86: Single on Purpose Isn’t a Status - It’s a Standard

You keep telling yourself to be patient.

To give him time.
To not overreact.
To understand where he’s coming from.

But your body already knows something is off.

And the longer you stay…
the more you feel yourself slipping.

This episode is Part 3 of the Embodiment Series.

And we’re talking about what happens after you set standards…

…and he doesn’t meet them.

Because this is the moment most women fold.

Not because they don’t know better.

But because being alone feels heavier
than staying in something that slowly drains them.

Let’s be real:

It’s not the dating pool.

It’s not your age.

It’s the fear of being alone that keeps you tolerating what you already know doesn’t work. 

In this episode, we go deeper into what it actually means to be:

Single on purpose.

Not as a status.
But as a standard.

This is for you if you are:

• In a relationship and questioning what you’re tolerating
• Dating and tired of repeating the same pattern
• Or standing in that in-between space… knowing something needs to change

We talk about:

• Why loneliness isn’t the real problem
• What your partner’s reaction to your boundaries actually reveals
• The difference between missing connection and living in chaos
• Why peace starts to matter more than companionship
• And what it looks like to choose yourself… even when it’s uncomfortable

Because the woman you’re becoming…

doesn’t stay where she has to abandon herself
just to be loved.

She can sit at a table alone…
in a room full of people…
and feel grounded in who she is.

Not waiting.
Not hoping.
Not proving.

Choosing.

And from that place?

She doesn’t chase connection.

She recognizes it.

You don’t need more options.

You need the courage
to stop accepting what doesn’t feel right.

You have the power.

Now choose like it.

Connect with Darla Ridilla: 

