitz

The belief that your happiness hinges on an external circumstance that you can’t control (i.e., meeting a romantic partner) not only makes it harder to find love, but it also sets you up for unhappiness. Letting go of the maddening myth that happiness comes from coupling up is the first step to freedom. Stressing out about meeting someone will not help you meet that person any faster. The healthiest way to increase your chances of finding love is to increase your happiness, right now.

The more I worked on entering the moment without wishing things were different, the less I worried about my future, criticized myself, and replayed various bad dates—and the more comfortable my life felt.

Mindfulness is about fully participating in activities instead of letting past pains or future worries contaminate your moments. Being present in your life is the opposite of waiting for love, and research suggests that the more present you can be, the more fulfillment you will experience.

People are more responsive to intermittent reinforcement (someone who is available, then not) than they are to continuous reinforcement. There’s something about not knowing when we’ll receive the next reward (or text) that makes us stay focused and excited. Inconsistency keeps us attentive and trying. But I didn’t want to sit around salivating; I’m not a dog in training. I decided that part of my mindfulness and self-compassion practice included honoring my emotions, not dropping everything when a guy I’d seen five times in as many months finally decided that he was ready to make a plan. I was sure that I wasn’t going to let “winning” him trump my self-respect. Life is too short to play games. That was my motto in my new dating life, and I told myself that I was willing to do what worked for me.

As Brach powerfully describes, “Perhaps the biggest tragedy in our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns. Entangled in the trance of unworthiness, we grow accustomed to caging ourselves in with self-judgment and anxiety, with restlessness and dissatisfaction. Like Mohini, we grow incapable of accessing the freedom and peace that are our birthright.”