Single On Purpose: Prioritizing Self-Love and Personal Growth in Your Journey Through Life, Dating, and Relationships

by John Kim

For many relationships, though, what happened is not so black-and-white. Sure, your partner was shitty sometimes, but were you perfect? Instead of feeling the pain of an expired relationship—and don’t forget, a relationship always involves two people—it’s easier to demonize your ex. This might feel good, but by ignoring your own role, you’re setting yourself up for a repeat performance. By blaming and not taking any ownership, you are living in the past instead of creating the foundation for a better future.

No space for growth can be created when you’re defensive, make excuses, pull away from logic, and tell yourself and everyone else all the reasons why it wasn’t your fault. You’re running away from yourself instead of toward yourself. You’re moving on, but you’re not moving through.

I will never be in an abusive relationship, neither physical nor emotional. I don’t care if she blows my socks off and the chemistry is out of this universe. This is a very hard line. I will not be with someone who does not support my passions or champion my story. She doesn’t have to agree with me on everything or like the same things I like, but she has to support who I am and what I stand for. I will not be with someone who does not take care of herself. This is not just about working out or maintaining a certain physical appearance. I will not be with someone who ignores her mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health. I will not be in a lopsided friendship. That’s one where you always have to come to the other person, and where they always make it about them and never hold space for you. Friendships that are superficial.

Once she was ready to date again—which was pretty much the day she ended her marriage—she got on dating apps. All of my other clients hated them, but Stacey had an entirely different experience. Dating apps empowered her. She used them as a tool. She had many suitors and started fucking different people. Not in a desperate “love me” way. She wasn’t looking for love. She was exploring her new body and her sexuality. She wanted to taste all the flavors, color with more than one crayon. She’d never done that before. She now had the giant box with all forty-eight crayons. “I don’t want to live not knowing anymore,” she told me. She said that exploring her sexuality for the first time made her feel like a new woman.

I learned that I’m not a dater, that I’m the happiest when I’m in a monogamous relationship, and that’s okay. I like thinking about one person and building something with that person. I learned that discovering someone new is exciting, but that the best sex and the deepest intimacy come from exploring with one person for a long time. At forty-six, I’m interested in a deeper love, not just sex, and I don’t believe you can get that by dating many people. I don’t know about tomorrow. Five years from now, I may be in five relationships at once and two of them may be men. I don’t know. But today this is my truth. And you can’t get to your truth unless you are always searching, exploring, and discovering. That’s what building a relationship with yourself looks like.

Maybe for you acceptance of your sexuality means abstaining for now. Not having sex for a while. Maybe sex has become the barrier to intimacy. Yes, you read that right. Maybe you’re fucking your feelings.

One of the greatest misconceptions about healthy sex is that you don’t need to put any work into it. That it’s a natural act. You just get naked and it’s all good. That’s not true, though. You have to work on sex. I start with communication. I try to tell my partner what I like and don’t like and encourage her to do the same. I explore. Switch it up. Play out my fantasies. My partner’s fantasies. Try things I may have labeled or judged. I try to see sex as a form of self-expression. Not just a means to having an orgasm. Sex is a shared space where you get to know and connect to another person but also to yourself. And the more you do that, the more you are fulfilling your sexual need and the sexier you feel.

I also masturbate with my partner. We do it not just to see, and show, exactly how we like to be touched but also as an exercise to build trust. It’s an intimate experience people rarely share with each other. It’s difficult to show and express yourself in that way without feeling self-conscious. But the more trust you and your partner build, the safer the space for the two of you to explore your sexiness. Masturbation can be a shared experience that makes both people feel sexy.

That’s why it’s important to lay these tracks when you’re single and build up some momentum by making every aspect of self-care part of your daily routine. The more confident and connected you feel to yourself now, the more you will be bringing to the table in your next relationship and the less pressure you will put on your partner and the relationship to make you feel better about yourself. You’re not taking care of yourself for someone else. You are taking care of yourself for you. Everything ripples out from that.

Nothing is ever truly closed. You will always remember, and you will have feelings attached to those memories. But the feelings can change as you embark on the journey of closure, which will take you inward to explore your self and to grow. If your feelings do not change, you’ll carry the residue of what happened, harboring hate, anger, and resentment. Not only toward your ex but maybe also toward yourself. This will harden you, and that energy will ripple into your other relationships. You won’t be able to create a brand-new love experience because you will be painting on a stained canvas.

Second, ask yourself why you need this. Usually what we believe we need from someone else is tightly tied to a belief about ourselves. About our worth. Or our ability to love. It’s the proof that we are attractive or lovable. It’s never about being right or just wanting to know. That’s only on the surface. There’s always something deeper attached. That’s why you want it so much and it’s so hard to let go of.

What I needed was an identity. I had lost it in my marriage. I had no sense of self. No life direction. I was the guy married to her. That’s it. That’s all I was. So I held on to the marriage because, without it, I didn’t know who I was. And since I didn’t know who I was and had no sense of self, I didn’t feel like I had any value. Because of my low self-worth, I put her up on a pedestal. She was “out of my league.” That made her a trophy, not a wife. And without her, I was worth less. Closure to me meant finding an identity and building a sense of worth. It took me nearly a decade and a total rebirth. But new definitions come with a new sense of self. And that’s when your life can really change.

When I went from seeing beauty in a cardboard cutout to recognizing it in a real person, I was able to feel beauty instead of just seeing it.

