in: Dating & Relationships

How To Be a Happy Single in a Couples’ World

Existing as a happy single is possible (even in this couples-centric world). Tara Greenway shares how to find joy through ditching self-sabotaging beliefs.


We are confident, accomplished, and just fine most of the time… yet all of us have been there: at the wedding reception without a date; at Thanksgiving dinner answering the question “Seeing anyone special?” over and over; home on a Saturday night trying not to check Facebook status updates and Instagrams of other people’s amazing evenings.

Even though you see being single as just one stage of your life, wouldn’t it be great to be a truly happy single person even in our incessantly couples-centric world? Here is a way to pull the joy and serenity you theorize about into reality.

In my mind/body healing practice, I have many clients who come in desperately wanting to meet their soulmate; they feel confused or even betrayed because they haven’t yet found that person.

One thing I do is help people change the core underlying beliefs they may or may not realize they have—because when you get down to it, our beliefs are basically running our lives. It’s helpful to know what those beliefs running around in your subconscious are, and also what the higher truth is—what your beliefs about yourself and your life could be.

First, many people have an underlying belief (really a fear, or a deep suspicion) that they don’t deserve their soulmate, or even that they don’t deserve love at all.

Why would they think this? Different reasons come into play. Maybe they have had many challenges in their lives—for example, perhaps they experienced verbal, physical, or sexual abuse in their childhood, or just a lot of neglect. Their young hearts and minds reached the conclusion that if they were treated that way, they deserved to be treated that way. And while of course this couldn’t be further from the real truth, those fears are still lurking around in their systems. Bringing those old beliefs to the surface of our consciousness and clearing them creates new patterns in the way they feel, and thus the way they act, and thus what they manifest in their lives.

The highest truth is they deserve love and their soulmate, because we all deserve love, every one of us; we all deserve a soulmate.

Another belief many people have is “I’m incomplete without my significant other.”

This is constantly reinforced by our culture, from movies with lines like “You complete me” to TV and magazine ads populated with happy couples… let alone that relative back home whose one and only query about your life is whether or not you have “found someone.” Believing that you are incomplete creates a certain sense of desperation and deficiency, and is far from the highest truth. You are perfectly complete; you came in this way and will someday leave this way. A love relationship is not necessary because you are incomplete, but for the polar opposite reason: because you wish to share your amazing life with another.

The image of one jagged half of a circle casting around for its other correctly-shaped other half is replaced with an image more like a spiral, gracefully swirling ever upwards, complete unto itself, yet also ready to someday curve with another person’s spiraling line, similar to the double helix of DNA: both lines constantly reaching upwards—separate, yet unified.

A common and extremely toxic belief I come across is “Whenever I love someone, they abandon me.”

You can see why one with this belief might either have a string of relationships that have ended badly, or why one might simply shun relationships altogether in order to avoid being abandoned. This fear of abandonment is rooted in childhood, with a parent who either physically or emotionally abandoned a child. Often this happens through a divorce or a death, a parent who worked so much they were simply not around, or a parent who was physically present but emotionally completely detached. With the mind/body technique I practice, we are able to change this belief by allowing the person to come to an understanding of why their father or mother was unable to parent them adequately (probably having a lot to do with how the neglectful parent was parented years before), and how the person, no longer a child but an adult who has learned from their journey, can release their resentment and fear around this, and move above and beyond it.

I have watched beautiful transformations occur when people pinpointed and released their old beliefs about love. Once you do this, you no longer feel betrayed, inadequate, or incomplete. You begin to understand how much you deserve true love, how love naturally flows toward you, how all you have been through has made you who you are, and how much you offer the world and it offers you. You begin to see, in short, your own perfection, despite it all. You see your happiness, your complexity, your completeness. And others will without question reflect back to you this love and acceptance.

What we believe creates our world. You can create your own world of love, happiness, and satisfaction… no matter what your marital status.

Please let me know if you have any questions or helpful comments for our community, and I wish you a joyful journey!

[image: via Ding Yuin Shan on flickr]


About the Author

Tara_Greenway_CoFounder_THNYC_KLPR_screengrab (1)Tara Greenway is a certified Master ThetaHealer® and co-founder of ThetaHealing®NYC who loves helping people heal. Tara has also trained in polarity therapy, EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and NDT (New Decision Therapy) and is an interfaith minister licensed in New York State. Tara has worked with children for over 25 years, including teens at the ‘I Have A Dream’ Foundation, grieving children at Long Island College Hospital’s Healing Center, and welfare hotel kids. Tara was honored to contribute a chapter in For Women Only, by Gary Null and Barbara Seaman (Seven Stories Press). She is a member of the Association of Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP) and was a founding board member of Healing Arts Haven. Topics Tara can speak to include chronic pain, physical abuse survivors, anxiety and depression, adoptive parenting, religion, the mind/body connection, and spirituality and sexuality. For any questions or helpful comments Tara is available through YouTubeTwitterFacebook and HERE.

 

About the Author:

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