perspective on being single. The  more we are happy to be on our own,  

the more we will be able to exercise the  correct degree of caution around finding  

a new companion. The bedrock of  true love is happy singledom.

Unfortunately, our societies do very little to  help us to be calm or at ease in our own company.  

Singledom is framed as an involuntary, depressing  and always hopefully temporary state. The notion  

that someone might want or need to be on their  own, perhaps for a long while, terrifies a world  

shaped by legions of silently miserable couples  who need confirmation that they have not chosen  

the wrong path. To enforce the idea of what single  people are missing, advertisers can never have  

enough of showing off tantalising images of happy  couples walking hand in hand on beaches - and most  

entertainment venues, holiday destinations and  social occasions feel compelled to patronise,  

overcharge and otherwise demean anyone who has  had the impudence to venture out on their own.

Unfortunately, being miserable while single  fatally undermines our judgement about who  

we might get together with. When someone is  starving, they will eat anything (Dostoevsky  

wrote a harrowing short story about a famished  child who eats a candle made of pig fat); and  

we’re equally liable, in emotional desperation,  to run into the nearest nightclub to secure a  

chump we’ll be appalled to find beside us at  day break. We eventually learn: being in an  

unsatisfactory relationship is clearly worse,  that is, even more lonely, than being alone.

The central challenge of being alone is  coping with the fear of what singlehood means:  

being alone is bearable in relation to how  ‘normal’ (that highly nebulous yet highly  

influential concept) the condition  feels to us at any given point;  

it can either be a break from an honourably busy  life, or sure evidence that we are an unwanted,  

wretched, disgusting and  emotionally diseased being.

This is tricky but ultimately very hopeful,  for it suggests that if only we could work  

on what being alone means to us, we could  theoretically endure long periods alone.

To build ourselves a new mental model  of what being alone should truly mean,  

we might rehearse a few of the following  arguments. Despite what an unfriendly  

voice inside our heads might tell us, we are the  ones who can chose whether or not to be alone.  

Our solitude is willed rather than imposed.  No one ever needs to be alone so long as  

they don’t mind who they are with. But we do  mind: the wrong kind of company is a great  

deal lonelier for us than being by ourselves,  that is, it’s further from what matters to us,  

more grating in its insincerity and more of a  reminder of disconnection and misunderstanding  

than is the conversation we can have in  the quiet of our own minds. Being alone  

is not proof that we have been rejected by  the world; it’s a sign that we’ve taken a  

good look at the available options and have -  with wisdom - done some rejecting ourselves.

Another big thought is that we need to  appreciate how long it will take to find  

someone, given how choosy we are (for very  good reasons). We aren’t just looking for  

anyone. The right candidate will be no  less easy to find than a great job or a  

beautiful house. It might take many months,  probably years. Expectations matter. If we  

regard a decade as a plausible time  frame, then six months will skip by.

Theres is no better guarantee of a successful  relationship than knowing that we could, and can,  

manage perfectly well on our own. It means  that we will only look for someone who can  

deeply contribute to our life, not someone who  can do the laundry with us or keep us company  

on Sunday evenings. This gives us the strength to  back out of unsatisfactory unions as quickly as we  

should. Being in a couple can’t and shouldn’t  mean that we are utterly reliant on the other  

for our self-esteem, our daily self-management  or for the meeting of our domestic needs. When  

we have under our belt a significant experience of  thriving on our own, we will be able to cope with  

the inevitable points at which even a very nice  partner can’t sustain us; we’ll be less demanding;  

more competent and more forensic in what  we seek from a lover. It turns out that our  

willingness to stay on our own is what centrally  predicts how likely we’ll be to find and bring  

to fruition a relationship with someone else.  Being at ease with being single is the needed,  

secure platform from which to make a sane and  wise choice about who to create a joint life with.