August 2, 2024 • 40 mins
Our fear of being alone forever and never finding the right one is scary, but it's also pretty natural. Whether you have never dated before, or are worried that you have missed your chance for true, long term love, it can be hard to imagine ourselves finding the right person without getting really caught up in the dating process. Today, let's talk about how to overcome your fear of being alone or ending up single, including:
- The fear of missing out
- The impact of social pain
- The societal narrative towards singlehood
- Single shaming language + the role of ambiguous loss
- Does a fear of being alone make us less selective?
- How to be self partnered and actually LOVE it!
All of that and some much more! Listen now!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
Welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here back for another episode as we, of
course break down the Psychology of our twenties. I'm so
glad that you're here. I'm really excited for this episode
because it is something that comes up so much on
the podcast and is such a deeply hidden fear for
(00:49):
so many of us. One of the things I hear
so often from twenty somethings from people beyond that age,
people in their thirties, is this fear of ending up
alone and never finding the one. I hear it from
people who have never dated before and feel very inexperienced
and behind when it comes to those romantic situations and
(01:13):
hitting those romantic milestones that everybody around them seems to
have already met, and you know, they find it really
hard to imagine that they'll find love because they've never
experienced it before. I also hear from people who have
been in long term relationships for years and years and
they've broken up with their partners, perhaps the person that
they thought they were going to marry, and they wonder,
(01:34):
they wonder that they've missed their chance to grow up
with somebody, and whether they will ever find anyone better.
It is such a common dilemma, one that I think
really unites us, not just as twenty somethings, but as people,
as human beings. I don't want to be alone. I
want love. I want someone to share my life with,
(01:55):
and it's not bad to admit that, or to assume
that just because you have this deep desire to maybe
eventually find somebody, you can't also be happy as a
single person. You can be so self aware and content
and fulfilled and still want someone to add to your
life without giving up everything that makes you independent already.
(02:17):
But I also think in many ways we have been
conditioned to see singlehood as this curse, as something that
everybody wants to avoid, and that really fosters a fear
of being alone and a fear of ending up alone,
when really I don't think that that's the worst thing
that could happen to us. This episode was really inspired
(02:39):
by someone who contributed to our twenty something Diary series
on Instagram. If you follow us on Instagram, you will
know that once a week we basically talk to someone
anonymously who is in their twenties somewhere in the world,
and we ask them, what are you worried about? How
much you haven savings, what do you want to change
in the next five years? And we have this person
(03:00):
from Perth and Australia right in and talk about how
the thing that she is most worried about is ending
up alone. And during this day in a Life that
she gave us, she was going on a date and
she kind of spoke about how she was in this
relationship for most of her late ten years and early twenties,
(03:20):
suddenly found herself single and had been single much longer
than she expected, and with each passing year it just
felt like more and more people were finding the one.
We're getting into these relationships and there were no good
people left. There was nobody left that would fulfill her
or be her partner, and it just kind of felt
(03:40):
like a race, like a race to find someone before
she turned thirty. And when I posted that and we
spoke about it, so many of you could relate. So
many of you were listening and reading her account of
situationship after situationship with no future and no exclusivity and
really seeing yourself reflected back at you. I think at
(04:05):
the root of what this person was talking about, what
we're talking about today, is a completely natural fear of loneliness,
a fear of missing out, a fear of falling behind,
a fear of judgment, of uncertainty, like you know, who
am I going to have when I'm old and gray?
And of course social pressure, and how so many of
the cultural narratives we experience and we're exposed to seem
(04:28):
to innately tie our self worth and our identity to
a relationship status, like having a partner, you know, finally
means that you are desirable and valuable, And if you
don't have a partner, that is a personal failure. There
is something about you that is lacking. It is such
a labyrinth. I don't feel like I don't need to
tell you that if you're experiencing it right now, And
(04:50):
it can be pretty emotionally draining when you've been dating
with no luck, no end in sight, when you want
to deprioritize dating and actually be happy alone. But it
feels like there is this little voice of your head
being like you're running out of time. You're running out
of time. So today let us talk about it. We're
going to talk about this very innate and psychological fear
of ending up alone, where it comes from, what kind
(05:11):
of people it turns us into, how it influences our
dating habits as well, and how it is possible for
us to really hold too truth at once. I want love,
but love is not my only purpose. I can be
happy alone and still want a relationship without letting it
sabotage my individuality. How exactly do we sit with our
(05:33):
fear without letting it control us or making us very
deeply unhappy and stressed, as it so often does. Well,
let's trap in. We have so much show unpack, so
much to talk about today, and surprisingly, perhaps not surprisingly
if you are a long term listener, a whole lot
of science and psychology to explain what it is you
(05:53):
may be feeling. So without further ado, let's get into it.
Our fear of being alone is a lot more complex
than just that just simply being alone. It really taps
into our very core and I would say primal fears
of firstly rejection and secondly isolation, two things that we
(06:16):
have been hardwired for millions of years. Millions of years
of evolution have taught us to avoid those two specific
feelings and experiences. As humans, we really thrive on being seen,
being loved, being surrounded by community, and it has built
us to really want connection wherever we can find it,
(06:40):
and to build trust, build something bigger that feels meaningful
and safe around those connections. That is what ensured our
survival long long ago. When we don't have that, especially
when it comes to a romantic love and we've been
single for some time or we've never dated, when we've
maybe been rejected far too many times than we would
(07:01):
like to acknowledge. This elicits a very distinct kind of
feeling known as social pain. So social pain occurs when
we feel isolated, we feel excluded, rejected, cut off, and
it may sound like it's less serious than physical pain,
but actually neuroscientists back in twenty fourteen in Italy found
(07:22):
that when they were studying the brain regions that lit
up when we were experiencing rejection versus physical pain, it
was the exact same region that was processing those distinct
kinds of discomfort and pain. So this area, this brain
region is called the posterior insular cortex for those of
you interested, and that is what we used to think
(07:46):
as our pain receptor and our pain receptor in terms
of you know, we kick our foot or like bump
our toe, or we cut our finger, and that's where
physical pain is processed. And that is the only role
of that area. Here's a brief life and about pain.
Though pain is constructed entirely by our brain and by
our neurons that are responding to some environmental stimuli or cue.
(08:11):
You know, if you bump your knee, you'll be like, yeah,
my knee hurts, but it's actually your brain that is
creating that painful experience for you. And the same goes
for social pain, and that social pain when we get rejected,
when we feel lost, lonely, when we feel unworthy of love,
is happening in that same cortex area, the posterior insular cortex.
(08:33):
If you have been you know, single for some time
and you recently went on yet another date that was
a dud, or you feel disconnected from all your friends
who are in relationships who just aren't making the time
for you that they used to. That is a painful experience,
and it is felt as intensely as physical pain. It
is processed, created, constructed, felt by the exact same region.
(08:55):
So I really don't want you to be sitting there
being like, oh my god, I'm just making way too
much of this situation. I don't want you to be
shaming yourself for this experience, feeling like you are over reacting,
feeling like it's not as intense as you feel it is.
Because the science is telling us the you know, research
is telling us that actually know, it is very equal
(09:17):
to what might be a much more valid physical experience
of pain, or what society would like to tell us
as a valid painful experience. So we have a natural
drive to want to find someone. We are both motivated
by the comfort of finding someone and the discomfort of
the social pain that we tend to experience. We are
hardwired to avoid these scary feelings of isolation and rejection. However,
(09:42):
the thing is is that so often, just because we
are single, we aren't actually fully alone. We are surrounded
by people, surrounded by friends and family. We do have communities.
