Potential Energy: Hate being single?

[IBDesmond]

Even those of us comfortable in our single life have moments of feeling alone. Maybe it's because you're lying to yourself about being comfortable being single? Maybe it's your suppressed insecurities surfacing? Maybe it's our ambiverted personality? The same personality trait that has us feeling isolated in a room full of people, let alone relaxing at home drinking your 4th cup of tea of the day before 1pm, slowly plowing through movies on Netflix.
Potential is a beautiful thing. The limbo of hanging in the balance between an infinite series of outcomes (something I could elaborate on on a deeper level but I will refrain). But beauty is relative. As much as something can be beautiful, it can also be ugly because a infinite series of possible outcomes aren't always going to be pretty.

Potential is the cocoons that caterpillars blossom from when you meet an incredibly beautiful woman. Potential is the energy running through the fibres of those transformed caterpillars in your stomach. It's the music that those butterflies dance to when she smiles at you, when she laughs, when you smell her perfume, when the tone of her voice resonates against your skin causing the hairs on the back of your neck to give a standing ovation, applauding the her excellence. Potential is the tempo of your heart beat when you think of her, because your mind suddenly becomes consumed with phantasmal images of optimism and ideas as though standing on the very edge of a tangible euphoria.
The exponential intensity of emotions as things with you and the said woman progress.

Now try and comprehend smoothly slipping back to contentment when all of that disappears in a moment...a moment that lacks explanation, understanding, sense, definition, and most of all....it lacks vindication.

 

[blue_ladybug]

Even those of us comfortable in our single life have moments of feeling alone. Maybe it's because you're lying to yourself about being comfortable being single? Maybe it's your suppressed insecurities surfacing? Maybe it's our ambiverted personality? The same personality trait that has us feeling isolated in a room full of people, let alone relaxing at home drinking your 4th cup of tea of the day before 1pm, slowly plowing through movies on Netflix.
Potential is a beautiful thing. The limbo of hanging in the balance between an infinite series of outcomes (something I could elaborate on on a deeper level but I will refrain). But beauty is relative. As much as something can be beautiful, it can also be ugly because a infinite series of possible outcomes aren't always going to be pretty.

Potential is the cocoons that caterpillars blossom from when you meet an incredibly beautiful woman. Potential is the energy running through the fibres of those transformed caterpillars in your stomach. It's the music that those butterflies dance to when she smiles at you, when she laughs, when you smell her perfume, when the tone of her voice resonates against your skin causing the hairs on the back of your neck to give a standing ovation, applauding the her excellence. Potential is the tempo of your heart beat when you think of her, because your mind suddenly becomes consumed with phantasmal images of optimism and ideas as though standing on the very edge of a tangible euphoria.
The exponential intensity of emotions as things with you and the said woman progress.

Now try and comprehend smoothly slipping back to contentment when all of that disappears in a moment...a moment that lacks explanation, understanding, sense, definition, and most of all....it lacks vindication.

I'm single and I love it..there's nothing wrong with drinking tea and watching netflix movies, IMO.. Being single is great. No one to answer to, no toilet seats left up, no bf sitting on the couch, watching tv and burping..lol.. I don't miss having a boyfriend at all. I have alot to keep me busy, and I don't wonder anymore who my bf is screwing around on me with..

 

[CatHerder]

I like my cocoon. It's cozy.

 

[p_rehbein]

At 24........the OP has some credible thoughts...............

Over 40........yeah, not so much........

At my age, single is way better

PROUD TO BE SINGLE! Why? Well, glad you asked.......

1) More quality time to spend with my Daughter and Grandson
2) Cook the food I like to eat
3) Go to the Stores I like to go to
4) Go fishing whenever I want, for as long as I want
5) Do laundry when I want to
6) Clean house when I want to
7) Go fishing whenever I want, for as long as I want
8) Put my feet on the table if I want to
9) Wear the same shirt two days in a row
10) Go fishing whenever I want, for as long as I want
11) Eat pizza whenever I want, the way I like it
12) Cheeseburger pigouts
13) Wash the car when I want to wash the car
14) Iron what shirts? Why?
15) Wranglers are just fine for Sunday Service
16) Did I mention going fishing........?

 

[IBDesmond]

At 24........the OP has some credible thoughts...............

Over 40........yeah, not so much........

At my age, single is way better

PROUD TO BE SINGLE! Why? Well, glad you asked.......