For me today, beauty is no longer skin-deep. Beauty is about soul and capacity. It starts with kindness. Without kindness, it’s all just makeup to me. Beauty is about not being judgmental, about depth, about awareness of self and your effect on others through your words and actions. It’s about thoughtfulness, support, communication, banter, eye contact. Beauty lies in having your own life. In love and appreciation for your body, in having an open mind, in being open to different perspectives and opinions, in trying to understand before trying to be understood.

She didn’t have joy, engagement, or meaning in her life, the three things you need or you won’t have a life. (I’ll get into it in a bit.)

This isn’t just about what you do for work. What matters to you also includes relationships, friendships, and even what you want to eat for lunch, if that’s meaningful to you today. No matter how big or small, if it’s meaningful to you, you should invest in it. You can argue, “Well, drugs are meaningful to me right now.” Okay, but are drugs truly meaningful, or are you using them as a way to cope because you don’t have any meaning in your life? Meaning lines up with your truth and who you are. If you don’t feed that, you will drift away from your truth and who you are. Everything from your taste in cars to how you want to make your dent in this world. If it’s honest to you, it’s meaningful. And if it’s meaningful to you, it matters.

Any activity has to matter to me. Before, things didn’t have to matter. I did things for approval, validation, or money. Today, if it’s not meaningful to me, I’m not interested. I won’t go back to living an unsubstantial life.

Most people do things that don’t really matter to them. They invest in relationships that don’t have much substance and do things because they feel like they should, not because they want to. Then they harbor anger and resentment, not only at others but at themselves. Carrying this low-grade anger starts to gray them out. They become moody and unhappy. Hanging your life on meaning allows you to be less angry and resentful. When you do things that truly matter to you, that line up with your truth and your story, you not only live closer to your potential but you become lighter, and lighter turns into happier.

Is what you’re doing in your life truly meaningful to you? Do the relationships you’re ...

I used to never feel much joy in my life because it never magically came. And even if it had, I wouldn’t have felt it. I wasn’t open to it. I didn’t allow myself to feel joy unless something good happened. With this mindset, I rarely experienced joy, because it was contingent on something happening. That meant it was always in the distance. What I didn’t understand was that joy is produced. And it’s a practice.

This is where mindfulness and gratitude come into play. To become more aware and more grateful, start by training your brain to find joy in little things. Like the first stirrings of an idea. The first sip of your morning coffee. A breeze. A meaningful conversation. The feeling after a hard workout. None of these small joys are contingent on something big happening first. You can find them every single day by practicing the art of producing joy. I call it “seeking nectar,” and a tattoo of a hummingbird on my left bicep reminds me to do just that.

The joy of a quiet morning moment sipping fresh hot coffee. Not thinking about anything but just being present and taking in the moment, using all my senses. Waking up slowly.

I have a thought about something that happened in the past. Maybe I play back a meaningful moment I had with an ex-girlfriend. That thought produces a feeling. That feeling makes me miss her. Now it’s off to the races I go. Did I make a mistake by leaving? Should we be back together again? Should I call her? I wonder what she’s doing. Am I with the wrong person now?

Sound familiar? This is just one simple example. Imagine all the thoughts we have in a day and how many of them pull us out of the here and now and into a time machine. Thoughts not just about our past relationships but also about our work, friendships, drama in our family. Think about all the things you obsess about that haven’t even happened yet. What if you don’t make the sale? Get the raise? Pass the test? What if you never find “the one”? Thoughts like these produce feelings of anxiety. Suddenly, we are drowning in what-ifs instead of living in what is. We have left our lives because our heads have taken us hostage.

It’s time machines that cripple us the most when we are single. We live in them. More than when we are in a relationship, we dwell on our past and obsess about our future. Because when we love someone, we don’t think about ourselves. We think about our partner or about the relationship. We think about what our partner wants and how we can give them that. How we can be better. For someone else. We think about our relationship and how we can make it stronger.

Follow this tread. A thought leads to a feeling, which leads to internalization, which leads to certain behaviors. See where that first thought leads you? Do you like where it leads you? Is it healthy and positive? Or is it unhealthy, producing anxiety and panic?

That’s why you must create distance from them. Imagine your thoughts in a snow globe. Watch them there. Don’t own them. Allow yourself to feel your feelings, but know that they are just that—feelings. Not facts or truth. Feelings will flow through you. And then they will pass.

I still want a house in the Hills. I still want nice cars and a few motorcycles. But those are just things produced by living a meaningful life. By running toward your true north. I also want to help people. I want to create a dialogue. I want to write books. I want to be a good person. I don’t just want to have things. I want to do things that are meaningful. I want to like myself. I want to live an honest life and feel like I’m making a dent in this world. I want to be a student of life and continue to learn. I want to love and to grow as a spiritual being. I want to be a dad.

Once you discover the origin of your tendency to fall into a low-frequency state, you can create distance and compassion. If you don’t figure it out, you’ll get angry at yourself for being in this state. You’ll internalize that anger and bash yourself with it—the complete opposite of building self-worth. Internalized anger at yourself destroys self-worth.

Understand before you speak.

When I played this song, I felt like suffering wasn’t a bad thing. Because pain can be soil. And that’s what makes you hang on. What makes you believe. I played this song often on long night walks. It made the hurt okay. Made me believe it was all a part of life. The process. My evolution. It made me suffer well.