As I get older, I see more and more of my friends getting into relationships. It seems like every other day someone else has a new boyfriend or girlfriend. I log on to Facebook and I see that someone on my friend list has changed their relationship status to “engaged.” I scroll down my feed and I see pictures of happy couples in their wedding dresses and tuxedos surrounded by beaming groomsmen and bridesmaids. For a moment, I feel like I’m the odd one out. Everybody else is finding happiness with significant others, and I wonder why that can’t be me? Why can’t I be the one that gets to fall in love with the love of their life? There are two problems with that line of thinking.

The first thing is that the vast majority of the people that I know are still single. It appears that everyone is in a relationship just because the ones that are can’t seem to stop sharing all of the bliss they’re experiencing with their partner. All of their love ridden posts and updates are constantly on my feed which is why sometimes it seems that there are so many people in relationships. I essentially get more information about this handful of people than I do about all of my single friends combined. It’s also true that I’m hyperaware of these couples because I’m single, and now that I’m closer to 30 than I am to 20, I feel the societal pressures to find a nice person that I can get married to and settle down with.

The second flaw to my line of thinking is that I sometimes find myself believing that I need to have a significant other to be happy. This is exacerbated by the “societal pressures” I just mentioned. People (and the media) are constantly telling me that I need to be with someone in order to be happy. My friends in relationships talk about how much better they feel now that they are in a relationship, and it makes me think that in order to be happy I need to have one as well. But like I said, this line of thinking is fundamentally flawed. You don’t need someone else to make you happy. You have to be able to find happiness from within positive thinker.

Sometimes people are so desperate to find someone to be with that they end up getting into a relationship with somebody that they aren’t compatible with. They get wrapped up with the idea of finding happiness with someone else, so they get together with the first person that shows them a bit of attention. When this happens, those relationships aren’t likely to last very long. You need to know yourself and what you want out of a relationship before you get into one. Your only reason can’t just be to find someone to make you happy.

When you’re looking for someone else to make you happy that makes you dependent on that person. If they’re not around then you’re not happy, and that is why it’s so important for you to be able to bring happiness to yourself. I know so many people that jump from short relationship to short relationship just because they don’t want to be alone. These individuals feel like they need someone else to be there to make them happy and when that doesn’t end up happening for them they run to the next person. They want their partner to be a constant source of delight for them, but that’s never a possibility in a relationship. Even if you have the perfect boyfriend or girlfriend and you never get into fights, they still can’t be with you 100% of the time. They have their own life to live, which is why they can’t be there for you 24/7 as this constant source that keeps pumping you full of the happiness that you’re unable to obtain for yourself.

When you’re able to bring yourself happiness then you won’t need to find somebody for the sole purpose of making your life happy. That person that you end up with will make your life better if they treat you right and respect you, but they won’t be the only reason that you’re happy because you’ll have yourself to make you happy.