1) More quality time to spend with my Daughter and Grandson
View attachment 98645

You wouldn't have a daughter or Grandson if it wasn't for companionship

 

[p_rehbein]

You wouldn't have a daughter or Grandson if it wasn't for companionship

Very true.......but we are discussing the present yes? As I said for younger adults, it is perfectly natural to long for a soul mate...to share their lives with........and that's a good thing.......


(also please recognize the level of tongue in cheek in my post.......were you at or near my age, you would realize that the things I listed are quite familiar to old married folks)

 

[seoulsearch]

Hi IB,

No matter what kinds of replies you get to your posts, I hope you will keep posting. You definitely have a very unique flavor of writing... flowing and poetic with a dreamlike quality that I personally find to be a bit of fresh air among the questions we singles ask ourselves over and over. And you ask some very good questions.

I have to say that time and experience have been huge factors on my own outlook at singleness. When I was in my 20's, I was lost. But at the same time, as you say, there is, what seems like, a never-ending bundle of potential that we feel would be wasted if we don't seize the moment. Potentially, I could travel to an exotic country and fall into a deep, storybook love with a guy who has a beautiful accent I could listen to day and night. Potentially. Potentially, every single one of us is told we can be anything we want, change the world, have fabulous careers, loving, bubbly families, become millionaires, and live a good life.

Potentially.

The problem with potential is that potential is not reality, and what we find is that over time, reality eventually does set in. We have the potential to live an independent life with a nice home and car. But the reality is, those things cost money, and in order to afford our independence (or the other things we potentially dream of, like a spouse and family), we have to do things such as sacrifice some of our own dreams, take a job we don't like, or find ourselves diverted onto paths we never thought we'd be on.

Potential is not a promise or a guarantee, which I think many people forget.

One of the reasons I don't feel so anxious about singleness now is because I'm not as lost as I was once upon a time, and I don't feel a need to cling on to someone or rely on someone as much as when I was younger. I realize that being clinging or needy can be seen as its own character flaw, but it also kept me loyal to a person in situations I otherwise would not have put up with. On the flip side, now that I'm older, I absolutely refuse to put with many things I tolerated when I was younger.

In my last relationship, I stopped by my then-boyfriend's house to surprise him with a gift. I found him sitting at his computer, printing out stacks of porn. I was UPSET. But I tolerated it. But if something like that were to happen in the present, I would walk out and never return.

Love and relationships CAN be beautiful, yes. But the problem is that potential very rarely seems to calculate any obstacles, and we all know that life has obstacles.

You mentioned the sweet smell of your significant other. What happens when that sweet smell becomes the stench of a hospital room, because your beloved is dying of cancer? You talked about the wonderful sound of her laughter... What happens when the laughter turns into screaming because she has Alzheimer's and no longer recognizes who you are? People think this is so far into the future it will either never happen to them or when it does, it will be miles away... but the truth is, more and more people are wrestling with all kinds of issues and at increasingly younger ages. And of course, this is but a small fraction of what you may face with your beloved. What about all the sleepless nights you'll have over how you're going to pay the bills, answer your child's teacher when he or she gets into trouble, how to care for aging parents, and countless other challenges of life?

Potential is beautiful, because it is devoid of the problems of everyday life, and even the most cynical person likes the ideas of grasping at straws every now and then. I once worked for a boss who talked all the time about how he had owned his own business by age 21. He was lost in the dream of his own potential. He fully believed he would retire a millionaire many times over and live the good life by the time he was 50.

By the time I was working for him, he was almost at his "potential" retirement age... and nothing in life had quite turned out the way he had foreseen it--which is what seems to happen to most of us.

I say all this not to be depressing, because I truly believe that most people build their relationships and marriages on the concept of potential--what COULD be, in their own minds, at least--and what they get is reality instead. Reality has a way of landing pretty far from potential... and when people see the discrepancy, they go chasing after that elusive potential yet again... Often with someone else.

People believe potential is a birthright they are somehow owed, and if someone or something doesn't live up to their expectations of their own potential, they believe they have a right to go and chase down the next best something or someone who can give them their fulfilled potential.

But anyone who reads the Bible knows that this is NOT what God says, especially in marriage. God says, "Make your promise to that person and keep it." Potential, on the other hand, says, "Look out for number one, and keep going until you find it."