So it's interesting because Surely this experience of isolation shouldn't
sting as much as we think. It's not like we're
stranded in like the wilderness and a boyfriend or a
(10:03):
girlfriend would be our only chance for connection. We actually
have plenty of chances for connection. It's interesting because what
we are lacking is not an entire support system. We
are just lacking a mate or a partner. And why
is it that despite having all of those connections, we
still feel this social pain so intensely. If you want
to identify white people fear and feel this fear so
(10:27):
intensely even when they have, you know, platonic and familial
relationships around them, you have to also examine the cultural
environment that we are in. It is very hard to
feel shame or embarrassment or even fear about something if
somebody hasn't told you in the first place that there
is something wrong with what you are doing, or that
there is something wrong with your reality, or someone hasn't
(10:48):
scared you with some awful future hypothetical of being miserable
and regretful and lonely at fifty. Our fear of being
alone is also partially derived from our environment, say about
twenty percent of it might be biology and evolution. The
rest of it, the eighty percent that is left over,
is societal. It is cultural. It is social. If you
(11:11):
are single right now, I feel like I don't even
need to tell you this, but society really does prioritize
partnership and it puts romantic love on a pedestal. A
relationship is like this golden prize, and it's made to
seem so wonderful. People write poetry and love songs and
create works of art about love. They spend hundreds of
thousands of dollars to show their love for one another
(11:31):
through a wedding and lavish gifts and huge grand gestures.
You know, people die for love. People survive for love
that looks pretty appealing, and if you've never experienced it before,
or it's something that you're really longing for, that can
be made to seem a lot bigger than it actually is.
Society is also not fully accepted the timeline that is
(11:52):
becoming more and more common in which people stay single
for much longer, or they adopt the kind of life
in which you know you can be happy alone. There
is still this overarching philosophy of you know, who are
you if you're not in love, who are you? If
you're not in a relationship, you are still half a person.
And it's that kind of culture of shaming and of
(12:16):
stereotypes and perhaps of stigma that plays on our more
evolutionary fear of isolation. Where this is seen a lot
and felt a lot is around things like language. You know,
there are words like spinster and cat lady. That's definitely
one dimension, but it even goes deeper than that. So
(12:36):
there's a starter from a survey that was conducted by
the dating service match back in twenty nineteen, and it
showed that fifty two percent of single people that they
surveyed in the UK had experienced single shaming in conversations
and in the language that was used to approach their
relationship status. And so when researchers kind of dug into
(12:58):
this and they were like, what do you mean by language,
they talked about these shaming phrases. A lot of people,
a lot of these single people had heard things like
you'll find someone better soon. Twenty nine percent said they'd
heard or how to experienced people suggesting that they must
be really lonely. Thirty eight percent of them just reported
a general level of pity in conversations over their relationship status,
(13:21):
and this led to many of them to report having
an increased sense of urgency even panic to find someone,
when actually about fifty five percent of them were pretty
happy with their relationship status, and they were pretty happy
with it until an outside force came in and disturbed
that piece. This language, you know, these shaming phrases of
(13:44):
you'll find someone soon, you must be so lonely, are
you dating at the moment, or you're not that such
a shame. It implicitly assumes that everybody's goal is to
find love and the fact that you haven't assumes that
something is wrong with you either a you must be
lonely or defective, which is not true. You know, most
(14:07):
research shows that single people actually have equally rich and
fulfilled lives as non single people. Or they assume that
you are unable to commit, that you were wired the
wrong way, you were wired away from partnership. And for men,
they're perhaps given a bit more of a free pass
when it comes to that to be uncommitted and to
be running around, for women not so much. And again,
(14:30):
it's not true that you are unable to commit or
that you have some kind of abandonment problem or whatever
it is. It's more likely that you're just not willing
to commit to the wrong person, and that should be
totally normalized. But because it is always about partnership before
you as a person, there is still a level of
shame and these false beliefs around who you must be
(14:51):
if you're not prioritizing dating in a relationship in your twenties,
or just in your life in general. All in all,
I think these assumptions the slanguge. It displays the lives
of single people as being less rich, and I am
like a huge fan of a lot of accounts and
Instagram accounts that are pushing down the stereotype. But even
if you truly believe in the sacred nature and the
(15:14):
benefits of being single, even if you are really really
happy where you are right now, I think the older
we get, it's also natural for a bit more fear
to creep in. And sometimes this comes down to another factor,
which is social comparison, and even deeper than that, the
fear of missing out on what everybody else seems to
be having and seems to be enjoying. I think this
(15:35):
is especially the case when you haven't dated or been
in love before seeing how much people really enjoy the experience,
or when you're kind of getting to a stage where
people are moving in together, people are getting married, they're
having kids, maybe you see a life that you may want.
At some stage, you see your friends kind of outgrowing
perhaps the life stage that you were all previously in,
(15:56):
and it's really difficult and stressful, and the only way
to discrib it is a fear of missing out. It's
also what psychologists may call a sense of ambiguous loss,
feeling like you've lost something or you are grieving a
life that you are yet to have, despite being really
happy with the one that you do have. So because
(16:18):
of these two conflicting truths, you know, I'm happy where
I am, but I also feel a sense of I
don't know, desire or jealousy, or a sense of panic.
You are unable to really find a home or a
place for these emotions. You feel constantly like there's a
tug of war in your heart between you know, staying
single and doing what everyone around you is telling you
(16:39):
to do. This creates dissonance. Basically, dissonance is just another
word for being uncomfortable, and we don't like being uncomfortable.
So we look for a way to lessen that discomfort,
and often a relationship is the band aid, right, It's
a great way to do that all our problems or
our fears are solved. This isn't all for the best, though.
(17:00):
I feel like that is such an obvious statement, but
let me just make it. What actually happens is that
when we have this fixation, this focus on the life
that will emerge if we stay single for too long,
we end up being ruled by fear. We end up
being ruled by hypotheticals and catastrophizing that hasn't even happened yet,
(17:25):
that may not even happen. When a fear or an
anxiety towards this potential future is the only thing that
we feel, our behavior becomes driven by that fear, and
that behavior is protective. It truly is because I you know,
our brain, I guess our higher conscious, our ego wants
to protect our future self from what it sees as
a harmful outcome. And a harmful outcome, you know, based
(17:47):
on biology, based on this weird evolutionary drive, but also
based on what society is telling you as the norm.
This fear can firsely cause us to be less selective.
So there was an article published about four years ago
and the title is the predictive effects of fear of
being single on physical attractiveness and less selective partner selection.
(18:09):
Long title, I know, but look it up if you
want to, if you can. Basically, what the researchers wanted
to know is, Okay, the more desperate you become, do
you lower your standards? And I don't like the word desperate.
I hate that word. But you know, the more fearful
of our future status as a single person, the fearful
of that we are, do we become less selective. I
(18:31):
will take a direct quote from this paper because I
think it really solidifies this point for both men and women.
A stronger fear of being single predicted greater romantic interest
in dating prospects who were less responsive and less physically attractive.
Once in a relationship, there was a lower likelihood of
initiating breakups with dissatisfying partners. So what does that actually mean.
