It’s exhausting having to constantly explain why you’re still single and justify your desire to not be frantically searching for someone to be with. Well-meaning relatives are always asking if you’ve met someone special yet, and it can feel like our friends are all settling down and moving on without us. The fact of the matter, however, is that whilst finding love is great, most of us have far more going on in our lives than needing to worry about how close we are to finding the one.

Emma Watson coined the term “self-partnered” in a 2019 Vogue interview when she was talking about the anxiety and pressure that came from turning 30, and it’s a perfect description of how many modern women are choosing to live their lives. Rather than giving in to the pressure to have a house, a husband, a baby and a flourishing career before they’ve even reached middle-age, more and more women are choosing to take care of themselves and engage in developing their lives as an individual, rather than as one half of a partnership. And hey – if it’s good enough for Emma Watson, then it’s certainly good enough for us too.

Being single has so many benefits and rather than meaning you’re unlovable or undesirable, what it really means is that you’re refusing to settle for anything less than the best. More and more women are now choosing to self-couple and find love within themselves, rather than elsewhere. There are thousands of dating guides out there that tell us in order to find love, we have to first love ourselves. Whilst they aren’t necessarily wrong, we should be loving ourselves for ourselves, not because it might snag us a better Tinder date.

You make your own choices

Learning to look after yourself and take pride in your surroundings, is one thing, but this level of independence also helps you develop a much higher level of self-assuredness in your decisions and opinions too. Choosing your own meals to cook without having to ask if the other person fancies it or going to bed whenever you want without the fear of waking your other half up. Deciding what films to watch, parties to go to and just how you decorate your home without an external input are incredibly liberating. You have to rely solely on your own gut feelings and opinions and you can learn to make a decision without second-guessing or having to worry that your partner doesn’t agree with it.

Learning to know your own mind and what exactly it is that you want is useful in all areas of your life. It makes you more decisive and authoritative at work, it makes you a better friend, it gives you healthier boundaries and the ability to enforce them. It can also set you up for better romantic relationships in the future. Knowing just what you want and enjoy sets a precedent for all future people that may enter your life. You’re sure of what you will and will not tolerate, what can be a deal-breaker and what you’re less bothered about. It helps make for an all-round healthier mindset that vastly improves your life, and is something that’s harder to enforce if you’re a serial monogamist or have been in back to back relationships without room to breathe and learn about yourself.