IVANJ: I’ve been following you and I appreciate your thoughts on how to be happy being single. But for those of us who may be heading in that direction, could you also share the disadvantages of being single? I’m not asking out of being a Maritess. I’m a guy, you know. I genuinely believe that while it’s important to celebrate the freedom and independence that come with being single, it’s equally important to acknowledge the difficult parts. What are the realities I should prepare myself for, emotionally and practically, should I decide to remain single? I hope you can share your honest thoughts on this.
DJ: Finally, someone wants to hear the terms and conditions of being single. Your email made me realize that, yeah, I’ve been advertising the free trial without explaining the hidden charges! Sure, being single means you get to do whatever you want, whenever you want. The catch? You also have to do whatever needs to be done, whether you want to or not!
If you are not born into wealth, if your family cannot open doors for you and if you don’t have connections that give you access to rooms where important decisions are made, you have to find your own way in. You build your credibility from scratch. You establish your network one relationship at a time. You work hard to earn a seat at the table.
But when you marry, you don’t just gain a life partner. You can also become part of another family, inherit a new network of relationships and gain access to opportunities that might otherwise have taken you years to build on your own. Some people look at me today and think I am successful. What they don’t see is how hard I had to work, how long it took me to get here and how many doors I had to knock on before one finally opened. So, dude, if you don’t come from wealth or privilege, prepare to build not just your career but your entire ecosystem from scratch.
The next reality is that you don’t have a partner in life. And I don’t just mean someone to date, travel with, or share a bed with. I mean someone who is your default person. Someone who is part of your everyday decisions, your plans, your worries and your future. When you marry, you become each other’s immediate family. But when you remain single, your siblings get married and build their own households. Your best friends settle down and have families of their own. While they may love you deeply, you’ll always be the visitor. They’ll consider you family. But at the end of the day, that place will always belong to their spouse and children. And when everyone goes home, you go home. Alone. Be prepared not to have that one person with whom life is shared by default. Get a cat, or a dog. Or both.
Of course, it’s cool to be the CEO of your life. But then you’re also the HR department, the accounting team, the maintenance crew and the janitor. In short, there’s no one to share the mental load. You have to remember insurance renewals, medical appointments, home repairs, family obligations, retirement plans and a hundred other things that keep life running. You are the planner, the workforce, the emergency response team and the person who gets blamed when you forget something! It’s funny when you find yourself saying, “Honey, can you take care of this?” Then you remember you ARE honey!
Being single means you have complete freedom. Unfortunately, you also have complete responsibility. But it’s not a tragedy, just as being married is not a guarantee of happiness. Both states of life come with benefits, burdens and bills. You need to know what you’re signing up for, including the hidden charges. Good that you asked. And whatever path you choose, you do you.