5 More Myths of Singleness

A while ago I wrote about five myths of singleness, and I had so much fun I thought I’d share some more. Here are some more sneaky lies about what we as single persons might believe, or are afraid others believe about us.

1. You can’t do anything alone (like go out to eat, travel, etc.)

If you go somewhere alone, who is going to take cool pics of you posing for Instagram?

Our culture has an odd fear of being alone. Yes, we need community. There is an epidemic of loneliness within the U.S. and young people are affected more than ever. But there is a difference between being lonely and being alone. It is dangerous for us to be isolated, but good for us to seek solitude. Confused yet?

Isolation is a negative state of mind and spirit marked by feelings of loneliness, like something is missing. Have you ever felt surrounded by a crowd of people and still felt alone? It is the state of feeling unknown and unloved, by anyone, no matter where you are.

Solitude, however, is the positive state of being engaged with one’s self and the Creator. Solitude gives you the space to get to know yourself. Solitude gives you the space of being able to hear your own thoughts and dive deeply into the creative parts of your soul to express the gifts God has given you for your particular vocation and apostolate. And in our hectic world that takes as much of us as it can, solitude is healing. Isolation is a deficit of community; solitude renews us so that we are able to be part of a community.

2. You can only grow within your vocation.

You aren’t on hold till your wedding day, my dear.

This one scares me. I have heard it so many times in various ways during my time at a very Catholic university and as part of young adult communities.

“I just want to get married and then I can live the life I’ve always wanted.”

“If only God would tell me what my vocation is then I could really be holy.”

“Once I find the right person I can be my real self.”

Your life is now, this moment, this city, this day. You cannot live in the future. You cannot live in the past. And refusing to live results in entropy. By not growing, by not changing, you are stagnating. In nature, things that don’t grow are dead. In the psychology world, this concept of staying the same versus changing is referred to as fixed mindset versus growth mindset.

Growing is hard. We need to admit that more. But staying the same is worse. Do you want to be the same person you were in high school or college?  Or do you want to keep growing and exploring and healing and discovering more ways the Lord loves you?

3. Single people are inferior to married people.

Look, just because they get to have sex without it being a mortal sin doesn’t make married folks superior to you.

You know who believes singles are inferior to marrieds? People who value status over relationship. And being married is still seen as a status symbol in our society, especially in Catholic-Christian subcultures. There is a lot of bias toward single people that we need to work on, especially within the Church. The fear of being judged as selfish, work-obsessed, and immature is rampant.

Why? There are lots of married people who aren’t saints. Getting hitched is no guarantee that you are doing God’s will. Like the point above, marriage is not the starting point of your life. That was conception.

We need to stop seeing “singleness” as transition period. What are you transitioning from or toward? A wedding day isn’t a magical moment of transformation like Cinderella’s fairy godmother turning a pumpkin into a golden carriage. You might be single for now or forever, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t always called toward holiness. If you never fully understand how deeply loved you are by the Creator of the Universe, then no relationship will be able to satisfy that longing.

4. You have to get married by a certain age (or you expire).

You aren’t a gallon of milk.

If you aren’t married by 30, clearly your bones are now dust and/or your womb is filled with cobwebs. You are ancient and joyless, cold as ice and never warmed by another’s love. Dramatic, much? I think this lie comes from the fear that we will never get the chance to fully live out our primordial vocations of paternity or maternity. And this comes from a misunderstanding of what fatherhood and motherhood essentially are.

Natural paternity and maternity is fairly obvious. You and someone of the opposite sex got together, God approved, and a new human was created. Spiritual fatherhood and motherhood is a little more vague. We often think it belongs only to priests or religious. But it is in fact the primary role we are all called to, no matter what our state in life may be.

Being a biological parent falls under the umbrella of spiritual parent, not the other way around. We are always called to be “open to life.” But being open to life means more than being open to conception. It means participating in the lives of your nieces and nephews. It means mentoring the kids and teenagers at your parish. It means creating a spirit of hospitality within your heart and your home for your friends to flourish and grow.

5. There’s no way you can have a fulfilling life alone.

Do you have your Grumpy Old Person at the End of the Block application?

Yep. Because as cool as your friends and family members and their children and your work may be, you are still #ForeverAlone and therefore condemned to misery. Or maybe not. Crack open your Bible like a good Catholic and read what Jesus has to say on the single life.

“Peter began to say to him, 'We have given up everything and followed you.' Jesus said, 'Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake [...] who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age” (Mark 10:28-30)

Everything we give up, or think we give up, is promised to us in an even greater manner than we first expected.

This lie also begs the question: what do I think a fulfilling life is? Is it having a spouse or kids? Making my home the way I want it to look? Or getting what I think I want out of my job or vocation? No. Let’s look at those adverbs, too. Having. Making. Getting.

These all speak to the way we grasp at good things, rather than receive them as gifts. When we try to possess what is meant to be given freely, then we are reenacting the actions of Adam and Eve taking the fruit of the tree, not the actions of Christ giving, and receiving, love.

Mother Teresa once said, “The problem with our world is that we draw the circle of family too small.” And I strongly believe that should be a “world” problem, and not a “church” problem. We are the Family of God, after all. We are called Brothers and Sisters in Christ. We should be part of each other’s lives and homes and hearts.  In this day and age of isolation, we should be the template seekers use to find and build family, whether that is your biological family or a “found family.”

And at the end of the day, we can only find true fulfillment in Christ Jesus because he is the root and source of our desire.