ALONE BY CHOICE?

Why give yourself the grief of one more failed relationship? Why not opt out on the whole thing and embrace personal isolationism? Dump the significant other search, let your kids(if you have any) go to the devil and live all alone? It sounds like a relief, if you've been beating your head against relationship walls. So why not?

Because humans need relationships. Just look at the statistics and you'll see that humans in contact with others live longer, happier lives. Sometimes, it sucks, but we need one another.

You were born needing the care of others to keep you from dying and you still need it now. But relationships--romantic or not--are complicated and sometimes hard. Being alone might seem easier and much more simple, but that doesn't mean alone is healthier. Aside from the consideration of your physical well-being and your cardiac health, you need relationships to help you grow as a person.

It's like exercise. You need the gasping, wheezing, heart-pounding part to keep yourself from sliding into physical decay. The benefits are well-documented. Your doctor may have told you to get up off your keister and move. All to stress and strengthen the pump in your chest. There is lots of advice available to help guide you through good dietary choices and help you know which is the best activity for your lifestyle.

This isn't to say that exercise is always fun. Aside from the odd individual who loves running, biking and mountain-climbing into their seventies and eighties, exercise is generally something you do because you know it's good for you.

This is an attitude which will benefit your relationships, as well.

Being alone can be tempting, at times, but it puts you at risk. Relationships are challenging, but they can bring positives that aren't immediately visible. Just as not exercising can harden your arteries and make your heart less effective, being alone makes you vulnerable to becoming encased in your own perspective.

We all have individual ways of seeing the world, some parts of which are accurate and some inaccurate. Very few people are uniformly bad. Most of us have good qualities along with the not-good behaviors. You have your own take on stuff and part of this is incorrect. Part of your beliefs/thoughts/feelings are completely accurate, but not all. When you interact with others in relationships, your perspective bumps against that of others. The resulting conflict is supposed to give you a reason to do some self-examination.

You're not always right or always wrong, but you need someone who cares about you enough to argue this out, in order for you to see beyond yourself. Relationships can be worked out. It does take effort, but this effort isn't beyond you. You can do this.

You might not realize you're in self-protective mode. If you can't find anyone (who's not an idiot)to date, you need to look at your own willingness to wade into the water. Maybe you're fearful of being hurt. If you're not investing in others' lives, they won't invest in yours and you need them.

Believe in yourself and believe in your fellowkind. Others are stumbling along, too, and they need you. Whether you need to date outside your comfortable pool or create mentoring relationships with those still coming up, you'll benefit by opening your life.

It'll make you healthier and give you good things, along with the challenges.