(18:54):
It means that, firstly, when we are really scared of
being single, and we are scared of that hypothe medical
above all else, we end up choosing people that first
we don't even like us back or who we don't
even find attractive. But once we are in that relationship,
even when we realize it's not for us, we stay
because being with the wrong person is less scary than
(19:17):
being alone. This can also mean that, you know, not
only are we less selective, we also undervalue ourselves. We
undervalue what it is that we can bring to the table,
and so we let people perhaps, and I don't like saying,
let we perhaps experience circumstances where people are treating us
(19:38):
not as well as they should, and they know that,
and we know that because we kind of feel like
we are forced to endure bad behavior or else encounter
an even worse fear for ourselves. And that is again
the fear of being alone. It also ties our self
esteem to our romantic or physical value. So what I
(19:59):
mean by that is basically, when we begin to perhaps
buy into this belief that if you are alone, that
therefore says something about how attractive you are, how valuable
you are, how desirable you are, how confident, how successful
you are the only way in your mind to make
(20:19):
people not believe that about you, that you are unattractive,
that you are undesirable, that you are not successful, or
not intelligent is to find a partner. And when our
self esteem is tied to our relationship status, that is
not a very sustainable bond. That is not a very
sustainable relationship to maintain because it bobs up and down
(20:42):
based on whether you are single or taken. And it
means that everything about who we are, our authenticity, our
confidence levels become tied to this very small part of
our life, which is a label, which is an exclusive label.
We also put a lot of pressure on everyone that
we meet, even when they give us a whole lot
(21:03):
of signs that they may not even be reciprocating what
we're putting down. Perhaps we're kind of blind to it
because we see a spark and we just chase it.
And again, it's very much like an all or nothing approach,
like this relationship is what I need to be happy,
it's what I need to feel good, it's what I
need to impress other people, and it's what I need
to finally feel maybe complete. And I was speaking to
(21:28):
a friend about this who was single for twenty six
years before she met someone, and I was asking her
about it. I was like, you know, think back to
that time when you were dating, what did it mean
to you that that status of being single for that
long did it actually change how you approach situations? And
she was like, yes, absolutely, she was like everybody she met,
(21:50):
everybody she encountered, she immediately ran this like series of
series of situations in her head in which they could
be the one. Her mind immediately went to the most
far off conclusions, like they would do one nice thing
for her that meant that, you know, that was her husband,
that was her future partner, because you know, it was
(22:10):
just always on her mind. She was always thinking about it.
She was always hoping for it in every situation and
every circumstance, and she didn't care who it was with.
And what she was saying to me was that it
was really frustrating because she kind of wanted her heart
to slow down so her brain could catch up and
her brain could be rational without getting caught up in
(22:31):
really intense feelings that ended up shutting down a lot
of that logic. You know. She was like, Oh, I
would meet these people and we would literally go on
one day and there was nothing that you could say
to convince me that they weren't the one, and so
I began treating them like that before they'd even showed
an interest in me, and she was like, I just
kept getting my heart broken without ever actually being in
anything serious, without ever even feeling like I'd done the
(22:54):
relationship thing. So I think that really comes down to
a sense of scarcity and a sense that we better
like getting quick, We better find someone to commit to
right now, otherwise all the good ones are going to
run out. Otherwise we're going to, I don't know, somehow
run out of time, somehow be left in the dust.
And the scarcity effect really comes down to when something
(23:18):
seems more rare to you, such as a relationship, because
you don't have one, that's suddenly that thing that is
scarce feels a lot more valuable because not everyone can
have it because you can't have it. It's basically like
the grass is always green, and mentality, it's, you know,
wanting what you can't have, it's all of those things.
It's looking at your situation and wanting the one thing
(23:43):
that you're missing more than you even value the things
that you do have. That can lead us to a
pretty dangerous place, as I just described. And I think
when we encounter that kind of thinking, it's really important
to remind yourself that it is much better to be
single than to settle for something else, and blah blah blah.
I get it. You probably heard that a million times.
(24:05):
You know that might not change the underlying desire or
fear or behavior. But let's make it even more mathematic.
You could settle down and spend the next five to
ten years in a mediocre relationship that eventually crumbles, meaning
that you're going to be back to where you are now,
back at the starting line in ten years time. Or
you could wait another three to five years, be selective
and find the one You could find the soul mate.
(24:27):
You could spend the rest of your lives together, or
you could have neither option, and you could, yeah, maybe
be alone for the rest of your life and maybe
be really really happy, perhaps be the happiest version of
yourself that you were ever going to be. The secret
to living and fulfilling life is not as simple as
a relationship status. I think that's the one thing that
(24:49):
I really want us to remember. There is this weird
fear that is implanted in us that we are on
this timeline, and this timeline involves curing a relationship, and
that if you don't have it there's something wrong with you.
Your life isn't going to be as good. That is
fear mongering. That is fear mongering that we eventually adopt
(25:10):
ourselves because it's really hard not to. So how do
we really fully embrace our power? I guess is I
would like to say, intentionally single people, how do we
have patience? How do we also make our lives as
rich as they possibly can before we get back out there,
before we find someone who is going to match that? Well?
I have some tips for you, some advice and some
(25:31):
psychology after this short break, so stay with us. How
can we still recognize that a relationship is part of
our timeline. It's okay to want love. It's okay to
desire that as part of your future, but not get
bogged down by the fear of being alone and let
(25:53):
it influence us to make rash decisions. Because it's okay
to say, like, yes, a big part of my life
plan and something that I want for my future is
to find someone, and is to love them and build
a family or a business or a house or a life,
whatever it is. We just don't want that to be
our goal above everything else and feel like we can't
start living till we've secured it. I think it's about
(26:17):
pursuing an authentic, well lived life that a relationship could
only benefit, but not complete. So my first tip around
kind of countering this fear of being alone, it revolves
around continuing to make yourself an interesting person, find yourself interesting,
find your life interesting, regardless of what's happening when it
(26:39):
comes to your romantic life. And I think in this way,
not only does it help us stay secure that we
are a really cool person. This will come in time,
but I think that authenticity in itself actually inevitably and
eventually attracts the love that we want so badly, but
in a healthy form and on its own timeline. Work
(26:59):
on making yourself an interesting person and in the process
creating a life that you absolutely fucking love that anyone
who walks to the door is going to have to
compete with. They are going to have to compete with
your dream life before they are let in. And that
is a really hard bar to get over, and it
means that you are more selective. It means that you
(27:21):
also just enjoy your time as a single individual without
seeing it as a waiting period, without seeing it as
like you being on the sidelines, or you being on
the bench before you know your life truly starts. That
authentic well lived life to me, involves having things that
keep you busy whilst giving you purpose, having things that
(27:44):
make you feel aligned with yourself, actually exploring who you are.
It is so so rare that we have time in
our life to actually think about what we want to
think about what you want from yourself right now and
from your future, to think about your identity and who
(28:05):
you really are. I really implore you to think about this.
When was the last time you really thought about those things?
When was the last time you really thought about? What
kind of person do I want to be? What kind
of life do I want to live? How am I
going to work on myself? Am I really happy right now?
I think that's one of the gifts about being single,
is that it does allow for that really intense and
(28:25):
beneficial and significant self focus. Another element of that authentic
well lived life also means having an active and engage life,
having hobbies and people you see in those spaces, that
casual social interaction that is such an antidote to the
loneliness we sometimes feel more single. There's no shame around it.
It is something that we experience. And also taking opportunities
(28:48):
that you might only have while single, you know, being
able to date freely and openly without looking for commitment,
being able to drop what you're doing and go and explore,
and not having to you know, really think about someone
and really count them into your plans. That is something
that we don't talk about. En me get into a
(29:10):
relationship like it's another person to think about, and sometimes
it's nice to just have to think about yourself. And also,
like I said before, ensuring that when the time comes
when they're you know, someone does come into your life,
because no one goes through life without ever meeting somebody
who could potentially really match them and be the person
(29:32):
for them. Knowing that you are going to still be
in control of your fate. You are still the master
of your own fate, and you still get to be
the one calling the shots around. Does this actually benefit
my life? Am I being selective enough? Or does it
feel like there is a whole that I couldn't feel myself?
