Why Being Single Can Be Great for You — And Your Future Relationships

Greta Christina

Weddingrings
In American culture, it’s generally assumed that everybody wants to be married, or to be in a long-term relationship. It’s assumed that everybody should be hitched up, and that everybody would be better off that way. Oh, sure, if you’ve just broken up with someone, it’s considered prudent to take a break between relationships. But it’s generally thought that this break is just that — a break. A temporary pause in the normal, correct state of affairs: the state of being in love. It’s assumed that, once a decent interval has passed, of course you’ll want to get back in the love game.

I was single for twelve years before my wife Ingrid and I fell in love. Very happily single. I am a huge fan of taking time to consider not just when to be coupled again and with whom, but whether to be coupled again. I am a huge fan of learning to be okay about being single: learning, not just to be okay with it, but to be actively happy about it. I am a huge fan of seeing our choices about romantic relationships include the choice, “None of the above.”

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Thus begins my latest piece for AlterNet, Why Being Single Can Be Great for You — And Your Future Relationships. To find out why I think being single can be an excellent and valid choice — both for its own sake, and for the health and happiness of any future relationships you might get into — read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

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Why Being Single Can Be Great for You — And Your Future Relationships

About the author

Greta Christina has been writing professionally since 1989, on topics including atheism, sexuality and sex-positivity, LGBT issues, politics, culture, and whatever crosses her mind. She is author of The Way of the Heathen: Practicing Atheism in Everyday Life, of Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God, of Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why, of Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, and of Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More, and is editor of Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients. She has been a public speaker for many years, and is on the speaker's bureaus of the Secular Student Alliance and the Center for Inquiry. Her writing has appeared in multiple magazines and newspapers, including Ms., Penthouse, Chicago Sun-Times, On Our Backs, and Skeptical Inquirer, and numerous anthologies, including Everything You Know About God Is Wrong and three volumes of Best American Erotica. She is co-founder and co-organizer of Godless Perverts, a performance series and social community that promotes a positive view of sexuality without religion. (Any views she expresses in this blog are solely hers, and do not necessarily represent this organizations.) She lives in San Francisco with her wife, Ingrid. You can email her at gretachristina (at) gmail (dot) com; you can follow her on Facebook, and on Twitter at @GretaChristina.

3 thoughts on “Why Being Single Can Be Great for You — And Your Future Relationships”

  3. vel
    3

    very nice article. I was 24 and sure I was going to be single and quite happy with it for my entire life….until my partner walked through the door. And he and I have been together for 22 years now. He’s just gotten a contract job 4 hours away so we’ll have some time to “play” single, at least as much as you can without considering another person as a potential partner.

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