There is a strange dichotomy between love and the holidays.
Culturally it feels like the most romantic time of the year. The season is filled with endless Hallmark Movie countdowns, festive lights, and multiple advertisements touting gorgeous families with perfectly plated turkey and decorations. From the bow topped cars in every luxury car commercial to the well-dressed couples who’s kisses all start with Kay, the reality of the season – as a time where the majority of breakups happen- doesn’t quite make it into the holiday narrative.
If you’re single the last few months of the year into the new year rest assured that you’re not alone.
Whether suffering from an ill-timed breakup, or fallen into a routine of self-partnership, being single during the holiday season can be almost unbearable. This is not the time to claim being single is a choice, or a widely accepted way of life. It sucks. And not just for you but for many.
This is the most devastating time of the year for relationships. It’s a season where culturally we reflect on our lives, and the decisions we’ve made. We look towards our past, our present and either hopefully, or woefully towards the future. We all have our own It’s a Wonderful Life moment, and we wonder if we’re making the right decisions, and often where we start to make the most abrupt changes is in our relationships.
So how do you survive the harshest season for relationships, of all kinds, when you’re not even in one?
The Gift Of Freedom
Let go of your past, and set yourself free.
If you lost it, then you weren’t meant to have it, or maybe you just didn’t need it. The one concept that it’s important to understand when you’re single at any time of the year is that everything happens in the future. If you are longing or waiting for that former flame to come back, it can only happen today or tomorrow but never yesterday.
Thinking about the past brings the past into the present and that is the last place it belongs. If you are hung up on what was, you need to recognize that you’ve actually fallen into a habit of thinking that is keeping you stuck. Break old thought patterns with one simple act. Daydreaming.
Whether you believe in miracles, or meditation, creating a vision for your future is the best way to create it. Instead of remembering happened last year, or the year before, or twenty Christmas’s ago, consider what your wish is for this holiday season.
When you want something you don’t have it can only come in the future. Focusing on the past, or even the present holds you in a perpetual state of distance from what you want. Thinking about the future aligns you with what you want by putting you in the only reality where you can have it, which is in the future.
Letting go of the past is a process of replacing old thoughts with new ones. New thoughts generate new feelings in the body and only when new thoughts are created can anything new happen to us.
The Gift of Forgiveness
Whatever you feel that you’ve done in the past is not the reason that you’re single.
Love is available to anyone who believes they can have it. Unlike the predictable plot of the holiday movies shown throughout the season, love is not a twist of fate, or a stroke of luck. Love happens through the same universal laws that produce all other events in our lives. Love is not limited to the beautiful or the wealthy, it’s made for the believers. It’s a manifestation of what we already believe so within as without. This means that as you believe you will experience.
We block love from our lives because we hold on to our pain, and shame. We hold onto everything that we’ve done wrong that somehow equals the fact we are unlovable. There is a large portion of single adults who feel that they are somehow unlovable. After a life of being conditioned to censor ourselves and taper our behaviors it’s hard to accept that you are worthy of something so important. But you are.
Whatever you’ve failed at, whatever you lack, whatever you’ve done in your past now is the time to let it go, and grace yourself with forgiveness. What you give to yourself is the best indicator of what you’ll get from a romantic partner.
The Gift Of Self – Love
Date yourself this season.
This isn’t a cheesy suggestion to take yourself out for ice skating and hot chocolate on snowy day. Dating yourself is about spending time with yourself, and giving yourself the attention and investment that you would give someone else. As within, so without. This means that if we have the capacity to get to know, and love someone else we should practice the most often on ourselves. In fact, it has been proven that 36 questions will help to fall in love and that isn’t reserved for a stranger. Getting to know yourself, and falling in love with yourself starts with taking the time to get to know yourself all over again.
What are your deepest fears, what makes you happy, if you were stuck on a desert island with a celebrity, who would it be?
The end of the year is a reflective time for everyone, and time alone, which comes with the territory of being single isn’t a bad thing. It can be used to treat yourself like the person you’re dating, with care and attention.
The superficial answer to surviving the holidays when you’re single is to take a hot bath, carol with friends in the form of holiday karaoke, or find the nearest yoga retreat to meditate away the fact the love isn’t under your tree. The reality is that dating isn’t about finding your soulmate. It’s an experience like anything else that reflects the way that you feel about yourself. The only way to find the a partner is to stop beating yourself up for not having one already.