Ep #40: Navigating Loneliness While Single

In this episode, I’m opening up about something that’s been sitting heavy on my heart lately - loneliness. Not the kind that comes from not having plans on a Saturday night, but the deeper kind that sneaks in when you’ve done the healing, raised your standards, and are no longer willing to settle for half-love or almost relationships.

I’m sharing the truth about what this season of singleness has brought up for me. The moments of peace and freedom, but also the quiet ache of missing connection and partnership. Because even when you’re secure, fulfilled, and deeply content in your own life, loneliness can still visit.

We’ll talk about how to move through these waves of emotion without running back to what’s familiar but unhealthy, how to hold yourself with compassion when you miss having “your person,” and why this version of loneliness — the kind that comes from choosing yourself — is actually a sign of growth, not regression.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
• The emotional reality of being single after healing your attachment patterns
• Why loneliness isn’t a sign you’re doing something wrong — it’s proof of your evolution
• How to hold space for your emotions without slipping back into old patterns
• The difference between being alone and feeling lonely
• Why this “lonely” chapter is actually one of the most powerful seasons of your life

🎧 Tune in now! And if this episode resonates, send me a DM on Instagram—I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Transcript

0:00

You are listening to the Secure Love Club podcast. I'm your host, Mimi Watt. Hey friends, welcome back to the club. I'm coming at you today with another real and raw episode. Last week's episode was an honest one, um, talking about my journey of opening up about my sexuality and the fact that I've been taking a break from dating for a good year. A year and a half. Yeah, year and a half. And I want to continue that theme of honesty today because I'm moving through some emotions today that have actually kind of taken me by surprise. And I think they have been bubbling under the surface for a little while now without me putting a name to them or acknowledging what's been feeling true for me and. That is a feeling of loneliness, a feeling of isolation to some degree, and missing having a person who is my person and the one who I turn to, to talk about things and to share details about my day and to navigate the ups and downs of life with, and. I know that's something that many of you can relate to is when we're not in a relationship and we are craving that partnership, it's, it's okay to feel lonely sometimes, and it's okay to feel sad about it, but there's an important distinction that I want make with these feelings about how we are moving through them and how we are processing them. And that's what I want to talk about. In this episode today, and I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna cut straight to it, so let's dive in. Loneliness is one of those emotions that I don't feel too often, and I feel very lucky and grateful that I can say that I have a beautiful. Family around me. I have good friends who I can call on and rely on and spend time with on a regular basis, and an amazing community in the online world as well with mentors and coaches of mine, and connections with many of you that I've made and just good friends who I've met through the industry or through the online world. I am lucky that I have that, but sometimes. At some points, the loneliness does creep in, and this is one of those sacrifices that we need to make if we want healthy, secure relationships. For many of you with an anxious attachment, you likely have a pattern of staying in. Relationships or allowing new connections to develop when you know that this person isn't right for you, when deep down you're not actually happy with them and you don't feel safe with them, you don't feel seen and understood, but you choose to stay in the connection because the thought of being alone and not having any connection is worse than. The pain or unhappiness that you might experience in that relationship. And as you grow and as you heal your attachment style, you begin to make different choices about where you invest your time and energy, and the types of people you entertain in your life and those who you don't and you learn and you recognize that. The safety that you are seeking in other people is something you have to learn to create for yourself first. If you ever want a chance at having healthy, secure relationships, the kind where you do feel safe, the kind where there is true commitment, where you are a team and it's a partnership and it doesn't just feel one sided. Because when we don't create the safety internally for your, for ourselves first, then even if we meet someone who's a good person, we are going to be almost draining that person of everything they have because we are wanting them to fill a hole or fill a void that exists within us that we, we haven't, we haven't learned how to plug that hole. For lack of a better term, we haven't learned to do that for ourselves. And so we are hoping the other person is gonna do that. And the, the truth is that no amount of their love and reassurance and validation can fill it. It's truly an inside job that we need to take care of first. And as you become more and more secure within yourself, you begin to steer away from. Lots of people who your past self may have entertained or you, you stop entertaining situation ships that you know are not going anywhere or you know, are only gonna hurt you because your self-worth increases and you really begin to respect yourself on a whole new level. And you value your energy and your time to the point where you just simply. Won't invest it into situations or people who don't deserve it and who aren't on the same page as you. But with that can come a different type of loneliness. It comes from having high standards, from not being willing to open up your heart as easily as maybe you did in the past from slowing. Connections way down so that you can really get to know someone and understand if they're truly compatible with you before saying yes to fully opening your heart and going into an exclusive relationship. And as you place less emphasis on these relationships that. You know, make you feel like you have to chase and beg and earn love. You start to direct your focus into other areas of your life. Maybe you become very focused on your career. Maybe you start a business and you pour 80% of your time and energy into trying to build that business. Or you invest more into your friends that you in the past may have neglected your friendships because you were consumed by a relationship and. When we focus on other things, they can tend to take up a lot of our time that sometimes we almost resort to putting dating on the back burner because you become so secure and I guess fulfilled in your life that you can tend to think you don't need a relationship and you don't need anyone in your life romantically. But that can. Sneak back up on you as I feel it's doing for me today. And you've caught me. You've caught me right in the moment with this emotion, and I just want you to know side note like I am, okay. I'm absolutely okay. And I have people around me who I can lean on for support and I do know how to honor my emotions and hold myself through this process, but. I do just wanna share this authenticity with you to know, like for you to know