When I was younger, I defined who I was by who I was with. From my early teenage years and well into my twenties, my sense of self was defined by my partner (or lack thereof). I pursued long-term relationships with a relentless single-mindedness that would make Frank Underwood accuse me of opportunism.

As teenagers and young adults, most people are learning who they are and how to navigate being that person in the world. I was learning who I was with someone else, and how to navigate being that couple in the world. I didn't know how to just be me.

I didn't really know any better. I was an only child (I know, quelle horreur). My parents—my primary relationship role models—isolated themselves from friends and family and existed entirely (and bitterly) in their own self-made universe.

So, naturally, I expected my boyfriend to be my end-all, be-all: my social world, my life, my universe. In a lot of ways I was lucky to find men who were at least willing to try. But, much like with my parents, it was at the expense of myself, and created a situation guaranteed to implode (incidentally, my parents are no longer together).

And so it was, at the age of 26, I was forced to figure out who I was. I forged a path for myself. I focused on fostering my own friendships and pursuing my own interests. In a way somewhat reminiscent of Elle Woods getting into Harvard Law ("What, like it's hard?"), I decided what my career was going to be and pursued it exhaustively. Pretty soon, I was knocking down career achievement markers I had missed out during all that time I spent just Having A Boyfriend. It turned out that my single-mindedness (maybe a function of my only-child-itis?) applied to anything I focused on, and now my focus was on my career instead of my love life.

I dated, but not seriously—to the point that when something did become serious, I wasn't willing to give up the sense of independence I had achieved, thus entering a whole different realm of relationship dysfunction: at the age of 33, I no longer know how to be a "we." And I'm okay with that.

I'm okay with that because I don't want kids, and I've known for as long as I've known it to be an expectation. Marriage, to me, is an abstract concept—like God or quantum physics. I don't really have an understanding of it and I don't care to, so I just don't think about. I'm not against it. I just think nothing about it.

I have friends who are single and are miserable. I have friends who are coupled and miserable. I have friends who are single and couldn't care less, and friends who are coupled and comfortable. I even have a few friends who seem to have achieved real relationship bliss, the kind of relationship I would want to have if I were in one; but I recognize it to be a rare thing and that, behind the scenes of even the most seemingly perfect partnerships, both of those partners have made tremendous sacrifices that I might not be willing to make, if I'm being honest with myself.

In my relentless pursuit of self-discovery, I've ultimately discovered I'm happier being single. I have wonderful friends and family who provide me with all of the social interaction and emotional fulfillment I could ever possibly want or need (more often more than I want or need), and I otherwise lead the independent life I want to lead without having to answer to anyone or take anyone else into account in my decisions, with works well with my only-child inclination to do exactly what I want to do exactly when I want to do it.

It turns out, me being single is just me in my natural state, and this is the best me I can be. I'm 33, I'm single, I'm not looking, and this is the happiest I've ever been.

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