Hello and welcome to episode 1 of the Single Girl's Guide to Life, your weekly guide to embracing single life in your 20s and 30s. Expect relationship chat, single life living, and learning to be yourself as I share insight, wisdom, and knowledge that will help you navigate your single life status. I'm Chantelle the Coach, a quarter-life confidence coach who helps women that are single, separated, or divorced to overcome doubt and certainty through their quarter-life crisis or other life change so that they can work out what they want in life, they can make decisions with confidence, and become the directors of their own lives taking action towards living a life that they can thrive in.
In today's episode, we're kicking off with embracing that single life of yours. Now, it only feels right and natural to begin with this because it's the first podcast episode. I am set in my little house and I'm set all at home. Hopefully, you've come across this podcast because of the title or the topic appeals to you and you are indeed a single lady. Now, we've all had our journey through single life, dating, and relationships in some form or another. Even if you haven't had that much experience of it or you've never been in a long-term relationship, you are still on a journey with or without those experiences. We all start single, but I will let you in on a little-known fact that of mine. Up until August of 2019, I had never been single as an adult. Honestly, literally, from the age of 17, I was in two back-to-back relationships. One was for two years and the other was for seven, which indeed, in fact, lead to marriage. Yet here I am today talking about the single life because that marriage didn't last.
As far as I was concerned, I kind of have done it. I had followed that checkbox list of success, of doing well at school, going to university, working my way through it, graduating. I got a job, bought a house, adopted some pets, have nice cars, continue to get promoted. Along the way, I met my now ex at uni and we designed that life together following that kind of rule book or suggested ways of doing it well. But I just wasn't all that happy. I wasn't that satisfied with a number of the elements within that. Now I won't go into the full details but I can now reflect and see that that was my epiphany time. It was my experience of a quarter-life crisis.
It's really difficult because, for the most part, I just knew that something was off or something wasn't right. It wasn't sitting well. But I also didn't know much about what was right. It wasn't a lavish lifestyle, it was comfortable, and what we had was what a lot of people are looking for. We're told or conditioned to strive towards those kinds of things; house cars, getting married, and all of that, but for me, not all of those pieces fit that well together. I went through this intense period of time questioning everything, which eventually led to me choosing to start over with a number of not all of those things.
I can hear you now at the other side listening to this thinking, “She doesn't know what she had. Those are literally the things that I'm looking for that I'm trying to get and I can't even get started,” and I really do appreciate that. I knew that what I had around me, I had to be grateful for. But I also couldn't sit with that conflicted feeling in my stomach and knowing you have that comfort, knowing that you have it all, maybe, the way it looks where some people are trying to get where you're at. Knowing that you should hold on to the gratitude towards it actually makes it even harder to take the first step of breaking out of it, but it's possible.
What I noticed at the time when I started to move towards the idea of changing and kind of starting over was that I was told a number of times that the grass is always greener, to look at what I had, hold on to it, and be thankful for it. People would reason with me, but some of that ultimately was the problem. I had a lot of things, but I didn't know who I was and what it all stood for, and why I had these sort of material things. There was a lot of stuff underneath maybe that I needed to explore more.
People were just looking out for me. I understand where they were coming from. They didn't want me to make a mistake, maybe one that they had made themselves or one that they hadn't made themselves and were worried about me making because their life had turned out okay. But I did learn that this was the right choice for me, and it actually turned out that the grass was greener. I've got a lot from this experience, and I would actually go with the phrase that the grass is always greener where you water it. It’s actually a much more relevant quote to use in this moment. But of course, the minute I was out of my marriage, I instinctively wanted back into a relationship.
Hands up if you have ever done this after breaking up with someone. The apps are back out, you're swiping left and right up and down, you’re Bumbling, Hinge-ing, Tindering, happening all across the place, to the point that you get to see the same people across those platforms. Whilst there's some fun in the actions and buzz of it, it doesn't actually satisfy what we really need in the whole healing process of coming out of a relationship. You see, the problem I was facing, and I think a lot of us face is that we associate being back in a relationship with being okay again; being successful, being on track. Boy, is the being on-track vibe a problem with our age group. When in actual fact, we're using the idea of being back with someone, this ideal relationship, to fill a void, to fill a gap, a gap that we aren't good enough, that it will make us better again, they will take that pain away. When in actual fact, it's not what we need.
