Why Are You Actually Single?

Everyone has a theory about why women are single.

Maybe you haven’t healed enough.

Maybe you’re too independent.

Too emotional.

Too intimidating.

Maybe you haven’t prayed hard enough.

Maybe it’s your weight.

Too many carbs.

Not enough cardio.

Maybe if you became softer, quieter, prettier, less sexual, more agreeable, less complicated, more healed, more feminine, more perfect… love would finally arrive.

But what if the truth is less aesthetic than that?

What if I’m single because my pacing in love has been wounded?

Because I confuse being hard to read with being emotionally safe.

Because I reveal my feelings too late.

Because I stay detached until I am suddenly overflowing.

Because I have mistaken longing for compatibility more times than I would like to admit.

What if I’m single because loneliness has made me romanticize emotionally unavailable people?

Because I tried to force clarity out of confusion instead of walking away.

Because I stayed too long in connections that never truly felt emotionally safe just because I feared starting over.

And maybe I’m single because I have spent years trying to be chosen without fully revealing myself first.

I wanted people to pursue me deeply while I hid behind aloofness, independence, and half-vulnerability. I thought being hard to read would protect me from rejection. Instead, it often left me feeling unseen.

And yes, some men hurt me.

But I have hurt myself too.

Through emotional withholding.

Through ignoring my intuition.

Through attaching myself to potential instead of reality.

Through trying to make homes out of inconsistency.

Still, I do not think I am single because I am unlovable.

I think I am single because I am changing.

I no longer want relationships built on ambiguity, emotional instability, or chemistry alone. I no longer want to confuse desire for devotion or attention for intimacy. I no longer want to abandon myself trying to hold onto people who are unsure about me.

And maybe that means some of my old patterns are finally dying before new ones have fully formed.

That space in between is lonely sometimes.

But maybe loneliness is not always a sign that something is wrong. Maybe it is simply evidence that I can no longer force myself to fit inside connections that no longer align with who I am becoming.

So yes, maybe one day this work will lead me to my person.

Or maybe it will simply lead me back to myself.

Either way, I think that is still love.