And That's why I'm pursuing this relationship. When we feel
(29:55):
strong as an individual, we are able to bring that
part of ourself, bring that soa bring that identity to
dating in a way that is more selective, more mature,
I also think, more fruitful. And here's the added benefit.
Authenticity makes you attractive. It makes you so much more
attractive through its influence on our sense of self confidence.
(30:17):
If you know yourself and you know yourself well, you're
not going to let the opinions of somebody else or
their approval or rejection of you, get in the way
of just being yourself, and you exude that kind of
confident elixa that we are all after. If you want
some evidence of this, you can check out a research
paper that was published in twenty fifteen by the Journal
(30:37):
of Personality and Social Psychology. I have quoted this study
so many times on the podcast because it is probably
one of my favorites. But in this research, these researchers
looked at a series of dating scenarios between two people
in a lab and they found that confidence was actually
one of the strongest predictors of romantic attractiveness, and confidence
(30:58):
we cannot have it without a set of authenticity. One
of the reasons that it's so attractive is that a
lot of the things we want in a partner are
really difficult to observe upon first meeting them, right, things
like competence, things like drive, things like kindness, things like intelligence.
You know, you only really get kind of a peek
(31:18):
at whether somebody has all those things upon a first impression.
But if that person shows up and is confident, we
kind of believe that they know themselves right. We believe
that they have a reason for being confident, and that
this reflects the actual value as a partner, so we
feel really into them. Another explanation. Confidence creates a real
(31:39):
aura that draws people in. I'm sure you've had that
experience where you've met somebody, perhaps not even somebody that
you're like romantically into, just like someone and you've just
been like, Wow, I want to be around you. You
make me feel warm, you make me feel see, you
are like this bright light. And I think what that
comes down to is that a lot of us do
lack self esteem, and so we are really intrigued by
(32:02):
people who seemingly don't. We want to learn from these people,
We want to maybe have that energy rub off on them.
And if you take time to really build that in yourself,
I think it's just a win win scenario. You attract
better people and you are more discerning of those people
as well. Another I think benefit of choosing to be
(32:23):
very authentically aligned with yourself in a way that is
not reliant on your relationship status is that it helps
you dispurse a lot of those false beliefs that society
would have us believe about single people. And as we
said before, it's those false beliefs that contribute to this
fear of being alone. If I'm single, you know I
must be unattractive, I must be boring, I must be unworthy,
I must be lonely. That is what so much of
(32:45):
the information we're picking up from society would lead you
to believe, and that is what makes us feel like
a partner is the only answer to making ourselves feel
more worthy and being a full complete person. You could
try that narrative. You could trust that society or rhetoric
and that society or vision, or you could trust your
(33:07):
own reality, which is that you are thriving, You were purposeful,
you are busy, and you know yourself better than most
people ever will. When you are confident in yourself, you
are able to look at those beliefs that might be
creating fear within you and creating poor decision making and say, actually,
I don't think that that's true, because I know myself
(33:28):
better than what this outdated narrative is trying to tell me.
The thing that really helped me when I was single
was looking at people who were still single at thirty
or forty or sixty and had really vibrant lives, because
I feel like the examples we are so often given
of happiness as we age is the happiness that we
(33:49):
get from big milestones that are associated with a partner,
you know, marriage, moving in together, having children together, vacations together.
It feels like, past thirty five, a lot of the
significant moments in our life need to be with somebody else.
And when we counteract that with the examples of people
(34:11):
who are still showing us that they are fulfilled and
happy despite going against the blueprint, we are able to really,
I think, dispose of that, dispose of that belief system,
and dispose of that construct. Somebody they always used to
think of was Emma Watson, and she did an interview
(34:31):
a few years ago where she like publicly described herself
as self partnered. That is a concept that I love.
It's like, I'm not single, I'm self partnered. I'm like
consciously dating myself, and she really like encouraged other people
to view their own I don't want to say lack
of a romantic partner, but their singlehood as a positive,
not a negative. Nearly like forty percent of adults in
(34:54):
the US don't have a partner. About half of those
people even express that they weren't even interested in according
to this research by the Pew Research Center. And I
think that that is something that if you only listen
to what the media said, if you only saw examples
online or in movies, or in the news or in
(35:15):
opinion pieces, you would believe that that is not the case.
You would believe that it's the opposite that most people
are in relationships. Most people are happier in relationships. But
in this example that they gave in this research, they
talk about this woman, Bella de Paulo. She is a
famously single person. She's sixty nine years old, she's never
(35:37):
been in a relationship, and she describes her solo life
as authentic, as fulfilling, as meaningful, as psychologically rich. That
is the opposite of what the world would like to
tell us about single people in order to fear monger.
And I think once again those examples wherever you see
them in the world, they are really powerful because they
(35:57):
get rid of the doom and gloom that fuels fear. Finally,
I think it's so important that if you are somebody
who is such a lover, who really just wants someone
to pour all of that brightness and life and energy
and passion and compassion into remember that platonic love is
just as important. Just having a partner is so lonely,
(36:22):
and I've seen that amongst people in my own life
who deprioritized friendship once they had achieved that relationship status
that they wanted, and they are very, very lonely people. Because,
as we said before, that social pain that we feel
when we are isolated is real. It's tangible, and it hurts.
(36:44):
And so it's really important that if you are somebody
who is a lover, is a giver, you find a
way to still tap into that part of you, either
by showing that love to yourself or really fostering those
connections that are going to sometimes last so much longer
than a love connection than a romantic relationship. Just because
(37:04):
you are single, you are not alone. There are so
many single people in their twenties there are so many
single people at any age, and it's not like every
single one of them is miserable and hidden away and isolated.
They have family, they have friends, they have people that
they admire. I think our fear of being alone often
(37:26):
occurs when we aren't given that vision of what life
could be like as an unpartnered person, when there is
a very shallow and false, false story about the unhappiness
levels of people who are alone, of people who have
never met the one. So, finally, I want to wrap
(37:48):
this up and just conclude by saying, it's okay to
want love, but don't let the pursuit of love dim
you down. You are still young, you still have time.
You will find the right person that is what you
are after, but don't wait for your life to start
until then. The fear of being alone is a very
very deeply rooted one. It is an instinctual one, it
(38:12):
is a primal one. But it's also one that is
stoked by a lot of unnecessary stories and pictures and
narratives pushed by our society. So take your time. It's
all right to just like really enjoy being self partnered
and exploring yourself. And if you fear being alone forever.
(38:33):
Just know that there are people who your worst fear
is their reality, and I'm sure they would sit you
down and say it's really not that bad. I promise
you it's not that bad. I promise you that there
is a lot about this that was a choice that
I made the same way that you will be able
to make choices, and you'll be able to create a
life that you want, regardless of weather dating right now
(38:54):
feels out of your control, regardless of whether you feel
very fixated on love right now, it is not the
end of your life to not find love. So thank
you so much for listening. This was a bit of
a pep talk, and I want to just extend a
lot of empathy and a lot of strength and a
lot of love to you for what you're going through.
(39:14):
You do have time. I promise you. I'm not gonna
give you those like bullshit phrases of like it happens
when you least expect it, because I just don't think
that is very helpful, and sometimes it's not true. Sometimes
it happens when you are like when you most expect it,
because you are at your most authentic and at your
most confident and whilst you wait for that, build those
(39:35):
things up. They are a tool, they are a skill.
