Kyle MacDonald: Is it wrong to be single for the rest of your life?

I’m happy in all areas of my life, apart from relationships. Is it wrong to be single for the rest of your life? Photo / Getty Images

Q I’m happy in all areas of my life, apart from relationships. I’m in my late 30s, currently single and seriously thinking about giving up on being with someone altogether. I’ve had long-term relationships, and they have never worked out for me. I can’t seem to find the right person, and I figure there must be something wrong with me. Is it wrong to be single for the rest of your life?

AThere is nothing inherently wrong with being single, there certainly isn’t any law that says you have to be with someone to find happiness. It can, in fact, be a reasonable decision if your experience is that relationships tend to only bring you distress, or worse, harm.

However, it’s clear to me, from what you’ve said, that you’re not quite there yet. You still, understandably, desire a relationship that works. Fair enough - the desire to love and be loved is one of the strongest instincts we possess, and it’s hard to extinguish.

I would say that variations of this dilemma - whereby intimate relationships are the problem, and the only problem, in someone’s life - would be the most common non-“diagnosable” concern people turn up in therapy for.

They’re not depressed, anxious or otherwise suffering from a psychiatric disorder, using alcohol or drugs in problematic ways. They have good jobs, satisfying careers and close friends. They’re quite able to engage in and enjoy sex, but struggle with forming and managing close intimate relationships.

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I say all this to let you know you’re not alone. I hope that helps with that part of you that thinks you’re the “problem” because you aren’t. In fact, in lots of ways the fact you think you are the problem, is a big part of the problem.

Generally, problems in intimacy, but not elsewhere point to early, and often quite subtle disruptions in our experience of being loved as a child. It can be obvious things like parental abuse, mistreatment or other trauma, although that can also tend to lead to more generalised emotional struggles.

More likely in this instance it can be as subtle as a sense of a mismatch between parent and child, or unavoidable disruptions like absence due to a parent having a demanding job, parental divorce or the emotional strain of single parenting.

Most of the time we’re not talking about abuse, anything intentional or even anything we might view as “bad.” We’re certainly not looking to prosecute your parents for any misdeed. For whatever reason sometimes the relationship between parent(s) and child doesn’t go that well.

But it is important to get clear about the truth, and what our felt experience was. Because it’s not uncommon for children, especially emotionally sensitive children to come away from a disrupted emotional climate in childhood feeling that something was wrong, and that something was them.

Children blame themselves. And of course, as an adult finding oneself in situations that don’t go well can simply reinforce that message. It can also lead to us having particular expectations and seeing problems that arise in relationships in particular ways.

The cliche is that we end up being attracted to people who aren’t good for us, and while that’s true again there’s likely more nuance to it than that. Perhaps it’s also true that you don’t expect a relationship to be good for you, so it isn’t?

Either way, intention and reflection are your friends. Pay attention to what hasn’t worked, and very deliberately look for someone different. Use your head as much as your heart, and pay particular attention to how you behave at the beginning of relationships, because how we start needs to be how we go on - as habits form and set quickly in relationships.

But mostly, recognise that any relationship is not one person’s responsibility. And it’s entirely possible that how you got here isn’t your fault, at the same time as it is your responsibility to do something different for your own wellbeing.