Not Having Someone To Love Doesn’t Have To Feel So Lonely

enticing woman on bicycle
God & Man

I don’t know how love happens, and I don’t know how or why people find it, but I know that not having it doesn’t have to make you feel so empty. I know that being alone shouldn’t make you feel like you need to search for love even harder. It shouldn’t make you feel like you’re just not trying hard enough, or that maybe you’re just not good enough, not good enough to find love and not good enough to keep it.

Love doesn’t have to always be prioritized. It doesn’t have to be worried about and keep you up all through the night wondering if you’ll ever find it, or if you’ll be alone forever.

Sometimes the amount of pressure we put on ourselves to find love is unbearable, and love doesn’t have to be something that feels so pressured. Love doesn’t have to be the shadow that’s always there, reminding you that you’re alone, that you don’t have a hand to hold or a shoulder to cry on. Love doesn’t have to make us feel so utterly deprived. It’s like when we have it we’re so over the moon excited, and if we don’t we’re lonely and feel sorry for ourselves. You don’t have to feel sorry for yourself for not loving someone, for not having someone love you. It seems love only makes us feel this way when we forget about ourselves.

Because not having someone to love doesn’t have to make you feel hopeless. It doesn’t have to make you feel pathetic either. I hope you realize that being alone gives you all the time in the world to focus on the person who really matters. Being alone means you can do things by yourself, for yourself, and you don’t have to feel sad that after you do them you’re left with just you. To be on your own takes strength. It means you have the courage to face loneliness head on, and when it creeps up on you, you allow yourself to feel it.

When you don’t have someone to love loneliness is the one thing that tries to threaten you, it tries to make you feel small, and unimportant. But please realize that when you don’t have someone to love, you’re allowed to feel lonely. You’re allowed to pour yourself a glass of wine, and wish someone’s empty glass was there waiting for you to pour them one too. You’re allowed to lay in bed reading that book you just bought that smells like unread pages, and wish someone was laying there next to you. You don’t have to hide the loneliness or pretend it’s not there, but you don’t have to let it make you feel pressured to find something that’s honestly not even supposed to be found.

You’ll be okay on your own. I believe in you. You don’t need to find love to feel good about yourself. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

Writer based in the Philadelphia area. Person who really loves her dog and watching cooking shows. Check out my writing on Thought Catalog and follow me on Facebook! Connect with me and submit your work on Collective World.

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