They are a part of you that never goes away,
that never expires, that can never be dimmed. So thank
you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode,
please feel free to leave a five star review on
Apple Podcasts, Spotify wherever you are listening right now. Make
sure you're following along or send this episode to a
(39:55):
friend if you think that they would enjoy it. If
you have any further thought, if you have an episode suggestion,
I love hearing from you, you can follow me at
that psychology podcast or at jemispeg. Come and join the community,
come and say hi, and until next week, make sure
that you are safe. You are kind above all else,
(40:16):
you are gentle to yourself, and we will talk soon
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
Welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here back for another episode as we, of
course break down the Psychology of our twenties. I'm so
glad that you're here. I'm really excited for this episode
because it is something that comes up so much on
the podcast and is such a deeply hidden fear for
(00:49):
so many of us. One of the things I hear
so often from twenty somethings from people beyond that age,
people in their thirties, is this fear of ending up
alone and never finding the one. I hear it from
people who have never dated before and feel very inexperienced
and behind when it comes to those romantic situations and
(01:13):
hitting those romantic milestones that everybody around them seems to
have already met, and you know, they find it really
hard to imagine that they'll find love because they've never
experienced it before. I also hear from people who have
been in long term relationships for years and years and
they've broken up with their partners, perhaps the person that
they thought they were going to marry, and they wonder,
(01:34):
they wonder that they've missed their chance to grow up
with somebody, and whether they will ever find anyone better.
It is such a common dilemma, one that I think
really unites us, not just as twenty somethings, but as people,
as human beings. I don't want to be alone. I
want love. I want someone to share my life with,
(01:55):
and it's not bad to admit that, or to assume
that just because you have this deep desire to maybe
eventually find somebody, you can't also be happy as a
single person. You can be so self aware and content
and fulfilled and still want someone to add to your
life without giving up everything that makes you independent already.
(02:17):
But I also think in many ways we have been
conditioned to see singlehood as this curse, as something that
everybody wants to avoid, and that really fosters a fear
of being alone and a fear of ending up alone,
when really I don't think that that's the worst thing
that could happen to us. This episode was really inspired
(02:39):
by someone who contributed to our twenty something Diary series
on Instagram. If you follow us on Instagram, you will
know that once a week we basically talk to someone
anonymously who is in their twenties somewhere in the world,
and we ask them, what are you worried about? How
much you haven savings, what do you want to change
in the next five years? And we have this person
(03:00):
from Perth and Australia right in and talk about how
the thing that she is most worried about is ending
up alone. And during this day in a Life that
she gave us, she was going on a date and
she kind of spoke about how she was in this
relationship for most of her late ten years and early twenties,
(03:20):
suddenly found herself single and had been single much longer
than she expected, and with each passing year it just
felt like more and more people were finding the one.
We're getting into these relationships and there were no good
people left. There was nobody left that would fulfill her
or be her partner, and it just kind of felt
(03:40):
like a race, like a race to find someone before
she turned thirty. And when I posted that and we
spoke about it, so many of you could relate. So
many of you were listening and reading her account of
situationship after situationship with no future and no exclusivity and
really seeing yourself reflected back at you. I think at
(04:05):
the root of what this person was talking about, what
we're talking about today, is a completely natural fear of loneliness,
a fear of missing out, a fear of falling behind,
a fear of judgment, of uncertainty, like you know, who
am I going to have when I'm old and gray?
And of course social pressure, and how so many of
the cultural narratives we experience and we're exposed to seem
(04:28):
to innately tie our self worth and our identity to
a relationship status, like having a partner, you know, finally
means that you are desirable and valuable, And if you
don't have a partner, that is a personal failure. There
is something about you that is lacking. It is such
a labyrinth. I don't feel like I don't need to
tell you that if you're experiencing it right now, And
(04:50):
it can be pretty emotionally draining when you've been dating
with no luck, no end in sight, when you want
to deprioritize dating and actually be happy alone. But it
feels like there is this little voice of your head
being like you're running out of time. You're running out
of time. So today let us talk about it. We're
going to talk about this very innate and psychological fear
of ending up alone, where it comes from, what kind
(05:11):
of people it turns us into, how it influences our
dating habits as well, and how it is possible for
us to really hold too truth at once. I want love,
but love is not my only purpose. I can be
happy alone and still want a relationship without letting it
sabotage my individuality. How exactly do we sit with our
(05:33):
fear without letting it control us or making us very
deeply unhappy and stressed, as it so often does. Well,
let's trap in. We have so much show unpack, so
much to talk about today, and surprisingly, perhaps not surprisingly
if you are a long term listener, a whole lot
of science and psychology to explain what it is you
(05:53):
may be feeling. So without further ado, let's get into it.
Our fear of being alone is a lot more complex
than just that just simply being alone. It really taps
into our very core and I would say primal fears
of firstly rejection and secondly isolation, two things that we
(06:16):
have been hardwired for millions of years. Millions of years
of evolution have taught us to avoid those two specific
feelings and experiences. As humans, we really thrive on being seen,
being loved, being surrounded by community, and it has built
us to really want connection wherever we can find it,
(06:40):
and to build trust, build something bigger that feels meaningful
and safe around those connections. That is what ensured our
survival long long ago. When we don't have that, especially
when it comes to a romantic love and we've been
single for some time or we've never dated, when we've
maybe been rejected far too many times than we would
(07:01):
like to acknowledge. This elicits a very distinct kind of
feeling known as social pain. So social pain occurs when
we feel isolated, we feel excluded, rejected, cut off, and
it may sound like it's less serious than physical pain,
but actually neuroscientists back in twenty fourteen in Italy found
(07:22):
that when they were studying the brain regions that lit
up when we were experiencing rejection versus physical pain, it
was the exact same region that was processing those distinct
kinds of discomfort and pain. So this area, this brain
region is called the posterior insular cortex for those of
you interested, and that is what we used to think
(07:46):
as our pain receptor and our pain receptor in terms
of you know, we kick our foot or like bump
our toe, or we cut our finger, and that's where
physical pain is processed. And that is the only role
of that area. Here's a brief life and about pain.
Though pain is constructed entirely by our brain and by
our neurons that are responding to some environmental stimuli or cue.
(08:11):
You know, if you bump your knee, you'll be like, yeah,
my knee hurts, but it's actually your brain that is
creating that painful experience for you. And the same goes
for social pain, and that social pain when we get rejected,
when we feel lost, lonely, when we feel unworthy of love,
is happening in that same cortex area, the posterior insular cortex.
(08:33):
If you have been you know, single for some time
and you recently went on yet another date that was
a dud, or you feel disconnected from all your friends
who are in relationships who just aren't making the time
for you that they used to. That is a painful experience,
and it is felt as intensely as physical pain. It
is processed, created, constructed, felt by the exact same region.
(08:55):
So I really don't want you to be sitting there
being like, oh my god, I'm just making way too
much of this situation. I don't want you to be
shaming yourself for this experience, feeling like you are over reacting,
feeling like it's not as intense as you feel it is.
Because the science is telling us the you know, research
is telling us that actually know, it is very equal
(09:17):
to what might be a much more valid physical experience
of pain, or what society would like to tell us
as a valid painful experience. So we have a natural
drive to want to find someone. We are both motivated
by the comfort of finding someone and the discomfort of
the social pain that we tend to experience. We are
hardwired to avoid these scary feelings of isolation and rejection. However,
(09:42):
the thing is is that so often, just because we
are single, we aren't actually fully alone. We are surrounded
by people, surrounded by friends and family. We do have communities.
