The Case Against Coupledom: Why Now Is The Time To Focus On You, Not Your Significant Other

One is the loneliest number. There is really nothing easy about being alone.

Having someone by our side enables us to have a crutch on this roller coaster that is life. It gives us one guarantee in a world full of uncertainty.

Think about the ease with which you answer some of life’s questions when you are in a relationship: Wedding plus-one? Date to the movies? Valentine’s Day plans? New Year’s Eve midnight kiss?

When you’re on your own, the only person you can rely on is you. While most of us have our families and close friends as added support, there is something fundamentally intimate about the comfort that a significant other can bring.

Love makes us all a little happier, a little lighter and more willing to forgive the woman at Starbucks who’s taking 10 minutes to decide between the everything bagel and fruit cup.

Love makes us look at the world a little differently — a little more compassionately. It makes us less self-involved and instead, just more involved. Quite simply, people in love are nicer; they have more reason to be.

After all, at the core of almost every life quest we take on is the pursuit of unconditional love.

Here’s the problem: Love also makes us crazy. It takes independent, freethinking women and turns them into borderline bipolar head cases. Men aren’t excused from the craziness, either.

Fun-loving ambitious men become sullen, resentful shadows of the powerhouses they once were. Okay, so maybe that’s a little harsh, but am I completely off the grid with this one?

I’m willing to bet that I’m not. To clarify, it’s not that all couples in love are doomed to break up, but being in love takes us outside of ourselves — in the best and worst ways.

We’re talking the highest highs and lowest lows. I am typically the first to advocate for getting on the roller coaster of love and milking that adventure to the last drop. My apprehension lies in the timing; timing is everything.

Take me for example: I am always in love. I love love, those butterflies and that rush.

And then, I also hate love; the lies, the tears and the “trauma” of another breakup while having to attend yet another wedding for someone who I can only assume is less crazy than I am… Love takes over. I’ve learned first-hand just how dangerous this can be.

During a time in our lives when most of us are coming to terms with how useless our degrees seem to be and figuring out what we really want to do, who has the time to fall in and out of love?

Now is the time to be selfish, to get a little more involved with ourselves and get to the core of what makes us tick. Now is the time to build the beach houses and buy BMWs in our minds so that we can enjoy them when they become reality later on.

We can’t afford the distraction of losing control and letting love, lust or whatever else put our dreams on hold. Productivity is for the focused and focus is the derivative of a one-track mind, moving steadily toward an end game.

Maybe on the way, you’ll find a passenger who’s as determined as you are and it will all work out; maybe you won’t. Regardless, at the end of the day, the only person you are guaranteed to go to bed with is yourself.

We are all just trying to find out who we are and grow into the best possible versions of ourselves. It’s only once we finally figure this out that we can thrive and actually be of any (sane) use to another person.

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