For a while now, I’ve had the nagging feeling that something about the way we’re taught to live doesn’t sit right with me. It took me a long time to understand that what I was feeling wasn’t frustration at all. It was anger. I’ve realised I spent years believing, nay being taught, that I needed a partner, when the reality was I didn’t.
I’m not angry with individuals, and certainly not at people who choose marriage or long-term relationships, but at the messages we’ve all absorbed since childhood about what a successful life is supposed to look like. That we are not shown that there can be an alternative.
It has taken me far longer than I’d like to admit to discover that I genuinely enjoy living alone. Not simply because it’s easier after a difficult relationship, or because I’ve become cynical (far from it), but because it suits me. I like the quiet. I like having my own space. I like making decisions without consultation, disappearing into creative projects without interruption, and spending an entire weekend following my own whims. I have found a sense of peace that I honestly didn’t know was available to me.
Ironically, it took a period of trauma and healing to discover it. For the first time in my adult life, I wasn’t trying to fill the space left by a relationship ending. I wasn’t trying to prove I was still attractive or wondering when I should start dating again. I simply stayed on my own because I needed to heal, and somewhere during that process I discovered that I wasn’t just recovering. I was thriving.
Looking back, what frustrates me isn’t that I found this life later than I might have liked. It’s that nobody ever suggested it was a perfectly valid destination in the first place.
The Story We’ve Been Told Since Childhood
From childhood onwards, we’re taught that life naturally progresses towards coupledom. Fairy tales end with weddings, not because marriage is one possible ending, but because it’s presented as the happy ending. The princess is rescued, finds her prince and everyone lives happily ever after. There are very few stories where the heroine rescues herself, builds a rich and meaningful life, and discovers that fulfilment doesn’t necessarily arrive wearing a crown and riding a white horse.
Of course, fairy tales are only the beginning. Popular culture continues the lesson throughout our lives. Advertising overwhelmingly sells us images of couples buying houses, families around dinner tables, romantic holidays and anniversaries. Films and television often treat finding a partner as the final piece of someone’s identity. Even when the story begins with an independent woman, audiences somehow expect the plot to end with romance. It’s so familiar that we barely notice it.
The Legacy of Patriarchy
Women, in particular, inherit centuries of expectation. Scholars have written extensively about the ways patriarchal societies positioned marriage not simply as desirable but as necessary. For much of history, women couldn’t own property independently, control their own finances or fully participate in public life. Marriage wasn’t just encouraged, it was the structure that determined a woman’s social and economic survival.
Those legal inequalities have changed dramatically (though not in all parts of the world), but cultural expectations are far slower to disappear than legislation. They simply adapt. Today, we often romanticise “traditional” womanhood without acknowledging that many of those traditions were built on women having considerably fewer choices than they do now.
The expectation remains remarkably persistent. Girls still grow up absorbing the idea that somewhere out there is a life partner they are destined to find. (I know I did.) If they haven’t found them by a certain age, concern quietly creeps into conversations. Friends ask whether you’re dating anyone. Relatives wonder if you’ve “met someone nice.” People assure you that “it’ll happen when you least expect it.” Never has anyone ever asked me whether I was actually happy by myself.
The Problem with the Labels
What fascinates me is that we have an entire vocabulary for women who remain single, and almost none of it is complimentary. Spinster, Old maid, Cat lady, every one of those labels suggests failure, loneliness or eccentricity, as though a woman living happily by herself is somehow an unfinished version of adulthood.
We don’t really have an equivalent language that celebrates independence. There isn’t a widely recognised term for someone who has built a joyful, peaceful, fulfilling life on their own and has absolutely no desire to apologise for it. That absence matters because language shapes what we believe is possible. And, more importantly, it also shapes what we never think to question.
For years, I assumed that enjoying my own company was simply something to do while waiting for the next relationship. Being single felt temporary by definition. Society had taught me that being alone was an in-between stage rather than a legitimate way of living. It never occurred to me that I might wish to choose it, not because I’d given up on love but because it genuinely suited me.
Solitude ‘versus’ Relationships
This isn’t an argument against relationships. Healthy relationships can be wonderful. They bring companionship, support and enormous joy. Many people build extraordinary lives together, and that’s something worth celebrating. What I’m questioning is the assumption that partnership is automatically the path to happiness.
Research into solitude has increasingly shown that choosing to spend time alone is beneficial. Solitude can nurture creativity, self-awareness and emotional resilience. It gives us space to hear our own thoughts instead of constantly reacting to other people’s expectations. It allows us to become familiar with ourselves in a way that’s surprisingly difficult when we’re always sharing our lives with someone else. I don’t think we’re taught that nearly enough.
Instead, we often treat solitude as something to endure until real life resumes. That solitude equals loneliness. Dating apps encourage us to keep searching. Romantic comedies reassure us that everyone eventually finds their perfect match, as though the relationship remains the destination. But, what if it isn’t? What if, for some people, the destination is becoming completely at ease with themselves? That possibility feels strangely radical, even though it shouldn’t.
A Different Kind of Happy Ending
One of the greatest gifts of living alone has been discovering just how content I can be in silence. My home feels peaceful rather than empty. My freedom no longer feels like the absence of something. It feels like something valuable in its own right. Creativity flourishes because I have uninterrupted time to think. Decisions become wonderfully uncomplicated. There is an enormous sense of calm that comes from knowing my life belongs entirely to me.
I don’t know whether I’ll always live this way. I may meet someone one day who enriches my life in ways I can’t yet imagine, and I’d never dismiss that possibility. But if that happens, it won’t be because I need someone to complete me. It will be because two already complete people have chosen to share part of their lives. I wish I’d learned that distinction much earlier.
The Option Nobody Talked About
Perhaps that’s what I’m actually angry about. Not that society celebrates love, because love deserves celebrating, but that it rarely celebrates the equally valid choice of building a meaningful life outside romantic partnership, for women or men. That it doesn’t celebrate the confidence that can be gained from living alone. We have spent generations teaching people how to find someone else, yet we spend remarkably little time teaching them how to enjoy their own company.
If someone had told me years ago that living alone could be amazing, peaceful, empowering and deeply fulfilling, I might have arrived here much sooner. Instead, I had to discover it by accident. I’m delighted that I eventually did. And I fervently hope it becomes a more realised option in the world, besides the ‘norm’.
More Musings
My life has become simpler, garnering me more time for creativity and musings on Life in France, ducks and whatever else tickles my attention. If you are particularly interested in a Simpler Life, you will find more musings here.
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