I finally have a chance to write about this topic because I am officially single, again.
I was more emotional and mostly upset when I was single in my 20s. However, being single in my 30s, I am calm, but also under pressure, feeling comfortable, but sometimes helpless.
Calm & Unhurried
The idea of being single is something that I can handle easily and calmly in my 30s. I peacefully told my parents that things didn’t work out between my ex and me. I shared with my friends that I returned to single life and asked them to introduce me to good men if they know any. Talking about this issue is like sharing what I eat everyday, just relaxed and natural.
Under Pressure
I have always been told that women in their 30s have fewer opportunities to be “chosen” in a relationship, and have been encouraged to get married as soon as possible while I still can. Since I was very resistant to such “suggestions” even when I was a little younger, I was able to react politely to reject their “kind” concerns.
However, the pressure I am talking about is from misunderstandings. Most of the people around me, including my parents, relatives and friends, think that I still just want to have fun and I am not into marriage, so that the reason I haven’t found my ‘other half’ is due to my own inaction. I am good at handling suggestions based on different values which will only annoy me. However, what I fear the most is the pressure of not being understood or even being misunderstood, which will sometimes lead me to question myself.
At Ease
Many people say that being single is addictive and I think being alone is something that you can get addicted to. I spend more time alone now that I am single. I didn’t understand the joy of being alone when I was in my 20s, but now I am so excited to seize every minute to enjoy my time alone. These are the moments that I can calm myself down, listen to my own thoughts, feel my own breath and appreciate my own body. I feel comfortable and satisfied in such moments. When people ask me what I like to do when I have free time, I tell them: be alone.
Helpless & Difficult
I am actually a big believer in love and marriage, and I began to actively look for a partner after I became single. A friend recommended a dating app to me, telling me it was a trustworthy and useful app which she was also using. I started it right away by answering all the listed questions, uploading documents for verification and posting photos. I have been actively using the app, checking information of the gentlemen assigned by the app to me everyday. In order to get more exposure, I even subscribed for membership at the premium level.
Unfortunately, I either received no responses from most of the invitations I sent out, or I got turned down with the reason that I was “age inappropriate”. Even though I did connect with some of the gentlemen, I felt it was difficult to proceed with the conversation by asking many questions. For me, this is totally new and I always feel helpless and difficult to get to know a new person.
Getting used to being single
Being single allows me to start over, and I really think I can choose who I want to be with this time. On the dating app, we believe that we can “customize” our future partner by choosing the appropriate age range, matching zodiac, height, weight, appearance, place of residence, hometown and even educational background, job, interests, hobbies and values. Since we are allowed to carefully check each other’s requirements, we can easily cross off the options we don’t like if there are any unmatched details. Therefore, to start something tends to be more difficult because we are too cautious about considering all the pros and cons.
It seems that I am less adventurous and enthusiastic being single now compared to my single life in the 20s. I either choose not to start anything and not to waste my time, or I want to start it and hope that it lasts forever.
Perhaps this is the reason why there are more and more people getting used to being single.
Single Ladies
It has become the choice for more people to be single in modern society, especially for women.
The fact that women over 30 choose to remain single is not because they would rather be alone than having someone shoddy. Instead, they are more empowered to choose the life they want.
The economic and spiritual independence and freedom allows women over the age of 30 to focus more on themselves. Single life is not an embarrassment to them, but a golden period that they cherish a lot. Enjoy your life, invest in yourself, and live a wonderful life. To them, being single, falling in love, being married and having children is a state of life. They are not anxious about being single just because of the pressure that the ‘social clock’ puts on them.
There is a slogan going around on the Internet: “Being married is not necessarily happy, while being single is not necessarily unhappy. You are born as one person, so you cannot leave the world as two people. Love is a luxury, but you can still live without it.”
If we haven’t met the one who can stay with us forever, we can live as the person we want to spend our whole life with. And this kind of single life is worth living.