Actually being single gives you all of the opportunities to do that, and that is the point of this very first episode of this. Because when you're single, there's a resounding collective expectation that you should be looking to not be single again, that you don't want to be single and you couldn’t possibly be happy with that scenario. The targeted ads that are coming up are always about dating because of course, our pain point as single women is that we want to find someone to be with. That means if you're pushing forwards with a narrative that you'll be happy once you're in a relationship, you're actually pushing your happiness beyond your own control. That's mad because we should be looking to maintain that level of control because that's ours to own and keep. My happiness is within my behaviors; the way I act, what I do, and the actions I take, not with the end result of achieving something that is ultimately out of my control.
That isn't really our pain point. When you become single or remain single even after trying dating with some mild levels of success or not, you worry that you are unlovable, that you just aren't good enough and that you'll never be loved again, it will be lonely forever. How many times have you Googled that? “Will I be alone forever?” A classic Bridget Jones moment springs to mind of being in your pajamas on a Saturday night, seeing your heart out to All By Myself. You can see it, but that isn't the truth. You are in fact completely and utterly enough, and you aren't going to be on your own forever. Another partner sprinting straight onto the scene is not the fix you need to make it better again, to make you better again. Time and healing will be the ones to take that pain away and for you to work on yourself, not another relationship to distract you from all the things that are underlying, that aren't going anywhere if you don't do something about them.
Instead, this single life is an opportunity to get to know ourselves, to get to work out what fills that void and that's within our control, and enjoy every minute of it that we spend single with friends, going on dates, having adventures, trying new things out, learning about hobbies. There’s also learning all the nots of that; losing friends, working out who's not someone to date, working out what adventures don't really work for us and everything else in between. There's a lot of working out what really, really matters to us, what we really enjoy, what we get happy by doing consistently.
Now I can wholeheartedly say, right at this very moment, I actively choose to be single. That also means I have to tackle the expectations that any people inadvertently or intentionally put upon me, which is asking, “How is dating going?” or “How's your love life?” I have to answer that with a simple explanation backed with confidence. I don't have to reason with people. An important message of this whole podcast will consistently be that this is your life and you have to own it. Everything that goes on in it is down to you and it's within your control, but I will have conversations with people about it and my choice if I feel that they'll be open to listening because it's not necessarily always the conventional option or choice. It's not the norm per se, but I will talk about it to people that genuinely care about me and will want to listen because we all know it's better to mentally roll your eyes at someone but outwardly just display a sickeningly sweet smile at someone when they try and reason with you that I'll change my mind. “You'll change your mind.”
I might change my mind, but my choice right now is that I'm not that bothered. That's okay, but I realised that my choice of being single is not a choice everyone gets to make. Many of you are single women looking to date and to find love, and I validate and support your choices and desires within that. I speak to many women about which dating apps to try, how to manage your time and energy and dating, how to work on your mindset towards approaching dating with fun and positivity, and this podcast will serve you with those things over time in much the same way. But today, I'm validating the single lifestyle that you're in, whether it's by choice or otherwise. It is about embracing the single life that is key.
I've already mentioned that you have to maintain your locus of control, you have to keep it internal to what you're doing so that if you are looking to settle down and find a partner, your efforts towards that level of success can't be based on you achieving and finding someone because that involves another person that you can't control. But, you can set yourself goals on how many dates you go on, how many conversations you start on apps, how many social events that you go on each week.
Above all else, enjoying that process as you do it, having fun in the conversations, the first dates, the nerves, the funny stories that come out of it, and meeting new people in all those different ways. Those are things that you could do something about, and that's still embracing the single life. It isn't getting caught up in the outcome. It's focusing on your journey, your experience, your development, and the single life you're living.
Now, there are a number of other things to embrace, and I make it eight that I want to share and highlight with you today because you should remind yourself of these in those testing times, the grass will be greener on the other side if you don't feel gratitude towards these opportunities. You've got to water your grass and you've got to remind yourself of these. They're the things that I love most about being single, what I talked to other single people about while they, we, I maintain that status with no active search otherwise. That's why it can be useful to you whether you're on a search for someone or not.