3 Keys to Magnetizing Emotionally Available Men masterclass: https://www.highvaluewoman.info/masterclass

Book a Magnetic Connections Call: https://www.highvaluewoman.info/call

Website: https://www.highvaluewoman.info

Send me an email: highvaluewoman7@gmail.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And I will say the frustration of dating can create a lot of common thoughts in your head. There are no good men left. The dating pool is small. My age limits my options. And these thoughts, they create a pressure to settle. They create a pressure to tolerate a man's behavior because what's really going on underneath is a fear of being alone. Welcome to You Have the Power, The Road to Choose Freedom, and Real Connection. This podcast is for women who are done asking why emotionally unavailable men keep showing up and are finally ready to change the way they relate. The chemistry is always there, the potential looks promising, but the consistency, death, and emotional presence just never fully arrived. You are in the right relationship. Here we are. Magnetic connection pathway. Agency empowerment. Because emotionally unavailable men aren't the problem. They're the feedback. And when you stop managing relationships that require you to disappear, emotionally willing men are magnetized to you. Let's begin. So let's just be real about something. Dating in midlife is difficult. It's not easy. And it can feel like you're never going to find that special someone. There are less options. A lot of men are already married. And then we have what I like to call the leftovers. These are the men that are emotionally unavailable, who never grew up, and just quite frankly, never intend to. So yes, it can feel impossible to find your person. But I want to assure you that the difficulty and the challenges in the dating world for women in their midlife is not an impossibility. And this episode is for you, whether you are dating, married, in a relationship, or you've already chosen to be single. Being single on purpose, it's not a relationship status. It's a standard. And if you are ready to stop questioning your standards and start choosing from alignment, then you're in the right place. This is part three of a series on embodiment. And in the last episode, we talked about once you have those standards with a backbone and you start to enforce them, what happens? And why is it that a lot of women go back on their standards and go back on their ultimatums and the reactions that you often get that are not pleasant and often very negative that men don't react very well. So now that we've talked about what they do, and then sometimes their access is removed, where do we go from there? And I will say the frustration of dating can create a lot of common thoughts in your head. There are no good men left. The dating pool is small. My age limits my options. And these thoughts, they create a pressure to settle, they create a pressure to tolerate a man's behavior because what's really going on underneath is a fear of being alone. And a lot of women start to think at this stage, what if this is as good as it gets? And it's at this point that many of them start buying into the illusion that their circumstances and their difficulties and their challenges in the dating world actually determine the results. But let me put this to you plainly, because embodiment and being empowered is gonna change how you perceive all of this. The situation hasn't changed, but your reaction to it will the facts haven't changed that the dating pool is smaller at this at this age. And it may take you longer to find your person. But when you're embodied, you're gonna find that you're not gonna let those frustrations drive your decisions and give up on your desire and dream to have a man who's aligned with you and who values you the way you deserve to be valued, who honors your boundaries and your standards. The reality is you don't need a large dating pool. You actually only need one emotionally willing man. And a woman who feels disempowered, she lets her circumstances drive her decisions, which affects the results. But an embodied woman, she's gonna hold her standards regardless of the circumstances. So today I'm actually speaking to two different kinds of women. And what I am not telling you to do is to just pick up and go immediately. What I'm suggesting is that you look at your current relationship and evaluate it from an embodied stance and look at what is in alignment and what is out of alignment in that relationship. And when you start speaking your needs and setting your boundaries, how does that man react to you? And how frequently is he reacting in a way that is out of alignment with what you need from him? And is he willing to change and grow with you as you change and grow? Or is he asking you to stay set in your old patterns because it benefits him and gives him the access that he hasn't earned? Because when you start speaking your needs and you stop apologizing for them and you start holding that boundary, his reaction is going to give you the answers that you need of whether you need to go or you need to stay. And it's worth working on. The second woman that I'm talking to is either dating or maybe she stepped away from dating for a while. Maybe she's kind of giving it a break. She's she's no longer waiting and she's no longer hoping, and she's not attaching approval and being chosen by somebody else as determining her value. She's decided that she's going to choose herself, and she's going to continue to do that until that man shows up that's in alignment with what she's looking for. And that standard means that you are no longer available for anything that's out of alignment with what you want. And you are no longer available for a man that requires you to abandon yourself. And what you're going to find is as you start applying this to men, it's going to kind of spread like a ripple and a pond. You drop a pebble and how it ripples out. It's going to affect all of your relationships because this is exactly what happened to me. From the time that I was 16 to 45, I was never single. I was either getting in a relationship, in a relationship, or getting out of one. And the reason for that is that I had a lot of false narratives going in my own head. I felt that my value was based on being chosen or not. I did not have a good relationship with my father. And so I was trying to use romantic relationships to fill that void. I, not that they were my dad per se, but what I subconsciously did, first of all, is chose men who are abusive, like he was. That's the first thing. And I did not have the courage to be by myself. I always had to be in partnership with someone. And unfortunately, that meant I made some really bad decisions, but I no longer give men the power to determine my value. I decide that. And what that means is that I'm whole and complete, whether or not I have a man in my life or not. Being single doesn't mean that I can't find a man. It just means I haven't found the one that I feel is the right one for me yet. And I would rather stay single than entertain all of the things that I entertained in the past that interferes with my peace. And in the past, when I couldn't do that, I felt drawn to emotionally unavailable men because they love bombed. It was intense, you know, all the emotion, the connection, the sex. And it made me feel wanted. And that feeling overrode everything. It drove every decision I made in that relationship. So that's why I did I looked overlooked red flags that sometimes showed up on day one, right up to the last relationship I was in. And that's how I got involved in abusive dynamics in my second marriage. I didn't feel I deserved to be treated well. It