The Unfair Advantage Single People Have
We always talk about being single as if it were the absence
of something—the chapter of your life where you are still
waiting for the real stuff to begin
or proof that nothing has worked out yet.
But the people who have stayed single the longest
are very often the people who know themselves the best.
Singleness does something to them that being
in a relationship never could.
Take two people who have been single for the same amount of time.
One comes out with sharp judgment, specific tastes,
and charisma because they spent that time building themselves.
The other comes out anxious, angry, and hungry for validation.
The experience is identical, but the output is opposite.
Time alone only does the work if you actually do the work.
The Concept of Shared Cognitive Load
When two people have been together for a long time,
something happens to the way they function individually.
Psychologists call it “shared cognitive load.”
The two brains start to run together as one extended system.
You remember different things than your partner does,
and whole categories of emotional regulation
and decision-making are redistributed across the couple.
This merging makes a relationship feel like a true partnership,
but the partner quietly takes parts of you off your plate.
Because someone else is handling those things,
those parts of you stop growing.
To run as one single system,
you give up running as two independent systems.
How Singleness Builds the Self
A single person cannot split anything with anyone.
Every decision, feeling, and action is theirs to handle alone.
Because of this, those parts of them stay alive
and keep getting stronger.
The person who has been single for a long time knows
what they want for dinner without thinking about it
and knows how to handle a bad day on their own.
The same thing happens with bigger moves.
In a relationship, taking a job in a new city requires conversation
and compromise.
A single person simply takes the job without asking for permission.
Multiply this across thousands of decisions,
and the difference adds up.
The single years are when you build the parts of yourself
that a relationship would have taken over.
The Science of Solitude
In 1988, British psychiatrist Anthony Storr argued that
the psychological field had been treating intimate relationships
as the only path to mental health.
However, if you look at the most psychologically developed
people in history, almost all of them
had long stretches of solitude.
Subsequent research supports this:
- Esther Buchholz found that alone time produces sharper creative work and a clearer sense of what people want out of life.
- Thuy-vy Nguyen at the University of Durham found that chosen time alone reduces stress and resets the nervous system.
- Sarkisian and Gerstel found that single people are more socially connected. They see their parents more often, have closer friendships, and invest more in their communities, while married couples tend to stop investing in outside relationships.
Furthermore, when researchers account for the fact that people
who are naturally happier and healthier are more likely
to find a partner in the first place,
the so-called “marriage advantage” regarding happiness
and longevity shrinks to almost nothing.
The Danger of Distraction
The benefits of being single are not automatic.
You can spend ten years single and emerge less developed than
a coupled friend if you spend that time avoiding yourself.
This looks like scrolling on a phone every night,
filling every weekend with distractions
because an empty Saturday makes you feel sick,
or killing quiet stretches with drinks and drugs.
This person is alone in a technical sense,
but they have arranged their entire life around
not having to sit with themselves.
The unfair advantage of being single only belongs to the people
who actually face the time
and look at themselves to become better.
The Compromise Dilemma
While alone time is vital,
there is a cost to spending too long on this work.
Couples who get together young have half-formed identities,
allowing them to easily shape themselves around each other
and build a shared identity from scratch.
If two people meet at 35 after a decade of self-improvement,
they have very specific preferences and sharp edges refined
over thousands of solo decisions.
They know exactly who they are,
which makes it much harder to compromise.
The goal is to find the sweet spot: single long enough to know yourself,
but not so long that knowing yourself becomes a fortress.
How to Make the Most of your Single Time
To ensure you are not wasting your time spent single,
there are four key actions to take:
- Spend real time alone: Quit using distractions to remove yourself from yourself. Sit in a room with your own thoughts. The boredom and discomfort are exactly why it works.
- Make decisions in your own voice: Stop outsourcing choices by texting friends for their opinions. Pick the restaurant or the apartment yourself. Even picking wrong builds the muscle of making decisions.
- Move when you want to move: Use your unfair advantage. If you want to take a job or spend a weekend doing something, do it. You don’t have to negotiate or coordinate with anyone else.
- Stop trying to fix being single: Treat singleness with purpose rather than treating it as a problem you have to solve or a waiting room for a relationship.
Knowing When You Are Ready
How do you know when the time has done its job,
and you are ready to pursue a relationship?
There are a few key signs:
- An empty Saturday by yourself no longer scares you, and you don’t feel the need to fix the quiet.
- You can articulate exactly what you want from a partner in a clear, short answer, based on real preferences rather than just a wish list.
- When you imagine staying single forever, you feel calm about it.
You can only truly choose to be in a relationship
if you are also able to choose not to be in one.
When these signs are true, you have completed the work,
and the next part of your life can start when you are open to it.
