The 11 Things You Learn From Being The Only Single Friend
Maybe you’ve glanced around recently and found yourself as the only person in your friend group not frolicking into a new romantic venture. It’s like spring is the season of new boyfriends or something.
Trust me, being the single friend is not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. It just means your life is all about you, and what’s better than that? Check out these 11 reasons why the single life ain’t as melancholy a place to be as society might have you thinking:
1. Independence
Being alone isn’t the same thing as being lonely. You really can learn to have a good time with you, yourself and… you. Go to a movie. Sit at a coffee shop and read a book.
Meditate in a park. Discovering what you enjoy sans outside influence is one of the most valuable and invigorating breakthroughs to experience, and you’ll find you can’t do it with a dude linked to your arm constantly.
2. Saving money
No significant other? That means no extra birthday, Christmas, Valentine’s Day or anniversary gifts to buy. Boom.
3. What not to do in relationships
As someone who feels like every last one of her friends has a boyfriend or girlfriend, it can be easy to get discouraged. Instead of feeling like the left-out, sad sap, keep living your life happily with the steady awareness of what you see in your friends’ relationships.
Does your main gal pal always get drunk and yell at her boy for talking to other girls? Realizing what you want (or don’t) in your next relationship is vital and easy to do when you have constant reminders.
4. Self-assurance
A perk of singledom is exploring in excess precisely who you want to be. You have only yourself to rely on to boost your own confidence and ignite your own motivation to work hard every day. What’s more empowering than that?
5. How to have fun on your own
Every single chick has been out with her coupled-up friends before. It can be a burden or a blast, depending on what you make it. Roll with the third- or fifth-wheel experience in effervescent style.
Branch away from your friends, the canoodling couple(s), and laugh about it with that cute, curly-headed stranger across the bar.
6. Standards
Helping your friends get through tumultuous times in their relationships is a surefire way to add new items to your list of standards: “Must not care if I have a girls’ night out and don’t text him the entire time.” Yeah, self-explanatory.
7. Listening skills
Helping your friends get through hard times is also prime time to work on the number one most-forgotten skill by human beings: listening. Don’t listen idly and simultaneously plan that you need to tell her to dump that evil jack*ss.
Listen openly and kindly; it is something not many people can do and will be a valuable asset in all facets of life.
8. You time: the most important time
Sometimes you just want to veg out in sweats and watch Netflix for seven-and-a-half hours in bed without caring if you get pretzel crumbs in the sheets. And that’s okay. Not feeling pressured to hang out with anyone is really one of the freest feelings you can have.
9. Going for what you want
Maybe traveling the world sounds like a good idea today. Well, you single minx, you, guess what? No one’s holding you back. No one is tying you down or telling you no or saying he or she totally cannot and will not do long distance.
Tell Austria, Greece, Thailand, India and Spain you’ll see them soon.
10. Small talk
Networking is this kind of obnoxious, really necessary thing that everyone who would like to get and maintain a job should know how to do. It’s about small talk and asking questions and getting to know someone in five minutes or less.
As the single friend, you have the optimal opportunity to get experience in this area every Friday and Saturday night (maybe even Thursdays).
11. You don’t have to share your food -- with ANYONE
Obviously, this is the most important takeaway. All that pasta? All for you.
Photo via We Heart It