So it's interesting because Surely this experience of isolation shouldn't
sting as much as we think. It's not like we're
stranded in like the wilderness and a boyfriend or a
(10:03):
girlfriend would be our only chance for connection. We actually
have plenty of chances for connection. It's interesting because what
we are lacking is not an entire support system. We
are just lacking a mate or a partner. And why
is it that despite having all of those connections, we
still feel this social pain so intensely. If you want
to identify white people fear and feel this fear so
(10:27):
intensely even when they have, you know, platonic and familial
relationships around them, you have to also examine the cultural
environment that we are in. It is very hard to
feel shame or embarrassment or even fear about something if
somebody hasn't told you in the first place that there
is something wrong with what you are doing, or that
there is something wrong with your reality, or someone hasn't
(10:48):
scared you with some awful future hypothetical of being miserable
and regretful and lonely at fifty. Our fear of being
alone is also partially derived from our environment, say about
twenty percent of it might be biology and evolution. The
rest of it, the eighty percent that is left over,
is societal. It is cultural. It is social. If you
(11:11):
are single right now, I feel like I don't even
need to tell you this, but society really does prioritize
partnership and it puts romantic love on a pedestal. A
relationship is like this golden prize, and it's made to
seem so wonderful. People write poetry and love songs and
create works of art about love. They spend hundreds of
thousands of dollars to show their love for one another
(11:31):
through a wedding and lavish gifts and huge grand gestures.
You know, people die for love. People survive for love
that looks pretty appealing, and if you've never experienced it before,
or it's something that you're really longing for, that can
be made to seem a lot bigger than it actually is.
Society is also not fully accepted the timeline that is
(11:52):
becoming more and more common in which people stay single
for much longer, or they adopt the kind of life
in which you know you can be happy alone. There
is still this overarching philosophy of you know, who are
you if you're not in love, who are you? If
you're not in a relationship, you are still half a person.
And it's that kind of culture of shaming and of
(12:16):
stereotypes and perhaps of stigma that plays on our more
evolutionary fear of isolation. Where this is seen a lot
and felt a lot is around things like language. You know,
there are words like spinster and cat lady. That's definitely
one dimension, but it even goes deeper than that. So
(12:36):
there's a starter from a survey that was conducted by
the dating service match back in twenty nineteen, and it
showed that fifty two percent of single people that they
surveyed in the UK had experienced single shaming in conversations
and in the language that was used to approach their
relationship status. And so when researchers kind of dug into
(12:58):
this and they were like, what do you mean by language,
they talked about these shaming phrases. A lot of people,
a lot of these single people had heard things like
you'll find someone better soon. Twenty nine percent said they'd
heard or how to experienced people suggesting that they must
be really lonely. Thirty eight percent of them just reported
a general level of pity in conversations over their relationship status,
(13:21):
and this led to many of them to report having
an increased sense of urgency even panic to find someone,
when actually about fifty five percent of them were pretty
happy with their relationship status, and they were pretty happy
with it until an outside force came in and disturbed
that piece. This language, you know, these shaming phrases of
(13:44):
you'll find someone soon, you must be so lonely, are
you dating at the moment, or you're not that such
a shame. It implicitly assumes that everybody's goal is to
find love and the fact that you haven't assumes that
something is wrong with you either a you must be
lonely or defective, which is not true. You know, most
(14:07):
research shows that single people actually have equally rich and
fulfilled lives as non single people. Or they assume that
you are unable to commit, that you were wired the
wrong way, you were wired away from partnership. And for men,
they're perhaps given a bit more of a free pass
when it comes to that to be uncommitted and to
be running around, for women not so much. And again,
(14:30):
it's not true that you are unable to commit or
that you have some kind of abandonment problem or whatever
it is. It's more likely that you're just not willing
to commit to the wrong person, and that should be
totally normalized. But because it is always about partnership before
you as a person, there is still a level of
shame and these false beliefs around who you must be
(14:51):
if you're not prioritizing dating in a relationship in your twenties,
or just in your life in general. All in all,
I think these assumptions the slanguge. It displays the lives
of single people as being less rich, and I am
like a huge fan of a lot of accounts and
Instagram accounts that are pushing down the stereotype. But even
if you truly believe in the sacred nature and the
(15:14):
benefits of being single, even if you are really really
happy where you are right now, I think the older
we get, it's also natural for a bit more fear
to creep in. And sometimes this comes down to another factor,
which is social comparison, and even deeper than that, the
fear of missing out on what everybody else seems to
be having and seems to be enjoying. I think this
(15:35):
is especially the case when you haven't dated or been
in love before seeing how much people really enjoy the experience,
or when you're kind of getting to a stage where
people are moving in together, people are getting married, they're
having kids, maybe you see a life that you may want.
At some stage, you see your friends kind of outgrowing
perhaps the life stage that you were all previously in,
(15:56):
and it's really difficult and stressful, and the only way
to discrib it is a fear of missing out. It's
also what psychologists may call a sense of ambiguous loss,
feeling like you've lost something or you are grieving a
life that you are yet to have, despite being really
happy with the one that you do have. So because
(16:18):
of these two conflicting truths, you know, I'm happy where
I am, but I also feel a sense of I
don't know, desire or jealousy, or a sense of panic.
You are unable to really find a home or a
place for these emotions. You feel constantly like there's a
tug of war in your heart between you know, staying
single and doing what everyone around you is telling you
(16:39):
to do. This creates dissonance. Basically, dissonance is just another
word for being uncomfortable, and we don't like being uncomfortable.
So we look for a way to lessen that discomfort,
and often a relationship is the band aid, right, It's
a great way to do that all our problems or
our fears are solved. This isn't all for the best, though.
(17:00):
I feel like that is such an obvious statement, but
let me just make it. What actually happens is that
when we have this fixation, this focus on the life
that will emerge if we stay single for too long,
we end up being ruled by fear. We end up
being ruled by hypotheticals and catastrophizing that hasn't even happened yet,
(17:25):
that may not even happen. When a fear or an
anxiety towards this potential future is the only thing that
we feel, our behavior becomes driven by that fear, and
that behavior is protective. It truly is because I you know,
our brain, I guess our higher conscious, our ego wants
to protect our future self from what it sees as
a harmful outcome. And a harmful outcome, you know, based
(17:47):
on biology, based on this weird evolutionary drive, but also
based on what society is telling you as the norm.
This fear can firsely cause us to be less selective.
So there was an article published about four years ago
and the title is the predictive effects of fear of
being single on physical attractiveness and less selective partner selection.
(18:09):
Long title, I know, but look it up if you
want to, if you can. Basically, what the researchers wanted
to know is, Okay, the more desperate you become, do
you lower your standards? And I don't like the word desperate.
I hate that word. But you know, the more fearful
of our future status as a single person, the fearful
of that we are, do we become less selective. I
(18:31):
will take a direct quote from this paper because I
think it really solidifies this point for both men and women.
A stronger fear of being single predicted greater romantic interest
in dating prospects who were less responsive and less physically attractive.
Once in a relationship, there was a lower likelihood of
initiating breakups with dissatisfying partners. So what does that actually mean.
(18:54):
It means that, firstly, when we are really scared of
being single, and we are scared of that hypothe medical
above all else, we end up choosing people that first
we don't even like us back or who we don't
even find attractive. But once we are in that relationship,
even when we realize it's not for us, we stay
because being with the wrong person is less scary than
(19:17):
being alone. This can also mean that, you know, not
only are we less selective, we also undervalue ourselves. We
undervalue what it is that we can bring to the table,
and so we let people perhaps, and I don't like saying,
let we perhaps experience circumstances where people are treating us
(19:38):
not as well as they should, and they know that,
and we know that because we kind of feel like
we are forced to endure bad behavior or else encounter
an even worse fear for ourselves. And that is again
the fear of being alone. It also ties our self
esteem to our romantic or physical value. So what I
(19:59):
mean by that is basically, when we begin to perhaps
buy into this belief that if you are alone, that
therefore says something about how attractive you are, how valuable
you are, how desirable you are, how confident, how successful
you are the only way in your mind to make
(20:19):
people not believe that about you, that you are unattractive,
that you are undesirable, that you are not successful, or
not intelligent is to find a partner. And when our
self esteem is tied to our relationship status, that is
not a very sustainable bond. That is not a very
sustainable relationship to maintain because it bobs up and down
(20:42):
based on whether you are single or taken. And it
means that everything about who we are, our authenticity, our
confidence levels become tied to this very small part of
our life, which is a label, which is an exclusive label.
