Is being single truly something women are free to be – or does it come laced with innuendo?

What’s to like about being single? After being single for over 30 years (my longest relationship was 3 months) when I met and married a gorgeous man, no one was more surprised than me.

I wasn’t relieved to not be single anymore, but I was surprised to be married as I had come to understand and accept that this time round marriage and having children were not going to be part of my life. In fact, I know for a long time my friends and colleagues suspected I was gay as this was the only reasoning they found made sense of a smart, successful, attractive woman not being in a relationship.

Still to this day I can appreciate the beauty of being single and the opportunity it offers us all to have women in the world exploring avenues of life and relationships outside the narrowness that has been on offer for thousands of years: marriage, spinsterhood or a religious life, borne of women being financially and socially dependent upon family, spouse or organisation, with those outside of these realms surviving by a life of ‘ill-repute’.

The beauty of being single today is not in its financial or social independence alone, but in the opportunity to live beyond the entrenched roles laid out for women that feed the stigma around being single. Being a single woman today is to be freer than ever to feel and live from an inner source of direction in life, nurtured by the absolute starting principles of a woman’s worth and sacredness. Contrary to still held beliefs, women are not a valueless burden – a second best to men – but an equally essential and precious part of life with a unique expression without which the world is, in every way, distorted, disturbed and diminished.

It is tragic for single women to live in the illusion that it is even a smidgen lesser to being in a relationship or a family; that somehow something is being missed out on. The idea that there is someone for everyone, that one day your prince will come, that happily ever after is found at the end of an aisle saying ‘I do’, feeds a lie that, if we buy into it, leaves us feeling dejected, rejected and waiting for a dream or a ‘normal’ to come true for us so we too can finally be fulfilled and in our element. It is, dear reader, rubbish feeding a social and commercial convenience at the expense of a true way of life for all.

The beauty of being single isn’t anti-marriage or anti-couple. It’s about being free of the shame, stigma, doubt and ‘wrongness’, the something-missing-ness. It’s the ridding of the ‘she must be gay’/ frigid/ a man hater, un-wanted, ugly, boring’ underlying ingrained assumptions and implications that hang over the single woman, making her singleness a ‘condition’ to remedy so she may no longer live contrary to ‘natural’ law.

The reality is, even in our age, we are not free to be single when we are female.

For single women everywhere of every age, make and model, let us breathe deeply and shake off the cloud that is imposed upon us or our sisters, as it is overwhelmingly designed to confirm a woman as being less or faulty for being single. It’s like having a disease or a weakness that only marriage or couple-dom can cure or a purpose in life that does not include being single.

"Be who you are and don’t lose that
to be something of this world."

Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings & Revelations Volume I, ed 1, p 179

Single or not, every woman deserves, in the most fundamental sense, the freedom to be single or coupled. Our societies can only be enriched by women being free to live and be single or in whatever type of relationship they choose.

That freedom is granted first to ourselves when we realise being a woman does not mean living up to the roles and expectations constantly implied and even enforced upon females, but living free of them, thereby moving out from under their age-old umbrella.

When the feminists won so much for women in the past 100 years of revolution in the West, it was from saying ‘no’ to living as our mothers did, but unfortunately not from saying ‘yes’ to ourselves.

In reaction to the din and clatter of so many voices coming down through the ages telling women that they are worth less than men, we’ve proved our worth by keeping up with or surpassing the boys club, instead of seeing the club itself as being harmful to all of us – men and women.

60% Complete
    /    

How successful is our success?

We boast about all the things we do as being successful but are we truly successful in our relationship with ourselves and with our families?

The beauty of being single is in connecting with our absolute worth and preciousness; the essence of who we are at heart, loving ourselves without reservation or doubt.

Thus, the crazy myth that being in a relationship is what confirms or completes a woman is dispelled and instead, our wisdom and naturally nurturing sassy and spectacular ways are freely brought to all aspects of life like a breath of fresh air in a stale old room.

"Human Life to date is not made or impulsed from our inner-most. In other words, we have not created life in society to be what we know deeply is true, but rather, we have a type of daily life that is held to, from and by the influenced ideals and beliefs we receive from those who have made it that way in complete dis-connection to their inner-most. And thus, we, in subjugation, end up with a disconnected way of being …
a way of being we loathe."

Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings & Revelations Volume I, ed 1, p 230

Filed under

Internet datingLonelinessSingleRelationshipsSelf-worth

  • By Adrienne Ryan

    I’ve always been interested in understanding the underlying cause and effect behind what we experience in life and for this the heart is the greatest teacher any student could have.

  • Photography: Rebecca W., UK, Photographer

    I am a tender and sensitive woman who is inspired by the playfulness of children and the beauty of nature. I love photographing people and capturing magical and joyful moments on my camera.