Here we go with number one. Number one is that you have more time and energy. There's absolutely no doubt about this one when you're single. There is one less significant other that you have to think about, consider or communicate with and spend time with. This is one of the strongest advantages to single life because it underpins the rest of them. Because the minute you enter a relationship, a chunk of your time is gone and rightly so because being in a relationship has that impact on your life.
On the flip side of that, the single life living frees you up with more time for so many things, which brings me on to number two, you have more time now to learn about yourself. With more time, energy, and headspace, quite frankly, you have the time to explore yourself. You start looking inwards, you reflect and you're asking yourself questions as part of a therapeutic process, particularly for you who have just gone through a breakup or separation. You're allowed to get a chance to reconnect with yourself.
It's maintaining and developing this relationship with ourselves, knowing what your wants are, what you need from a relationship when you decide to eventually get back into one if so, what your goals are, what your strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement are. It allows you to be an informed director of your own life. Making decisions going forwards becomes easier because you know what matters to you. There's no fretting over it because you know who you are. This is a completely unique opportunity to discover the true authentic you if you didn't already know it, and this is the part where self-love and understanding really come into play.
That and knowing and loving ourselves, which means forgiving ourselves when we mess up, when we make a mistake, or not beating ourselves up over it is so important to the foundation of our life, let alone then introducing another person into our lives in the form of a relationship. Use the extra time to learn about yourself, your upbringing, your past, the mistakes you've made, and the learning you can gain from them. Who are you really, and where do you want to go in this life? What do you want your next steps to be, and in what direction?
You have to know that before you can commence on any kind of forward trajectory. As well as discovering your personalities and motivations, you'll also have more time to have some fun. You can go and explore. You can discover new hobbies and try new things out. One of the things that I really want to do with this single status was to do a little bit of traveling. Not largely, I have a job where I can only go away at certain points in the year, but I did book a trip with a company called Srprs. I assume they are still running because they're still with my credit voucher.
Essentially, I paid to go for a city break away for two nights, I believe it was. They sort the flight. With the hotel, you choose whether you want to stay in a hostel, a B&B, or anything grander than that. You find out where you're going, I think it's two hours or so before the flight or before you have to arrive at the airport. I didn't get to do that because of COVID but, oh, the adventure. It's still there. Hopefully, the money is still in that account, ready and raring to go when necessary.
It's things like this, if you've never had the chance to do them before, you get to do. If you have been single all that time but you still haven't tried those things, let’s get out of our comfort zone. What would make you light up at the thought of doing? I realised there are practicalities of how you go, especially at the moment, but let's be hopeful. Of course, money always impacts the things we can do, but there are still adventures you can do that don't cost as much money. There are ways to do them in clever ways, but you have the time now to do those things. Arguably, you might even have a little bit more money because you're not in a relationship. It depends.
This now leads me nicely on to number three, which is you get to do what you want when you want. There is nothing like the freedom of being single, like completely and utterly single, not even dating, because it’s having the complete and final decision about any choice in your life without having to check in with anyone. I genuinely mean that. If you're still checking in with your parents, you can do it out of wanting their advice, but you are now the director of your own life. You don't have to agree to take something out of a joint account. You don't have to keep your shopping hidden because you know that your partner won't approve. You hide those ASOS delivery bags as they drop on the doormat, get rid of them, or picking up stuff from the sale when you see it on offer. You just know that you'd have to put it in the bottom of the wardrobes they don't see.
There's no, “What you want to do today?” You can ask yourself, “What do I want to do today?” You end up answering to yourself and yourself only. That, my friends, is empowering. To have complete control as you wake up in the morning to go, “I don't want to do anything today,” or “I want to go for a walk,” or “I want to go to the beach.” If you decide not to do the dishes for two days, because you want to accumulate enough stuff to make it worthwhile, then you can do that.
There's no expectation to keep the place tidy, for example, not that it's untidy even if you have two days’ worth; you live on your own. There are no compromises to make, and no standards of anyone else’s to meet at that point in time. With a relationship comes compromise, but right now you're living your life as you wish and that's liberating and satisfying as a single person. Of course, if you live with family or housemates, then that's slightly different in some scenarios. Other than that, you are the author of that story of yours.