We also put a lot of pressure on everyone that
we meet, even when they give us a whole lot
(21:03):
of signs that they may not even be reciprocating what
we're putting down. Perhaps we're kind of blind to it
because we see a spark and we just chase it.
And again, it's very much like an all or nothing approach,
like this relationship is what I need to be happy,
it's what I need to feel good, it's what I
need to impress other people, and it's what I need
to finally feel maybe complete. And I was speaking to
(21:28):
a friend about this who was single for twenty six
years before she met someone, and I was asking her
about it. I was like, you know, think back to
that time when you were dating, what did it mean
to you that that status of being single for that
long did it actually change how you approach situations? And
she was like, yes, absolutely, she was like everybody she met,
(21:50):
everybody she encountered, she immediately ran this like series of
series of situations in her head in which they could
be the one. Her mind immediately went to the most
far off conclusions, like they would do one nice thing
for her that meant that, you know, that was her husband,
that was her future partner, because you know, it was
(22:10):
just always on her mind. She was always thinking about it.
She was always hoping for it in every situation and
every circumstance, and she didn't care who it was with.
And what she was saying to me was that it
was really frustrating because she kind of wanted her heart
to slow down so her brain could catch up and
her brain could be rational without getting caught up in
(22:31):
really intense feelings that ended up shutting down a lot
of that logic. You know. She was like, Oh, I
would meet these people and we would literally go on
one day and there was nothing that you could say
to convince me that they weren't the one, and so
I began treating them like that before they'd even showed
an interest in me, and she was like, I just
kept getting my heart broken without ever actually being in
anything serious, without ever even feeling like I'd done the
(22:54):
relationship thing. So I think that really comes down to
a sense of scarcity and a sense that we better
like getting quick, We better find someone to commit to
right now, otherwise all the good ones are going to
run out. Otherwise we're going to, I don't know, somehow
run out of time, somehow be left in the dust.
And the scarcity effect really comes down to when something
(23:18):
seems more rare to you, such as a relationship, because
you don't have one, that's suddenly that thing that is
scarce feels a lot more valuable because not everyone can
have it because you can't have it. It's basically like
the grass is always green, and mentality, it's, you know,
wanting what you can't have, it's all of those things.
It's looking at your situation and wanting the one thing
(23:43):
that you're missing more than you even value the things
that you do have. That can lead us to a
pretty dangerous place, as I just described. And I think
when we encounter that kind of thinking, it's really important
to remind yourself that it is much better to be
single than to settle for something else, and blah blah blah.
I get it. You probably heard that a million times.
(24:05):
You know that might not change the underlying desire or
fear or behavior. But let's make it even more mathematic.
You could settle down and spend the next five to
ten years in a mediocre relationship that eventually crumbles, meaning
that you're going to be back to where you are now,
back at the starting line in ten years time. Or
you could wait another three to five years, be selective
and find the one You could find the soul mate.
(24:27):
You could spend the rest of your lives together, or
you could have neither option, and you could, yeah, maybe
be alone for the rest of your life and maybe
be really really happy, perhaps be the happiest version of
yourself that you were ever going to be. The secret
to living and fulfilling life is not as simple as
a relationship status. I think that's the one thing that
(24:49):
I really want us to remember. There is this weird
fear that is implanted in us that we are on
this timeline, and this timeline involves curing a relationship, and
that if you don't have it there's something wrong with you.
Your life isn't going to be as good. That is
fear mongering. That is fear mongering that we eventually adopt
(25:10):
ourselves because it's really hard not to. So how do
we really fully embrace our power? I guess is I
would like to say, intentionally single people, how do we
have patience? How do we also make our lives as
rich as they possibly can before we get back out there,
before we find someone who is going to match that? Well?
I have some tips for you, some advice and some
(25:31):
psychology after this short break, so stay with us. How
can we still recognize that a relationship is part of
our timeline. It's okay to want love. It's okay to
desire that as part of your future, but not get
bogged down by the fear of being alone and let
(25:53):
it influence us to make rash decisions. Because it's okay
to say, like, yes, a big part of my life
plan and something that I want for my future is
to find someone, and is to love them and build
a family or a business or a house or a life,
whatever it is. We just don't want that to be
our goal above everything else and feel like we can't
start living till we've secured it. I think it's about
(26:17):
pursuing an authentic, well lived life that a relationship could
only benefit, but not complete. So my first tip around
kind of countering this fear of being alone, it revolves
around continuing to make yourself an interesting person, find yourself interesting,
find your life interesting, regardless of what's happening when it
(26:39):
comes to your romantic life. And I think in this way,
not only does it help us stay secure that we
are a really cool person. This will come in time,
but I think that authenticity in itself actually inevitably and
eventually attracts the love that we want so badly, but
in a healthy form and on its own timeline. Work
(26:59):
on making yourself an interesting person and in the process
creating a life that you absolutely fucking love that anyone
who walks to the door is going to have to
compete with. They are going to have to compete with
your dream life before they are let in. And that
is a really hard bar to get over, and it
means that you are more selective. It means that you
(27:21):
also just enjoy your time as a single individual without
seeing it as a waiting period, without seeing it as
like you being on the sidelines, or you being on
the bench before you know your life truly starts. That
authentic well lived life to me, involves having things that
keep you busy whilst giving you purpose, having things that
(27:44):
make you feel aligned with yourself, actually exploring who you are.
It is so so rare that we have time in
our life to actually think about what we want to
think about what you want from yourself right now and
from your future, to think about your identity and who
(28:05):
you really are. I really implore you to think about this.
When was the last time you really thought about those things?
When was the last time you really thought about? What
kind of person do I want to be? What kind
of life do I want to live? How am I
going to work on myself? Am I really happy right now?
I think that's one of the gifts about being single,
is that it does allow for that really intense and
(28:25):
beneficial and significant self focus. Another element of that authentic
well lived life also means having an active and engage life,
having hobbies and people you see in those spaces, that
casual social interaction that is such an antidote to the
loneliness we sometimes feel more single. There's no shame around it.
It is something that we experience. And also taking opportunities
(28:48):
that you might only have while single, you know, being
able to date freely and openly without looking for commitment,
being able to drop what you're doing and go and explore,
and not having to you know, really think about someone
and really count them into your plans. That is something
that we don't talk about. En me get into a
(29:10):
relationship like it's another person to think about, and sometimes
it's nice to just have to think about yourself. And also,
like I said before, ensuring that when the time comes
when they're you know, someone does come into your life,
because no one goes through life without ever meeting somebody
who could potentially really match them and be the person
(29:32):
for them. Knowing that you are going to still be
in control of your fate. You are still the master
of your own fate, and you still get to be
the one calling the shots around. Does this actually benefit
my life? Am I being selective enough? Or does it
feel like there is a whole that I couldn't feel myself?
And That's why I'm pursuing this relationship. When we feel
(29:55):
strong as an individual, we are able to bring that
part of ourself, bring that soa bring that identity to
dating in a way that is more selective, more mature,
I also think, more fruitful. And here's the added benefit.
Authenticity makes you attractive. It makes you so much more
attractive through its influence on our sense of self confidence.
