No one is your better half

You are a long way from happiness if you think that a man or marriage will complete you. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • You can’t go through your single days focusing on finding that other half and expect that you will enjoy the present.
  • You must have heard a woman say that when she gets married she will do this or the other. So what happens if you never get married?
  • Does that mean that you will never invest, that you will never buy that house or travel the world?

I cringe every time I hear a single woman say, when asked about her relationship status, that she is waiting for Mr Right. She will say this as if singlehood is a meaningless phase during which she waits for the man who will finally bring meaning to her life – the man who she will show off and affectionately refer to as her better half, as if both she and he are broken pieces seeking to be made whole again.

I cringe because this phrase is unsettling and because I do not believe it. No one is your better half. He may be the ying to your yang, but no matter how perfectly the two of you complement each other, no one is meant to be the half that completes you. You are whole by yourself, and this is something that every infatuated, starry-eyed woman out there needs to hear.

I am not sure how aspiring to become someone’s other half became socially acceptable. I think, though, that we can get out of this rut by changing how we look at singlehood.

If you truly believe that a man completes you, then you might never find that ever elusive marital bliss. You will be the woman who can’t look a man who is courting her in the eye and ask him directly what he is bringing to the table because you don’t value what you already have. And you will bring the energy of neediness into your relationship.

If this man meets most of your expectations, you risk getting lost in marriage and motherhood.  You will become the woman whose ‘I’s change to ‘we’; the woman who always introduces herself as Mrs So and So, or so and so’s mother, never by her name. Marriage can be a beautiful thing, but if you go in looking for someone to complete you or to make you happy, it will not be beautiful. If you go looking for your other half, more likely than not, this man will fall short of your expectations. Of course no one is perfect. But this doesn’t mean that you are incomplete, imperfect as you are.

You can’t go through your single days focusing on finding that other half and expect that you will enjoy the present. You must have heard a woman say that when she gets married she will do this or the other. So what happens if you never get married? Does that mean that you will never invest, that you will never buy that house or travel the world?

Stop settling. Stop holding back your own progress. Stop looking at your man as your other half. If you feel incomplete, look for your better half within yourself, not in another person because you will not find it there.