Number four is that your friendships get stronger. When you are single, you are forced to reach out to others for a variety of reasons. If you're going through and experiencing a breakup or divorce, friends and family will be there for you and you have to communicate with them on that so that they know when and how to show up for you. They might know that this is going on, but it's a really sensitive time for you. People will reach out and they'll say, “If you need anything, let us know.” You have to be the one to then let them know and in what way because you can't expect them to keep showing up. They've already offered their support; it's very easy to sort of retreat and think, “Okay, well, I don't want to bother anyone. I'm just gonna get through this and put your head down and crack on.”
They've said they'll be there and that means you can put together this system relying on your network of friends in different ways. Someone might be there for text message support, when you need to text someone, someone might be there for phone calls. Someone might be there to help you with the practicalities. You have to communicate with these people and reach out at a really vulnerable time. But through that, you've actually gained so much more. Your relationships with those people will deepen because you're letting them in at a time when you are at your most sensitive. You've got to be ready to return the favor later, but really, that bond between you two will now be different. It will be now much deeper than it was before.
Now even if you aren't going through a breakup of any sort, living on your own or being single, you still need friends. You still need other people to vent to. No, you don't have that person to go home to necessarily. You have to still have connections with people on ways to offload. Sometimes that's through journaling or meditation yourself and other times we just need a sounding board.
On the note of friends, that brings me to tip number five, having the chance to overcome loneliness. Our friends and family will be there for us. As I said, reach out, and the majority of the time people will be there if they can. But sometimes our avoidance of being single is because of the fear of loneliness and being on our own. Being single gives you the chance to sit with that. Yes, I know there are tons of tactics to avoid it that we might not even realise we're doing. Being busy all the time, meeting people, working, these all take up time and distracts you from what's really going on. I’m guilty as charged on this. Actually, you have to stop with some of those distractions and really take the opportunity to sit with yourself and overcome the fear of being lonely, the fear of loneliness.
Being alone, in the practical sense, is very different from feeling lonely. You have to get used to the idea that if you really were the only person left in the world and you only had yourself to rely on, you would be okay. We are hardwired, however, for connection. It all goes back to when we lived in tribes to survive and had to hunt for food. You live in a tribe because it wasn't the social rejection of being kicked out. Partly, it was down to the fact that it was life or death. If you weren't in that tribe, your chances of getting food, of being covered if you were ever attacked, made safe, living in the shelter, and working together was completely compromised and your likelihood of death was increased. That is hardwired in us from years and years and years ago.
I'm not suggesting that you should be a recluse and never speak to anyone because we need that connection in our lives. However, we have to get used to doing things on our own. We have to have a blend of it and we have to not fear this element of being on our own, of being lonely. When I said about doing what you want, when you want, that surprise trip I booked, that was to do it on my own. I had no plan. I didn't know where I was going. I was pushing myself, to force myself to one be on my own for three days and I wasn't going to have any plan because I didn't know where I was going.
Someone did say to me, “Once you’re there at the airport and know where you’re going, you can sit and plan it.” I was like, “Well, no, I'm gonna do this on the fly. I'm gonna really push myself out.” I don't know where I'm gonna eat, I don't know what's gonna be best to do here, I'm just gonna use my instinct and go with it. I was pushing myself because I thought, “Well, let's go for it. I've got this chance.”
Number six, it leads me nicely onto this actually, you learn to rely on yourself. That was almost what I was trying to do with that surprise. I’m proving to myself that I could rely on myself. As well as spending time with other people, you are now fully in a scenario where you can take charge of your own life. It’s no not just taking random city trips to Europe, but actually making decisions, big ones, or little ones, and taking responsibility for everything. Managing your money, whether you know you've got lots of going out because you're living somewhere that you're renting or that you bought, or if you actually can save a bit more because you live at home. You've got cooking and cleaning to do wherever you are. You’re probably contributing to that unless your parents have got you covered. You got insurance; you wouldn't believe all the different types, you’re thinking about all those kinds of things. They're the practicality things.
In a relationship, there are two of you and these different things, money, cooking, legalities, they get divided up and you have each other to rely on. You might have experience from a relationship with having done that, or you've got none, potentially, if you're still living at home, but you've got to find ways to fend for yourself and develop that reliance on yourself. Just imagine, where would you go if you didn't have the cash flow? You'd rely on probably parents in the first instance if they're in a position to. Maybe friends, but it's quite vulnerable to go and speak to someone. People have turned to probably payday loans and things like that, and that can be a spiral.