was on a subconscious level. I wasn't saying that to myself. I wasn't looking in the mirror going, you don't deserve it. But my internal script was saying it. And it was driving everything, and I was totally unaware of it. And so the man shows up and it out plays out this dynamic that I played with my father. It was felt familiar. And though it was abusive, it felt safe. My nervous system says, Oh, I know this, I recognize this, I'm comfortable with this. And so I participated. But in this past year and a half, I've really dug in my heels and decided to be single on purpose. Does that mean that I'm 100% happy by myself and never miss companionship? No. I some days it's heavy, heavier than others. I miss having someone to come home and talk to. I miss companionship. I miss physical touch. I miss sharing experiences with men. I miss trying new things. I miss intellectual conversations. But you know what I don't miss? I don't miss chaos and confusion. I don't miss being gaslit. I don't miss the anxiety and the emotional instability of wondering where I stand with him or why didn't he call me or why is he withdrawing? And I definitely don't miss being asked to compromise myself. I miss connection, but I don't miss chaos. My life now is very peaceful. It's just me and my dog. There's no one that I have to deal with, that I have to manage, that I have to appease. I can make dinner or not make dinner. If I want cereal for dinner, I'll have that. Or if I want to cook a pasta meal, that's what I'll do. I go to bed when I want. I get up when I want. Tonight I considered going out and playing trivia. But I decided I had some things to catch up on. I had a long day, and I really prefer just to be by myself, catching up on my work. There wasn't someone sitting on the couch beside me going, but honey, I really wanted to go out. And then I have to make a decision. Well, sometimes we do have to compromise in decision in relationships. I didn't have to make that decision tonight. I like to travel a lot. And I gotta tell you, while traveling with someone is fun too, I really enjoy traveling alone. I get to go where I want when I want. If I want to, if I want to do a lot of things on my vacation day, I do. If I just want to go camping and lay in a hammock and read a book all day, I choose it. I don't have to negotiate any of that with anyone. So my days, even when they can be stressful, they're on my terms and they're grounded in what's in alignment for me. But the duality of that is I do want partnership, but I am also willing to be single on purpose until that shows up or it doesn't. What if I do die alone with a cat? You know, the whole stereotype. So what? What's wrong with that? My pets, my dog, has been more loyal to me than any man ever has. The dog that I lost a year ago, Goliath, I had him for 10 years. And I tell this all the time to people the running joke was he outlasted every man in my life over that 10-year span, including a husband. He was way more loyal, loving, and accepting. I could be myself, and he never expected anything else. So if I do die alone with just a cat, I would much rather have that than be in a relationship with someone who makes my last days on this earth miserable. And that's because my peace matters more than anything now. I do not entertain chaos, I do not entertain gaslighting, games, lack of commitment, lack of communication, all of the crap that emotionally unavailable men do. Because when I find that emotionally willing man, he's not gonna be the main meal, he's gonna be the dessert. And what I mean by that is because my life is already full, he's an extra. He has to bring a lot to the table. He cannot bring chaos, he cannot bring confusion, he cannot detract from the life that I've built. If he is gonna be given that access that he wants, he has to bring peace, he has to bring support, he has to meet me at my level. He has to add and not detract from anything that I have built in my life or enjoy. And the reason that single on purpose is such a powerful position to be in is because when you're embodied, the question is no longer why do emotionally unavailable men keep showing up in my life. The question becomes, who am I becoming? Did they become irrelevant? Because when you're single on purpose, you may have days where you do feel sad and lonely. That's normal. You're a human being. As humans, we are social creatures. But you're no longer willing to trade your peace for their chaos just just to be with someone. Being alone and having a peaceful life takes priority over everything. And what I'm finding in my own life is that every day I'm single, I'm getting more okay with it. I'm totally okay if I meet someone in the future, and they end up being someone who's gonna be good for me. But I'm also totally okay with continuing to live my life on my own, single, on purpose, doing my thing. Yes, that means going to dinner and movies and vacations alone. Yes, that means going dancing alone, or wherever it is I go, whether it's trivia, karaoke. My ability to go to a bar, pick a table, and sit by myself and be content is going to be very attractive if there happens to be an emotionally willing man in the room. He's gonna watch me and he's gonna see that I don't need validation from others, that I'm very comfortable in my own company. But I'm also warm and inviting if someone comes in my space. That's attractive to him. Because he's also looking for those same things. Calm ground and no drama. I have my own life. Thank you very much. I don't want you messing with it. Just because it hasn't happened for me doesn't mean it won't. And just because it hasn't happened for you yet, doesn't mean it won't. But I keep hearing over and over again, when you get comfortable with not needing or wanting a man, that's when he shows up. I've heard this so many times. Now, we don't want that to be the goal. I'm gonna get really comfortable so I attract the man because then the energy gets all messed up. It's when you really embody it. It doesn't mean it happens right away either. But single on purpose is such a powerful position to be in. I can't tow you how different I feel about my life now than I did two years ago. If this is something that is spoken to you, whether you are in a relationship and you are ready to set those boundaries and let the chips fall where they may, or if you are dating, single, whatever, and that single on purpose concept really appeals to you, but it scares the pants off of you, or maybe you just don't quite know how to get through the difficulties and challenges of that, but you're ready to be that woman who sits at the table by herself and is totally okay with her own company and a room full of people that are interacting. Then I'm gonna invite you to book a magnetic connections call. Because this call is for that woman that says, I'm ready to do relationships differently. And maybe that means the relationship with yourself. This is not gonna be a coaching call. We're just gonna take a look at the patterns that have been going on in your life up till now with your relationships with men, what you want the changes to be in the future, and what's your next step to get there? Because you know what? What you want is not too much. It's just you've been accepting too little. Thank you for listening to You Have the Power, the Road to Truth, Freedom, and Road Connection. If something landed while you were listening, pay attention to that. Emotionally unavailable men aren't a mystery to solve. They're information. They show you exactly where you've been waiting, minimizing, or tolerating what doesn't actually work for you. This podcast isn't here to keep you how to answer that better. It's here to help you stop participating in it.