(30:17):
If you know yourself and you know yourself well, you're
not going to let the opinions of somebody else or
their approval or rejection of you, get in the way
of just being yourself, and you exude that kind of
confident elixa that we are all after. If you want
some evidence of this, you can check out a research
paper that was published in twenty fifteen by the Journal
(30:37):
of Personality and Social Psychology. I have quoted this study
so many times on the podcast because it is probably
one of my favorites. But in this research, these researchers
looked at a series of dating scenarios between two people
in a lab and they found that confidence was actually
one of the strongest predictors of romantic attractiveness, and confidence
(30:58):
we cannot have it without a set of authenticity. One
of the reasons that it's so attractive is that a
lot of the things we want in a partner are
really difficult to observe upon first meeting them, right, things
like competence, things like drive, things like kindness, things like intelligence.
You know, you only really get kind of a peek
(31:18):
at whether somebody has all those things upon a first impression.
But if that person shows up and is confident, we
kind of believe that they know themselves right. We believe
that they have a reason for being confident, and that
this reflects the actual value as a partner, so we
feel really into them. Another explanation. Confidence creates a real
(31:39):
aura that draws people in. I'm sure you've had that
experience where you've met somebody, perhaps not even somebody that
you're like romantically into, just like someone and you've just
been like, Wow, I want to be around you. You
make me feel warm, you make me feel see, you
are like this bright light. And I think what that
comes down to is that a lot of us do
lack self esteem, and so we are really intrigued by
(32:02):
people who seemingly don't. We want to learn from these people,
We want to maybe have that energy rub off on them.
And if you take time to really build that in yourself,
I think it's just a win win scenario. You attract
better people and you are more discerning of those people
as well. Another I think benefit of choosing to be
(32:23):
very authentically aligned with yourself in a way that is
not reliant on your relationship status is that it helps
you dispurse a lot of those false beliefs that society
would have us believe about single people. And as we
said before, it's those false beliefs that contribute to this
fear of being alone. If I'm single, you know I
must be unattractive, I must be boring, I must be unworthy,
I must be lonely. That is what so much of
(32:45):
the information we're picking up from society would lead you
to believe, and that is what makes us feel like
a partner is the only answer to making ourselves feel
more worthy and being a full complete person. You could
try that narrative. You could trust that society or rhetoric
and that society or vision, or you could trust your
(33:07):
own reality, which is that you are thriving, You were purposeful,
you are busy, and you know yourself better than most
people ever will. When you are confident in yourself, you
are able to look at those beliefs that might be
creating fear within you and creating poor decision making and say, actually,
I don't think that that's true, because I know myself
(33:28):
better than what this outdated narrative is trying to tell me.
The thing that really helped me when I was single
was looking at people who were still single at thirty
or forty or sixty and had really vibrant lives, because
I feel like the examples we are so often given
of happiness as we age is the happiness that we
(33:49):
get from big milestones that are associated with a partner,
you know, marriage, moving in together, having children together, vacations together.
It feels like, past thirty five, a lot of the
significant moments in our life need to be with somebody else.
And when we counteract that with the examples of people
(34:11):
who are still showing us that they are fulfilled and
happy despite going against the blueprint, we are able to really,
I think, dispose of that, dispose of that belief system,
and dispose of that construct. Somebody they always used to
think of was Emma Watson, and she did an interview
(34:31):
a few years ago where she like publicly described herself
as self partnered. That is a concept that I love.
It's like, I'm not single, I'm self partnered. I'm like
consciously dating myself, and she really like encouraged other people
to view their own I don't want to say lack
of a romantic partner, but their singlehood as a positive,
not a negative. Nearly like forty percent of adults in
(34:54):
the US don't have a partner. About half of those
people even express that they weren't even interested in according
to this research by the Pew Research Center. And I
think that that is something that if you only listen
to what the media said, if you only saw examples
online or in movies, or in the news or in
(35:15):
opinion pieces, you would believe that that is not the case.
You would believe that it's the opposite that most people
are in relationships. Most people are happier in relationships. But
in this example that they gave in this research, they
talk about this woman, Bella de Paulo. She is a
famously single person. She's sixty nine years old, she's never
(35:37):
been in a relationship, and she describes her solo life
as authentic, as fulfilling, as meaningful, as psychologically rich. That
is the opposite of what the world would like to
tell us about single people in order to fear monger.
And I think once again those examples wherever you see
them in the world, they are really powerful because they
(35:57):
get rid of the doom and gloom that fuels fear. Finally,
I think it's so important that if you are somebody
who is such a lover, who really just wants someone
to pour all of that brightness and life and energy
and passion and compassion into remember that platonic love is
just as important. Just having a partner is so lonely,
(36:22):
and I've seen that amongst people in my own life
who deprioritized friendship once they had achieved that relationship status
that they wanted, and they are very, very lonely people. Because,
as we said before, that social pain that we feel
when we are isolated is real. It's tangible, and it hurts.
(36:44):
And so it's really important that if you are somebody
who is a lover, is a giver, you find a
way to still tap into that part of you, either
by showing that love to yourself or really fostering those
connections that are going to sometimes last so much longer
than a love connection than a romantic relationship. Just because
(37:04):
you are single, you are not alone. There are so
many single people in their twenties there are so many
single people at any age, and it's not like every
single one of them is miserable and hidden away and isolated.
They have family, they have friends, they have people that
they admire. I think our fear of being alone often
(37:26):
occurs when we aren't given that vision of what life
could be like as an unpartnered person, when there is
a very shallow and false, false story about the unhappiness
levels of people who are alone, of people who have
never met the one. So, finally, I want to wrap
(37:48):
this up and just conclude by saying, it's okay to
want love, but don't let the pursuit of love dim
you down. You are still young, you still have time.
You will find the right person that is what you
are after, but don't wait for your life to start
until then. The fear of being alone is a very
very deeply rooted one. It is an instinctual one, it
(38:12):
is a primal one. But it's also one that is
stoked by a lot of unnecessary stories and pictures and
narratives pushed by our society. So take your time. It's
all right to just like really enjoy being self partnered
and exploring yourself. And if you fear being alone forever.
(38:33):
Just know that there are people who your worst fear
is their reality, and I'm sure they would sit you
down and say it's really not that bad. I promise
you it's not that bad. I promise you that there
is a lot about this that was a choice that
I made the same way that you will be able
to make choices, and you'll be able to create a
life that you want, regardless of weather dating right now
(38:54):
feels out of your control, regardless of whether you feel
very fixated on love right now, it is not the
end of your life to not find love. So thank
you so much for listening. This was a bit of
a pep talk, and I want to just extend a
lot of empathy and a lot of strength and a
lot of love to you for what you're going through.
(39:14):
You do have time. I promise you. I'm not gonna
give you those like bullshit phrases of like it happens
when you least expect it, because I just don't think
that is very helpful, and sometimes it's not true. Sometimes
it happens when you are like when you most expect it,
because you are at your most authentic and at your
most confident and whilst you wait for that, build those
(39:35):
things up. They are a tool, they are a skill.
They are a part of you that never goes away,
that never expires, that can never be dimmed. So thank
you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode,
please feel free to leave a five star review on
Apple Podcasts, Spotify wherever you are listening right now. Make
sure you're following along or send this episode to a
(39:55):
friend if you think that they would enjoy it. If
you have any further thought, if you have an episode suggestion,
I love hearing from you, you can follow me at
that psychology podcast or at jemispeg. Come and join the community,
come and say hi, and until next week, make sure
that you are safe. You are kind above all else,
(40:16):
you are gentle to yourself, and we will talk soon
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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