Don’t make the mistake of thinking that, in order to find your forever person, you need to sacrifice all of your other dreams.

You can work ten hour days and still make time for date night.

You can put effort into your job and still have enough energy leftover to make your person smile.

You can have a healthy relationship and a successful career. You don’t have to pick and choose between the two.

You can create a balance. You can have everything that you have ever wanted. You just have to be careful about who you let into your life.

Stay single until you find someone who is just excited about your dreams as you are.

Stay single until you find someone who is proud — not jealous — whenever you earn a promotion or a pay raise.

Stay single until you find someone who wants what’s best for you, even if that means you have to spend more time away from them and more time at the office.

Finding your forever person is important, but it’s just as important to find your forever career.

Find a career that makes you excited to get up in the morning, even if your alarm chimes at six.

Find a career that you’re proud to talk about at dinner parties while all of your friends are whining about how much they hate their jobs.

Find a career that pushes you to your limits every single day. That inspires you to get better and better.

Find a career that you can imagine continuing long into your life, even after you hit the age of retirement.

Find a career that makes you believe you’re doing something worthwhile with your time, like you’re actually making an impact.

You don’t want to turn your person into your entire world, the only reason you have for waking up in the morning. You don’t want to dedicate your entire life to a relationship that might fall apart. You don’t want to risk ending up alone and unemployed.

That’s why you should never put your dreams on the back burner.

You should never let society convince you that it’s better to focus on finding a person who makes you feel alive than finding a career that makes you feel alive.

You should never give up the dreams that you’ve had ever since you were a little kid, because you feel like that’s the only way you’ll be able to make your relationship work.

Besides, if you actually find the right person, you won’t feel pressured to give up your dreams. You’ll have more motivation than ever to try to achieve them.

So stay single until you find someone who pushes you to pursue your passions. Someone who would never ask you to put your dreams on hold, because they think you deserve all the happiness in the world.

Stay single until you find someone who believes in you just as much as you believe in yourself.

Holly Riordan is the author of Lifeless Souls, available here.