What you want to do is start, for example, coming up with ways to save money, where possible. It's all coming up with these ideas of relying on yourself practically but also pushing yourself in other ways. You've got the chance and opportunity to develop your independence and design systems so that you can work with some self-sufficiency and not letting things get to a bad position because you already thought about what you could do to encourage that preventing and accounting for that.
Number seven is one that I don't think gets spoken about enough in society because it's assumed and prescribed. Number seven is that you get to define what love means to you. What I mean by that is that you get to decide how you want your future relationship to be. What do you really want from it? What does it involve? Does it involve living together? Does it involve children? Does it involve being in the same country, living in the same house? How does it fit into your life? With your likely increasing level of independence as a single person, it can become a really interesting contemplation to start really addressing this in terms of love, friendship, and connection because you start to learn that you don't necessarily need somebody else. It would be nice to, and then you're really digging deep into what is it that I want from other people in my life? Not just a romantic relationship, but everybody? How do I design a system that doesn't have to rely on this one singular person?
When you're single, you come up with those ways. That's when it's like, “Where is the loving partnership? Am I not getting love anywhere else.” Wait a second, I am, from my friends and family. This whole concept of what love is and what a relationship is is something to really deeply reflect on in this time so that you make the right choices going forward. This is all set up for you. I'm making a choice to remain single because I don't feel I need that extra element. Some people will make a different choice to me and that's fine because they've done it based on their own inquiry into their life. As long as you're making the right decision for you and asking yourself good questions and digging deep, then you'll come up with the right steps to take.
It's important that you do question things because we kind of prescribed what love and relationships should look like. From the minute that we're born, we're told of stories of fairy tales, of the princess meeting a prince, each teenage chick flick much ends the same. We've all watched Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging, right? You know, the girl trying to get the guy usually after some sort of struggle, it's all fulfilling and everlasting because we never see what happens after those films unless you've watched Cinderella II and III.
It's a chance for you now to decide if you really believe in that. That's fine if you do if you're going after that; it’s entirely your choice, but you can also get a chance to redefine what it looks like, what you will accept, what you encourage, what you seek out. It doesn't have to look like the movies. Love is love, whatever form it takes.
Lastly, it brings me to number eight, which I've actually referred to a lot in all the points I've made so far. It brings it up as a nice summary. It is that you take ownership of your life, not just in your decisions, not just in your time, not just in your love and relationship, not just in the practicalities of living, paying for food and cooking, surviving. But you are fully empowered in your single state to reflect and realise what it is you want from life, having the time and opportunity to give it thought to try things out. In turn, just explore and enjoy what the world has got to offer you. You have full ownership of your life. That doesn't have to meet the expectations of anyone else, so take that ownership.
There you have it, that is episode one of the Single Girl’s Guide to Life, and that was embracing the single life; giving you eight opportunities that the single life brings and reasons to live that life. I really, really hope that you go out there embrace some of those elements. Maybe you didn't think of it that way. Maybe you never thought to push yourself. Maybe you know about some of them but didn't really think about how you could do that one. If you aren't already doing them, then start with one. Start putting the focus on one of those eight things, or if you're already doing a couple, then let's look at another one that you can work on.
Now, being an active podcast listener myself, I know the dilemma you're currently in. What are those eight things? I cannot remember them. Now if you have been paying attention, maybe one's really sticking out to you, but that might be the one that resonated most because you're like, “Yeah, I went through that too.” You're already doing it. I'm just going to recap those eight things, but before I do that, I'm going to ask you right now, which one of those stood out to you? Which one really chimes with you, and which one are you going to make the most of going forward with your single life?
To recap, there was having more time, learning about yourself, wants, and desires. Doing what you want, when you want including doing things on your own. strengthening your friendships, relying on yourself, defining what love means to you, and taking ownership of your life. Make that decision now. Think about how you're going to start doing that in the week coming forwards. What are you going to start appreciating more? What are you going to start pushing yourself with in the next seven days? Now if you love this episode, and you've got something from it, then please hit subscribe for your weekly dose of single girl listening. I would love to hear any of your thoughts or realizations from the episode, so head over to Instagram to share those. It's the Single Girl’s Guide to Life where you can get inspiration on single life living on a much more frequent basis. Until next time, my friends, keep thriving and have a wonderful week.