How to Be Single
Christian Ditter’s 2016 film, How To Be Single is the magic elixir I never knew I needed. From the cover of the movie with Rebel Wilson in the cast, alongside Dakota Johnson, Alison Brie, and Leslie Mann, I expected to watch a raunchy rom-com and laugh giddily throughout. But the film surprised me. I found myself following Alice’s story, played by Dakota Johnson, and learning pivotal life lessons, leading me to truly contemplate how I can sufficiently be single.
Up until this point, I had been lamenting this lonely era of wanting a body next to me. To be honest, it’s been a while since I had romance and I miss being in bliss. However, none of my past relationships were of mutual interest. The guy was either into me and I eventually got bored, or I was overly invested, and he… well, wasn’t. So, my relationship track record sucks. This leads me back to the question of how I can successfully and sufficiently be single. Like, what does it really entail? How can I be happy with myself with no strings attached?
A line in the movie caught my attention when Alice said: “I don’t know why always I talk myself out of doing the things I really want to do.” It’s preposterous, yet I do it all the time. It’s as if I am secretly telling myself I don’t deserve what I want out of life. Me asking: “Can I really be happy?”, is really a microcosm of the overarching insecurity of believing I am not worthy of happiness, to begin with. Yet, I long for something I don’t believe I can have. Could it be that I believe in happiness; just not in it happening for me?
As a child of emotional neglect, I found ways to hold onto whatever would get me through heartache and pain. Thus, unworthiness became me. It was a familiar feeling of struggle. If I didn’t expect life to go well anyway, it was no surprise when things didn’t go my way. When I didn’t get what I wanted - sometimes out of self-sabotage, that was simply a way of me living out my self-fulfilling prophecy: “I didn’t deserve, therefore I did not receive.”
What has God taught me about me that brought me to such a lackluster belief system? The answer is nothing. He didn’t teach me self-hatred. I picked that up at a young age when I wished my parents would be together, yet talking myself out of what I wanted because I knew it would never come true. That was my defense mechanism. I knew my parents were divorced for good, so I justified their split by disregarding how much pain I was in because of it. This bad habit of self-denial morphed into self-deprivation, where I longed for material things, dreams, and goals, and never pursued them wholeheartedly. Instead, I half-assed my way through life, applying to programs of interest, then quitting and wishing my life was different. It was a foreign concept for me to have drive or perseverance. Those qualities didn’t kick in until I gave birth to my son. By then, I had something to live for.
As I watched the final scene of “How to Be Single,” where Alice finally took the reigns over her life as a single woman and climbed that mountain on her bucket list, something clicked. I need to live my life with no strings attached and do what I want to do. Being untethered from social media is a start because the barrage of posts are a breeding ground for comparison and jealousy, to which I have fallen, victim. I’m not proud of it, but it’s true.
Further, being alone in the physical and relational sense has taught me to hear my own thoughts and to deal with my pain. Outside of this sacred solitude, I have been running away from my feelings. As a former coach, this very act of avoidance seems absurd, because I preached to my clients time and time again to feel their feelings. But, I am not exempt from being human and screwing up every now and again. Perfection is a myth. That being said, I am making time for peaceful thoughts and reflective moments. My soul deserves to get what it wants. Then and only then will I attract the luxurious life I desire.