Thread by @thetimes

In 2016, I had a minor experience at a dinner party that became a major life-changing event, writes @ALutkin.

I was 32 years old and I was single. My friends, in a friendly way, asked me that night, “So, what’s going on with your love life?”
thetimes.co.uk/article/single…

Nothing had been going on for quite some time. And I was pretty sure nothing ever would get going again. I voiced my deep suspicion that I might end up being alone for ever 🧍‍♀️

But their reaction quickly grew beyond annoyance. At that dinner party in New York, my friends argued with me. They insisted that I would eventually meet someone because everybody does.

They were trying to be encouraging

“I think there’s this idea that everybody finds someone eventually,” I replied, my voice shaking from saying something I often thought but never articulated.

“Logically, I just don’t see how that could be true”

Being single for years at a time, even an entire life, is not that strange at all. Across the world, the balance of married to unmarried has shifted significantly. The 2010 US census indicated that for the first time in its history, there were more single women than married in 🇺🇸

In that moment of confession, when I thought I would be alone for ever, I didn’t want pity or reassurances.

I just wanted that to be an acceptable way to exist on this planet. Unfortunately, people will have a negative reaction to the idea that love isn’t an inevitable destiny

The thing about leaving the dating scene in your mid-twenties and then scrambling to find a toehold there in your thirties is that there is an arrested development.
Not engaging with dating or love for so long had left me a bit immature about some things, a bit naive in some ways

The pain of rejection is not something you feel when you don’t put yourself in a position to be rejected and lots of lonely people rightly avoid that sting. It’s much sharper when you have been craving acceptance for so long

Common advice for the broken-hearted is to “work on yourself” or “love yourself” and that advice has been manipulated by capitalism to mean “buy things” and “constantly optimise for productivity”
thetimes.co.uk/article/india-…

That advice does contain a seed of truth, which is that when we focus too much on romantic love, we are losing out on all the many opportunities there are for falling in love with life, with community and with all the slow, arduous growth it takes to accept yourself 🌱

💪In recovering from pain, I began to invest more in cultivating an internal life and let go of chasing something external I could never hold on to.

❤️Romance is a really magical, wonderful part of life, but it’s just a small fraction of everything else there is to walk towards

Read @ALutkin's full story 👇
thetimes.co.uk/article/single…