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

by John Kim

The truth is, we’re humans and we’re not meant to do life alone. We want to love someone. And that’s okay. We’re biologically built that way. What’s not okay is losing ourselves because we don’t have someone to love. Or losing ourselves in the person we’ve chosen to love.

Because there’s more to life than who we choose to love.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be in a relationship—we’re all human. But a relationship is not required for you to be happy. It’s not the only way to find joy in your life. Your happiness isn’t contingent on loving someone else. That’s something that’s been programmed into you by movies, advertising, social norms, social media, and old blueprints.

Singlehood isn’t just about being single. Singlehood is about being a whole person.

A thriving relationship is one in which two whole people come together and do life with each other, not at or around each other.

We continue to drift further from ourselves, and the more we disconnect from ourselves, the more we crave connecting with someone else.

Read that sentence again. This is why so many of us fall into lukewarm relationships that lead to years of misery and heartbreak. Relationships we know aren’t right but we don’t want to be alone. Or we think we can fix because fixing things is how we find value in ourselves. But we can’t fix other people. And we’ll always only be 50 percent of any relationship. So even if we could be perfect, that would be only half and half is not enough.

Doing things for the outcome rather than for the joy of the process disconnects you from yourself.

So stop telling yourself to love yourself. That’s a loaded demand. There’s pressure behind it. And it makes you feel defective if you struggle with it. The truth is, we all struggle with self-love because we don’t know how to love ourselves. It’s not something we practice. Yes, we’re good at loving others. But rarely do we even prioritize loving ourselves, much less practice it.

A first date with yourself can be a walk. Or a workout. Or a cup of coffee sitting on a brick wall on a Saturday afternoon. It’s not about the activity. It’s about the connection.

Self-care doesn’t mean bubble baths and fancy brunches. It really means taking care of yourself daily like you would for someone you love. It means breaking the pattern of putting yourself last. It means not taking on everything.

Giving yourself space to be human. Self-care is building a better relationship with yourself by listening to yourself and giving yourself what you need and deserve.

Are you assassinating your own character and calling yourself fat, stupid, lazy? How you talk to yourself is actually more important than how you treat yourself. Because how you talk to yourself will determine how you treat yourself. Words turn into actions more easily than actions turn into words.

When we find someone we want to spend all our time with, we do. And we slowly lose our friends. Not having friends makes us disconnect from ourselves. And when we disconnect from ourselves, we also disconnect from our partner. We think we’ve found paradise, but we’ve created our own desert island. Yes, your partner can be your best friend. But he or she cannot be your only friend.

Dance for you and other people will dance with you. Dance for others and you become a show. Not a person.

Just because you have a history doesn’t mean you have a healthy friendship. Read that sentence again.

You have to grow individually if you want to grow as a couple.

How do I create healthy new love experiences that will eclipse the old ones—and pave over the unhealthy ones—and give me new definitions of love?

I learned that my views of love were distorted and unhealthy. I thought that love meant, if I go down, you go down with me. And vice versa. I thought love meant we become one person.

Many don’t know what to do with themselves when they are alone because they get their worth from loving someone else. They have never made life about themselves, but always about others.

I started liking myself only when I started listening to myself, treating myself better, and practicing self-compassion, self-care, and self-discipline, all of which shaped my character. It wasn’t until I finally allowed myself to know me that I started to like me.

Yes, that person may love you, but remember: love is a choice. Your partner is choosing to love you, but that doesn’t mean they find you just as attractive as they did at first. You should not stop doing everything you were doing to take care of yourself when you got into the relationship. You should actually be doing more.

Because it’s not just how you look and feel that becomes unattractive, but the fact that you don’t care about how you look and feel.

“Closure” requires nothing from the other person involved. It does not require an answer, an apology, or an explanation. If it did, very few people would truly be able to move on because most relationships end unsettled and unresolved.

You have no control over the other person and their experience of you or what happened. And if your definition of closure is making sure they see things like you do, they’re okay with things, and they’re not mad at you anymore, you will never move on.

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. Beauty is being gentle but strong, careful with your words, and able to forgive right away instead of holding on to resentment. Beauty is honest and consistent communication.

Beauty is also being able to draw strong healthy boundaries with a Sharpie instead of chalk.

I used to believe that love was only about lightning sparks. That whole “locking eyes across the room and just knowing” dynamic. But that’s not love. That’s a fairy tale.

Some days love is easy. Some days it’s hard. Love fluctuates. It’s a dance, with an ebb and flow. Love is not a constant.

Love is found in moments. The moment when you realize you were heard.

Because love is not a constant, and if you see it that way, your love will always flat-line. Love is its own living breathing thing that you must allow to constantly grow and evolve and take new shape as you grow and evolve and take new shape.

Worth is not something you believe. Worth is something you build. Read that sentence again. Most people think they can white-knuckle their way to worth. But you can’t. It’s a process. More accurately, a space.

To believe. In love. In sweat. In building something. In starting over. Because over doesn’t mean again. Over means new. But you can’t get to new until you believe. Again.