The Tension of Singleness
Have you always been single? Did you recently go through a breakup? Do you find yourself wondering if something’s wrong with you? Like you’re just too much or not enough? “What makes that girl more lovable than me?” You look around and see everyone else enjoying the thing your heart desires most, and feelings of jealousy creep in. That emptiness sits heavily on your chest. You wish for relief, but you’re not sure how to find it. Or maybe you suffered in a past relationship and are fearful of letting someone in that close again. You long to be married, but you’re terrified of the commitment due to something in your past. I want you to know YOU ARE SEEN, and YOU ARE LOVED! You are NOT less than, and you’re not a condition to be “fixed.”
I experienced several long seasons of singleness in my twenties and thirties (in addition to a few seasons of dating and then a broken engagement in my early thirties. I married 4 months before I turned 35 to my husband, and we have now been married for almost a year and a half at this point). I have joked with certain girlfriends that I frequently have felt in early marriage like I could relate better to my single friends than my married friends just because marriage has been such a new experience to me. I had become so very familiar with singleness—and the tensions of it.
There can be such a tension in the experience of singleness, depending upon your personal experiences. You may long to be married but also may enjoy your current freedoms. One day you are lonely and just want to do life with a partner, and the next day you are spontaneously booking a weekend trip with a girlfriend. You may feel either pressure from family or even in certain church circles to get married. Or you may feel invisible in certain church and ministry circles because your experience of singleness is never really addressed as the focus tends to be more catered to marriage and parenting, yet you are looked at as someone who has “more time” to serve (even though thriving and juggling adulting as a single adult in this day and age can actually take a lot of time!). These various kinds of tension are often isolating.
I remember in a season of singleness in my twenties, hearing a young adult pastor point out something profound about the tension of singleness that helped both normalize and reframemy experience. (I don’t know about you, but I have heard some pretty unhelpful or over-spiritualizing comments about singleness over the years, so this was different!) He basically exhorted us to be satisfied in Jesus during our single years, but that we actually did not need to “be content.” He explained that yes, all of us—whether married or single—can ultimately only find true satisfaction and fulfillment in our relationship with Jesus. Preach on! But then he went on to say that sometimes as singles in Christian circles there can be this hidden, hyper-spiritual pressure to “be content” in our singleness before God was going to bring us someone (yikes!). The other issue he pointed out was that sometimes some singles can use “contentment” in singleness as an excuse to passively not pursue getting married or to avoid the vulnerability required in relationships. (I have so many thoughts on this, having sat with singles over the years!). His big point was that we did not need to squelch our desires to be married but we could actually pursue our desires to be married in godly ways while also being satisfied in Jesus and bringing our desires and emotions about it to Him. This pastor said: “I want y’all to be satisfied, but you don’t need to be “content.” He pointed out that God made us to be in relationship and that longing to be in a relationship—as long as that desire is submitted to Jesus—is actually a good, healthy thing. There is not some hyper spiritual “arrival” of not wanting a relationship or marriage. This is a healthy tension in singleness—pursuing both satisfaction in Jesus while also pursuing healthy relationships submitted to Jesus. This paradigm shift was a helpful reframe to me in my singleness.
So—what do we do with our desires in our singleness? We allow the above healthy tension to reframe the other tensions that we experience in singleness. We are honest about our emotions with ourselves and with others. We do not need to hyper-spiritualize being “content” as a single as meaning we have now arrived and God can now bring us someone. We can honestly lament (the Psalms are my go-to!) about our experiences. We can gently educate those around us as to what is actually helpful versus unhelpful in our singleness. For example, I remember really appreciating one of my girlfriends (who was married) occasionally asking me, “How’s singleness for you these days?” There was no judgement or pressure in the question, just a simple entering into my experience of singleness—and I could be whatever I was that day—sad, neutral, or ok, and she would simply listen.
During my long seasons of singleness, I also clung to the fact that Jesus Himself was single. God the Father did not send down a perfect God-Man example of a married man…. but of a single man. Was Jesus ever lonely? Was He ever sad? Did He ever in His flesh desire a close human relationship as He saw marriages around Him? Although the latter is not mentioned in Scripture, we do know that yes Jesus experienced loneliness and sadness. He was described as a “Man of Sorrows” (Isaiah 53) as His experience of life—not just on the cross. He experienced singleness. He experienced loneliness. He experienced being misunderstood. Jesus experienced every tension there was to experience about being human and also about being single. He experienced the biggest tension of all in being fully God and fully Man. If you ever feel like no one can relate to your experience of the tensions in singleness, my biggest encouragement to you would be that Jesus can. He also designed you and He knows your heart’s desires even better than you do. His scarred hands can be trusted with your hopes, dreams, and desires and can also hold space for crushed dreams, anger, or wounds that you may have in this area. In our lament, may we remember that Jesus- the perfect single- experienced beautiful intimacy with His heavenly Father, and invites us into a deep intimacy with Him and His Father. He longs to hear from you about the tensions you are experiencing and He longs to be with you in them.
On the Bridge:
Grab a cup of your favorite drink and get ready for personal reflection or gracious conversation! This can be done in a personal or group context. At the end of each blog, there will be a few questions for reflection designed to help you grow as a sufferer or helper as well as to “build bridges” between the two groups around a topic. I invite you to use these questions in a way that works for you whether that be for personal reflection or gracious conversation with other sufferers or helpers (or both!). Consider others in your life that may need to be educated on a topic and consider ways that you too may also be called to be a “bridge-builder.”
1) If you are single, what has your experience of singleness been like?
2) How does knowing that you can be in the tension of“satisfied but not content” potentially reframe the other tensions of singleness?
3) If you are not single, what may be a helpful way to relate to a single friend?
4) If you are a part of a church or ministry that is not addressing singleness, how can you be a “bridge” in this area, providing gentle education or resources?
(For starters, you can check out this article and discuss with a single or a married friend or send to your pastor or ministry leader): https://static.pcpc.org/articles/singles/singledout.pdf
