I’ve finally found the time to read this book. While the title may indicate this book is for singles only, those in relationships would find this book helpful as well. Why? Because this book is not about how to have better relationships with others, but how to have a better relationship with yourself.
Some lessons I’ve learned
- Practicing self-care. Self-care is not just caring for yourself. Self-care is connecting with yourself. You need to know how take care and connect with yourself in all aspects of life – physical, mental, social, and spiritual.
- If you’re single, having friends is more important than finding a partner. Not having good friends disconnect us from ourselves.
- We need to understand our past relationships in order to have better relationship with ourselves because our past relationships either encouraged us to connect or disconnect from ourselves. Knowing the journey of love is a helpful tool for this.
- You need to grieve the death of a relationship. If you don’t you will cope in some other unhealthy or destructive ways like jumping from relationship to relationship or sex, drugs, or food.
- When you do get into a relationship, you have to work on self-care and connecting to yourself much more because you are not only dealing with your own shit, you’re dealing with your partner’s as well. You need to keep doing the activities that made you feel connected to yourself when you were single, things that you might not have in common with your partner.
- One of the most common mistakes people make in relationships is they stop taking care of themselves and stop working on being attractive. You have to lay down that habit of taking care of yourself while single so you can continue doing it while in a relationship. This is your responsibility, not your partner’s.
The book also contains a brief description of what the journey of love looks life from young love to love in your 20s, 30s, and 40s. This provides a helpful pattern for most people and can help in how to understand your previous relationships.
The things I didn’t like about this book is that the author relies on his and his clients’ experiences for what he writes about. There’s not a single scientific reference or study that he cites.
Another aspect of the book you might not like if you’re religious, is the author suggesting to explore your sexuality and sleep around. The irony is that even the author was not able to practice this himself when he was single as he mentions in the book. There’s a good point in here though. A large part of what matters is being in a healthy state of mind when sleeping with other people and not using it to escape from yourself.
Besides a few minor things I didn’t like in the book, overall, I found the book to be helpful. I recommend this book to anyone who’s struggling to find happiness as a single individual.
