You log into Facebook, and another "just got married," "just got engaged" or "in a relationship" status appears on your news feed.
Now, don't get me wrong; finding love is rare. It's special, and despite the countless corny movies that would say otherwise, it's underrated.
When you find that heart-wrenching can't-imagine-spending-any-waking-moment-without-you phenomenon, you deserve to parade it around.
Take it from someone whose closest thing to finding love was the day I stepped into Chipotle and ordered my first burrito bowl.
If you have someone to call your own, that's incredible. But let's not downsize and neglect the lives we already have bestowed upon ourselves.
What if the biggest romances of our lives didn’t revolve around someone playing the role as our rock, other half, soulmate, arm candy, boyfriend, girlfriend, lover or whatever and whoever it may be?
What if the biggest romances of our lives involved simply no one else but ourselves? Who we are as individual, driven, and fearful, but inspired, singles? What if our singledom romances are the ultimate romances of all?
Well, if you’re anything like me, that idea does not seem too farfetched. This is how you see things:
You have your family and your friends to stand beside you.
They are there to hold your hand, they love you to death, and they remind you of just that every single day. Knowing this, you know just how lucky you are. You understand nothing and no one is granted to us forever.
You can name people in your life who have stuck beside you through thick and thin, who have seen you at your Beyoncé days and at your Ben-&-Jerry’s-binge-eating-pantless-sobbing-over-"Titantic"-for-the-thousandth-time days.
They have seen you through all of this, and they have never left.
They’re a part of your life because you gave them a reason to want to be. Maybe that isn’t what most would constitute as conventional romance, but that is surely something to love in your life nonetheless.
While there’s no “significant other” in your life right now, you do aspire to significant things.
For example, my dreams don’t exactly revolve around falling in love with a person, but rather falling in love with the life I make for myself, like achieving the dream job. (Teen Vogue, I'm looking at you.)
If I could get my foot into the door of coffee runs and late nights in the Condé Nast office, to then writing, reading, researching and doing all things fashion and relationships, I would have it all.
Like falling in love, and like the field I aspire to work for, the things we want for ourselves is just not an easy thing to accomplish.
It is going to be about compromise. It is going to take work. No, it is not going to look like how we thought it would.
It is going to be a hundred, thousand times better.
How romantic would our lives be if everything we ever imagined for ourselves came true?
And what if all of this was accomplished by ourselves? Would some call that sad? Possibly. Independent? Sure. Whatever you may call it, I fully believe there are things in our lives that can give us everything we were told partners provide.
Significant others are just plus ones on our rides through life.
Having significant others in our lives should be nothing more than having partners in crime to help us through our trials and tribulations, and the things we dream of accomplishing one day.
I figure that if I get the dream job at Teen Vogue, there’s nothing and no one more I could possibly ask for.
But hey, if someone comes into the equation at a coffee shop while I’m writing a piece for Teen Vogue about self-worth, feminism, and finding yourself, all while wearing the perfect pair of heels?
How romantic is that? Someone call John Green, and let’s make a novel turned rom-com.
I wonder if it’s naïve to think we will all fall in love with people someday.
It's not that I believe falling in love is overrated. And no, I also don’t say this because of a pessimistic past with college frat guys and month-at-longest “commitments.”
I say this because while falling in love with someone else must be incredible, I think it would be a disservice to ourselves to underestimate the opportunity to fall in love with the lives we already have: the career, the friends and family, the people, places and things that we already have and can achieve on our own that are absolutely worth romanticizing.
So, let's soak in every single independent second of it. Let's love our singleness. Let's love ourselves, and who knows?
Besides our friends and family, maybe, ironically enough, we will meet people who love us for who we have created — for ourselves, and by ourselves..
With all that said, this is why being single may be the ultimate romances of our lives.