 

[IBDesmond]

Hi IB,

No matter what kinds of replies you get to your posts, I hope you will keep posting. You definitely have a very unique flavor of writing... flowing and poetic with a dreamlike quality that I personally find to be a bit of fresh air among the questions we singles ask ourselves over and over. And you ask some very good questions.

Thanks for you post. Hmmm....your post did come across a little bitter as though. As though not matter what ideas of utopia we have, we are destined for immeasurable amounts of pain and sorrow.

I elaborated on the positives of potential but I did mention that potential also has an ugly side which, by your post, it seems that you focus more on that side of potential.
Reality is the manifestation of potential. And since potential is neither good nor bad, to PRIMARILY focus on one is either naive or cynical. However to simply focus on one more than the other is what defines us. To focus on the positive is to be positive.

You said things like "What happens when that sweet smell becomes the stench of a hospital room, because your beloved is dying of cancer?".....why would I live my life thinking about those things or expectant of those things. Those things are some people's reality. Not everyone's.

I understand what you was saying but you came across very cynical and almost belittling (which is something I find myself getting from number 40+ year olds that populate this site). I take wisdom from my elders, not cynicism.

 

[seoulsearch]

You said things like "What happens when that sweet smell becomes the stench of a hospital room, because your beloved is dying of cancer?".....why would I live my life thinking about those things or expectant of those things. Those things are some people's reality. Not everyone's.

I understand what you was saying but you came across very cynical and almost belittling (which is something I find myself getting from number 40+ year olds that populate this site). I take wisdom from my elders, not cynicism.

I don't consider myself to be your elder at all. Just another person on another journey in another place.

Nor do I consider myself a cynic. I'm writing from a place of once being someone who believed in all the potential you speak of but then found these to be some of the realities along the way. For some people, yes. Others have found the good life and that's great! But most people I've met and spoken with have run into a lot of unanticipated things and learned to work with reality rather than potential.

I am also not bitter. Sometimes maybe a little sad about this or that, as we all have regrets or longings. I'm single because I haven't found someone I thought I could "meet that great potential with." I've met great guys along the way and maybe we could have become a couple, but at the time, I didn't feel a spark or great urgency to rush into anything.

I'm actually in a better place in life that I ever have been before--more independent and more able to take the bumps and bruises of life as they come. I've seen some people whose lives seem to always get better and others who never seem to catch a break, and I try to learn from both. I wrote what I did because I've known and been close to people whose loved ones have died from cancer and have suffered from Alzheimer's. I try to remember that for all the potential life has, God also equips us to deal with less pretty side of life, and there is plenty of that, too.

But of course, I believe there is a balance in enjoying life as well. I now have more freedom (meaning, my bills are paid and I look forward to traveling when I can) than at any other stage I have experienced so far in my life, and I keep grasping for more. I still believe in potential as well, though my view and definitions have changed somewhat.

Nothing I said was meant to be belittling or cynical. If you interpreted it that way, then that was the way you chose to read it, and I understand that. I do hope you stay with us a while... I'd be very interested to see what you write in 10 years, or 20, or more, because I'd like to see what becomes of the potential of your outlook on potential.

 

[wisebeardman]

4th cup of tea caught my attention.

but I was on my 4th cup about 2pm.

 

[seoulsearch]

P.S. I'm also writing to you as someone who has been in the single world for several years, and I am neither writing as someone "older" nor "cynical" but rather from the perspective of reality as I've found it.

Several of the gentlemen I've spoken to or have read the profiles of will state right away that they are caring for a relative or their aging parents, often dealing with the issues I spoke of, so in the potential of the beauty of an enticing relationship... There is also the reality that many of these real-world issues must be taken care of as well.

Many others also have children, which is a beautiful thing, but again, reality sets in. I'm certainly not saying caring for children is like caring for someone aged or with health problems, but it does make a substantial impact on the relationship you will have.

For instance, romantic dates are wonderful... But this expectation must also be tempered with the reality that you will be helping to care for the loved ones of the one you love--financially, spiritually, and emotionally.

So when you mention all the wonderful scenarios of love with a potential significant other (I used to envision all of those things too, and ONLY that side), what's changed for me is that I now take a moment to pause... and really listen to what the other person is going through, because a big consideration for me now is that whatever they're dealing with in life will become my own responsibility as well.

 

[seoulsearch]

4th cup of tea caught my attention.

but I was on my 4th cup about 2pm.

Wise, this made me smile.

Even without any tea (but it sure does sound like a good idea.)

