You are meant to be single right now.
What a strange thing to say! Isn't our natural state to be in a relationship, and when we're single we're … well, lacking?
Of course not. That isn't true at all. But as a woman I am still very conscious that all the models of happiness I see in society – from Hollywood movies to family pressures – involve being matched up with a man who is one's soulmate. (One's soulmate, of course, has to be a man according to this ideal. It can't be a female friend, or a mentor.)
Wait a moment!
Although many of us enlightened women like to think that we celebrate our single status and desire a relationship as an extension of our happiness, rather than the purpose and cause of it, we still respond to the cultural programming that tells us that we are incomplete if we don't have a man.
That same cultural programming shames the woman when her man cheats. That same cultural programming blames the woman for not holding the relationship together.
Although we know in our minds that it's all a bunch of baloney, I don't think that there are many of us who can honestly state that we don't respond to those beliefs on a heart level. Emotionally, we still feel shamed if we can't "get" a man. We feel shamed if he leaves us. We feel that it's our fault, somehow.
Our cultural programming is so powerful that many of us end up seeking out a relationship just because all of our female friends in relationships seem so happy. We want to have what they have.
Yet what if you told yourself that, unlike them, you were meant to be single right now? You were single because there was something that you had to do. God is giving you the chance to be on your own because He wants you to learn something, or to develop a new skill, or move to the next level spiritually … and being single is the only way you can do it.
Wouldn't you want to know why you were single, and then take advantage of it?
Very few of us spend any time examining our belief systems about what it means to be single. Socially we're told that being single is merely the limbo period between relationships. But is it?
What if you were meant to be single right now?
What if it was your job to figure out what you're supposed to be doing with your single time and doing it?
Wouldn't you feel a lot more okay about being single?
Wouldn't you feel a greater sense of meaning and purpose in your life right now, rather than waiting for the time in which you have a partner?
You aren't single because you can't get a man. You aren't single because you're not enough. You aren't single because you're bad at dating.
You're single for a reason … and it's your job to find out that reason.
Once you do, then you'll have completed the reason for which you were single. And then, magically, you'll find that relationship opportunities open all around you.
Does that sound too airy-fairy? Perhaps. But it can also make your single life much more wonderful and meaningful than an endless search for a partner.