that it's okay if you feel this way, because I sure do. Sometimes there I have days where I, I Ms. Love and I miss waking up next to, next to someone that I love and I miss being able to think about someone else other than myself in a way, um, as privileged as that sounds, but. It is true. You know, like at the moment I'm in a season of life where my business is one of my top priorities. I am prioritizing doing the best I can for my clients and creating the best experience I can for them. And. Setting myself up financially so that when I hopefully have a family someday, I feel secure in that. So it's a big focus. And to be honest, it takes up so much of my head space that often, it's the first thing I think about when I wake up, and the last thing I think about at night when I turn the light out. Actually not often, that's a lie. It's like nearly, it's pretty much every day and. Whilst on the one hand, that's okay because I am very passionate about what I do and I'm grateful to have something that is such a passion project. It's, you know, it can be, it can be all consuming in a way that is, again, detrimental sometimes. And that's just fucking life, isn't it? That is the law of duality. Everything has opposites. And there's good and bad to everything, and life is 50 50, but because I'm in this phase of being so focused on it, again, like I said, I have a tendency to just push dating to the side because I tell myself, you know, one day soon I'll get back into it one day soon. I'll put myself out there when my business is at x. Point then I will get back into it. And this is something that for me personally, I need to gab, navigate regularly. I need to catch myself and pull myself out of this head down hustle mentality because if I'm not careful, I can tend to look up and have this feeling of where is everyone? And fuck everyone else is out living their life or dating or doing these things, and I'm not. And that hurts sometimes. And I think today I was sitting here doing some work and I started to notice that I was feeling quite heavy in my body. My arms felt heavy, my chest felt heavy, and the motivation, the drive just wasn't there. And I went into, I was, I spoke to my mom and she said, how are you? And I just, you know, sometimes when someone says, how are you? And it's like the thing that just opens the can of worms on your emotions, and you didn't even know what was gonna happen. I think that's, that's what happened to me today. And I just found myself saying the words, I feel lonely and. Whether that's a loneliness of missing a partner or a loneliness of working. For myself, by myself every day at home and missing that outlet and that socialization that comes from working with a team and going to an office every day and having people you can talk shit with in between tasks or people you can turn to when you're a bit stuck and you need that push, or I do miss that as well, you know? And that sometimes is one of the downfalls of working for yourself. And whilst I would not trade it for anything. It's, it's just one of those things, and I guess the reason I'm telling you all of this is because I want you to know that it's okay if you feel loneliness sometimes in your life, but I also wanna remind you that it is better to feel lonely and know that you are not. Entertaining people just for the sake of it just to fill a void, because the loneliness that you feel in a toxic relationship or a situationship or casual fling, that deep down you want more, but the other person doesn't, and you stay in it anyway. The loneliness in those experiences, in my opinion, is far, far worse. Or being in a relationship where you don't feel seen because you don't feel safe to be your authentic self. And so you hide who you truly are and you morph into who you think this other person wants or what you think that they think is attractive and you lose yourself in the process. Right, or you haven't developed the communication skills or the confidence or the emotional safety internally to feel confident, to express your feelings, your needs, your desires. So you bottle them up. And that is isolating because maybe the person you're with thinks everything's fine, but it's not. It's not fine. And that, again, is a very painful type of loneliness. So even though this loneliness is challenging, I would rather feel this and experience this than the loneliness that comes in toxic relationships when you become someone who has a certain standard for the type of person you want to be with and the type of relationship you want to create, and that standard is high. You're going to meet less people who meet that standard. And so, like I said earlier, maybe it takes a bit more time or you have to say no to more people than you would say yes to. And yeah, there can be loneliness in that, but just remember that it's worth it. It is worth waiting or biting your time for the right person to come along. Than giving into the discomfort of loneliness in the short term and entertaining people who you know are only gonna hurt you a few months down the line. And to top all of this off, we are living in a time where, on the one hand, we are more connected than we have ever been with social media and the internet. But ironically, feeling the most disconnected we've ever felt because we as humans, we're not created and designed to connect with people through a screen. It's not real. It's not enough. We need human interaction. We need physical touch. We need to co-regulate with people around us and. You know, that's another thing to watch out for is where do you have community in your life? Maybe it is on the one hand in an online group, like a group coaching program. That's why I love facilitating peacefully attached my group space because the connection and community that comes in that is so healing. But where are you not investing time into your friends? Where are you not making an effort to get out and be around other people? And I'm saying this to myself as well, don't worry, but even going to a group fitness class, that's why I also love doing, um, training at gyms that are group based classes because it's an easy way to be in a community and to see people on a regular basis who you can become friendly with. And it does help, it does add to your life. So that's all I have to say for you today, but I hope that this touched the right person. And if you are listening and you are feeling a little bit lonely today or lately in your life, just know that I see you and that it's okay, but I would rather you endure the loneliness and find healthy ways to fill up your cup emotionally. Then go back to some toxic ex or some fucking crusty fuck boy who you, oh fuck girl, who isn't right for you. Just to ease that pain temporarily because you and I both know on the other side of it is a very painful come down. So I'm sending you so much love today and a lot of reassurance that everything is going to be okay. We are going to be okay and. When those challenging days come, just let them be there. But just know that tomorrow is a brand new day. The future is very exciting and the right relationship for you and for me is absolutely inevitable. Alright, my friends, you have a beautiful week and I'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye. If you enjoyed today's episode, hit that subscribe button and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Share this episode with your friends and come find me on social so we can hang out between episodes. All the links are below in the show notes.