 

[IBDesmond]

I find things belittling and condescending when people compare my mindset to theirs and say that's it's because I'm younger than them. They imply that my mindset is immature and naive and that when I reach a certain age, my mindset will have most likely varied.

Age doesn't guarantee wisdom. It can only guarantee experience. And should you take on particular patterns of behaviour from a young age, you will just end up gaining experience in that pattern of behaviour. If that pattern of behaviour is somewhat foolish, the mindset will inevitably not be wisdom.
What I'm trying to say is, just because I'm young, doesn't mean I should be negative or have a different view on life. I don't think I'm being unrealistic in my mindset.

In the OP, I was talking about how you feel when you meet someone you're attracted to. I don't think I should be any less hopeful or anything.


I understand you wasn't being belittling or cynical. I'm just saying that's how it comes across. Often I read comments and can discern that the person who posted it was over a particular age because it's often a little cynical, and it frowns on my age. That's my perception anyway and that's why I find it hard to take much from it.


I'd be interested to see your response the OP been a similar age to you or older.

 

[IBDesmond]

P.s. please know that I'm not arguing. My tone and demeanour is relaxed and chill.

And I too want to mention...24 years single :/

 

[seoulsearch]

I understand you wasn't being belittling or cynical. I'm just saying that's how it comes across. Often I read comments and can discern that the person who posted it was over a particular age because it's often a little cynical, and it frowns on my age. That's my perception anyway and that's why I find it hard to take much from it.


I'd be interested to see your response the OP been a similar age to you or older.

When I was 26, which isn't so far from 24, I was in a relationship in which... Yes. Sometimes he smelled good. But that "sweet significant other smell" was also mixed in with the smell of dirty diapers, many of which I found myself changing. And there were a lot of them, because he had three kids.

Yes, there was the sound of his laughter... but it was usually because he was drinking and didn't know any better, which was all the time.

I would have loved to have been in a beautiful situation with a beautiful person, but that's not how things turned out. Sure, I have some regrets and some leftover hard feelings but I'm glad for the lessons I learned. I've remained single ever since--it might not work for some, and it's not always the way I wanted it. Maybe someday it will change. I try to take life as it comes. In the meantime, I have a lot more positive days now than I did back then. I loosened my grip on looking for potential and tried to make the most of what God decided to put my way.

And yes, I was, for the most part, the same age as you.

We aren't arguing, just stating different points of view. I'm sitting here chillin' with my cranberry grape cocktail instead of tea.

My track record so far is: ages 0-16, single; 17-29, long-term relationships; ages (latter half of age 29) to present age, 41, single once again.

 

[Siberian_Khatru]

Even those of us comfortable in our single life have moments of feeling alone. Maybe it's because you're lying to yourself about being comfortable being single?

Something I wonder about in others and in myself, too. I'm of said ambivert nature.

 

[wisebeardman]

Wise, this made me smile.

Even without any tea (but it sure does sound like a good idea.)

I drink a lot of tea actually. i make mine hot. and I use a big cup. its like having 4 cups in one. im on big cup #3

 

[IBDesmond]

I think if Jesus was at a life/connect group, he would have turned water to tea like when at the wedding he turned water to wine.

 

[CatHerder]

I think if Jesus was at a life/connect group, he would have turned water to tea like when at the wedding he turned water to wine.

I think he would have turned the water into wine again, then he would have gotten lectured by one of the members for promoting drunkenness and stumbling his brothers, while another would be insisting that it was unfermented grape juice.

 

[Lynx]

If this were a certain other forum we would argue about what kind of tea... I think it would be darjeeling, it's the champagne of teas - No brother, you do greatly err, it would be sweet iced tea - no no no, it would obviously be earl grey...

But since this is the CC Singles forum I'll answer the OP instead. Dude, have you ever considered taking a creative writing course? You have a wonderful gift for expressing what you think and feel. I've never been on a date before and even I felt like I knew what you were talking about.

I don't hate being single, but I do look forward to one day being married - if and when. If it doesn't happen I won't grieve. I'm too busy doing other stuff I like.

I do have to say something in seoulsearch's defense though. I didn't read what she wrote as condescending or cynical. She spoke of the other side of the same coin, and it is something that is best considered when it IS a hypothetical. If you devote time to thinking about the potential downsides (not too much and get gloomy, but enough to evaluate possibilities) you will be much better prepared later in life if they become realities.

Did that make sense? It's better to think of the downsides when they are not real, so they don't knock you off your feet if they do become real.