Solitude vs Soulmate: Is being alone better or should you wait for the one?

After substituting a date night for a galentine's dinner and suppressing all your hopeless romantic dreams with a feel-good movie or by sobbing while reading your ex's texts, life is now back to normal.

You have bravely or cowardly lived through one of the most traumatic days of the year, Valentine's Day. Red balloons all around, couples being cosy on the subway and just the feeling of love in the air can make a sane-minded person envious of others. It can make one really wonder if they are better off alone or just lagging behind in the race of finding their 'one'. If you have pondered this in the past few days, let's delve in deeper together.

Flying solo?

Flying solo is a part of many people's YOLO motto. From spending time by yourself learning new hobbies to just avoiding the extra burden of fights and arguments, there are many benefits of being single if one really sits down to make a list. The dead dating pool and concepts such as self-dating have only made the idea more exciting in the minds of many who fear putting their emotions out there and venturing into the volcanic world of dating.

With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone was brutally hit by the "loneliness epidemic", a term popularised by then US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy in 2023. However, the concerns about the effects of being lonely left solitude with "a bit of a bad reputation, throwing the baby out with the bath water, so to speak," said Robert Coplan, a professor in psychology at Carleton University in Ottawa to the BBC. Solitude is a state some choose for positive reasons.

Especially when it comes to Gen Z and millennials who are re-evaluating their romantic relationships and embracing single life in order to better understand intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships. The idea of "settling down" is correctly outdated for these new entrants into the dating world. According to a 2023 US survey, two out of five Gen Z-ers and millennials think marriage is an outdated tradition, and in the UK only just over half of Gen Z men and women are predicted to marry, according to the Office of National Statistics. As much as this comes from a larger access to freedom and independence for more and more women, it also comes from the fascination of simply existing with oneself. "Society understands better now that romantic love is not the only model to live by, or something to wish for," said Daniel Schreiber to the BBC. "There are different ways of life, and it's not as necessary to be in a traditional romantic relationship."This does not mean staying alone all the time or swapping solitude with romantic relationships, it just means accepting and embracing it as a choice rather than treating it like a stigma or a problem that needs to be solved.

It is ideal to switch between times of solitude and social engagement. When you add importance to your time of solitude, through a walk, a coffee or any other hobby, it ends up being more fulfilling. Do things that you want to rather than waiting for a partner and the right time.

But what about a soulmate? Is there truly someone out there, just for you?

Keep the search on?

Listening to music, reading books, watching couples or even interacting with someone, many things in life tempt you to believe that there is someone in the world, meant to love you with all their being.

Humans have been drawn to the seriousness of the idea of love since ancient Greece, when Plato imagined that we were once whole beings with four arms, four legs and two faces so radiant that Zeus split us into two. The two halves have been roaming around searching for the other, ever since, giving rise to the modern idea of soulmate.Then, Shakespeare ignited a new fire with the concept of star-crossed lovers like Romeo and Juliet. Over the years, every movie and song out there has just deeply embedded the belief of a soulmate in us. But is this reality or just a fiction of the mind?According to Viren Swami, Professor of Social Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), in Cambridge, these stories have pushed the idea of choosing one individual as "your companion and that companion is for life."

"Before that, in much of Europe, you could love as many people as you like, and love was fluid, and it was often not about sex," he told the outlet.However, over time, as life made people move to different places and apart from their attachments, the feelings of "alienation" became stronger. So much so, that we started looking for someone to save us, to distract us from the complexities of life. And now, dating apps have turned this simple need into an addictive algorithm of changing partners, which Swami called "relation-shopping". Jason Carroll, Professor of Marriage and Family Studies at the US Brigham Young University, advises his students to leave the idea of soulmates but still keep up the hope to find "the one." "A soulmate is simply found. It's already pre‑made. But a one and only is something two people carve out together over years of adapting, apologising, and occasionally gritting their teeth," he said. The professor distinguished between the two in his report The Soulmate Trap where he differentiated between what psychologists call "destiny beliefs", the idea that a relationship should feel effortless, and "growth beliefs" the idea that two people can make efforts to make it work.

As per Carroll, those with the second type of beliefs are able to have long relationships because they continue commitment even after conflict.

"The first time there's any type of struggle, the immediate thought is, 'Well, I thought you were my soulmate. But maybe you're not, because soulmates aren't supposed to deal with things'," he said. "But if relationships are going to go long term, it's never just going to be a downhill run."Additionally, the butterflies might not truly be good. Sometimes, too much chemistry is a sign of previous trauma opening up. In this situation, inconsistency can make you feel excitement when actually it's anxiety.The heightened emotions one may feel might actually be warning signs from the nervous system recognising previous unhealthy patterns, which some therapists term as trauma bond.Essentially, it's not about finding the one, a factory-made customised model for you, it's about getting together and shaping each other to be the one, creating something anew together."I'm pretty comfortable with the aspiration to be in a unique, special relationship as long as we remember it needs to be created," added Carroll.