Being human means being alone

When we give people a sticker with ‘I am SGL’ logo and ask them to wear this as a signal of belonging to SGL community there are usually two reactions. First is the reaction we like most: what a cool idea, give me the sign. Second is less favorable for us: I’m not that desperate, it is not that  bad with me. I don’t want others to see that I am without a partner.

And this second one made me wondering why it is so that we are ashamed of being alone. Not everyone can tell you how it is to be married, or how it is to be a parent but almost all of us can tell you how it is to be alone. So, why do we try to neglect this experience, pretend that it has never happened to me? Why, when alone, we feel like kind of a losers? Is it biology or culture, or maybe both? I will not give a simple answer to that. What I want to say is that being alone is a part of our human existence. If you are alone right now, and you look around with a feeling that there are almost only couples, you should be aware that:

-        -   firstly, no there not only happy couples around you, it is your brain playing with you and showing you only this one thing on which you focus the most

-        -   secondly, almost all of this people at some point of their life where alone, some of them will be alone also in future

-        -   thirdly, there are lots of interesting, funny people around you, who are also alone

-        -   and last but not least, there are many things which you can do to stop being alone, if you want to, and first of them can be to go out and …, but this is totally different story.


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Single time - good time

I am not single right now, but not so long ago I was single for two marvelous, frustrating, incredible, and miserable years. Being single for me was a mixture of all of this contrary feelings. I can honestly say that it was most prolific time in my life. Why? Because I had to define for the second time in my life who I am. If you are in a relationship you automatically give up some of things that defines you. I love being in a relationship do not understand me incorrectly, but look at some couples, they have usually similar ideas about world, they often like spending spare time in the same way, sometimes they even look similarly, and that’s cute of course, but… for me a question raises is this really them. What will left of their ideas  if they are separated somehow? When I became single after 11 years of being in relationship, I had to ask myself all of these questions: which part of my life is actually mine, what do I like, what do I think, why I do some of the things? Why do I spend my holidays every year in a cottage house if one of my biggest dream ever was to see the world? And every year I promised myself that next year we will go to the Crimea. We never did and there was always a good argument why not this time. I do not blame anyone, I just think that you have to be alone for some time to define for yourself what is really important for you. Which things you can give up because you love somebody and which are the core of you and without them you are only partly the person who you want to be. Therefore, if you are single you have an unique opportunity to get to know the person which should be most important in your life – you. Use this time and no matter whether you will be single for life, or one day you will decide to start a relationship, this time can be the most precious in your life. It was in mine.

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Being single – what I learned about this phenomenon from my sociological research? by Magdalena Wachnicka

I would like to introduce you to the basic definition of the phenomenon of being single and my efforts of ordering them. I would like to describe social and cultural basis of the phenomenon, to get to know singles opinion on the choice of such way of  life. I want to define positive and negative aspects of the phenomenon and its scale. www.IamSGL.org

Today I will tell you about resources of my research. The first one was questionnaire research. The second one were talks on the internet forum for singles, where people who live alone talk about the new and occurring more and more often phenomenon.

For my research I chose an international company because most workers of the firm are young people just after finishing college with a few years of professional experience. Desire to broaden as well as obtain new skills, devote their work time quite often at the cost of their private life. So they are a potential group of singles - ambitions young people who are oriented towards a career and put their private life into the background. ( I am SGL on YouTube )

The hypotheses in my work were - women make a decision more often to be a single, the higher level of education the respondent has got the more often he makes a decision to be single, inhabitants of big cities make a decision more often to be single, there is a correlation between the picture of happiness or misfortune of own family and making a decision about being single, there is a correlation between the way of spending free time and making a decision to be single. 

The results of the questionnaire proved my hypothesis, but gave also a few surprising results. It seems that even in strongly family-oriented Polish society, singles are more and more perceived as a fulfilled people with different way of living and not as old-fashioned spinsters. Additionally, most of the young singles is not especially willing to use dating sites or events organized especially for singles. This new and growing phenomenon is definitely worth looking close to.

- Magdalena Wachnicka

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