Single Awareness Day can be seen as an unofficial celebration of single life and looking at the potential challenges that can come with being single. Single Awareness Day was created as a response to a culture often highly focused on love and relationships. For this reason, it’s typically celebrated the day after Valentine’s Day, and most people wear green as it’s the complementary opposite to red. If you’re single this February, it may be beneficial to investigate how to celebrate Single Awareness Day and how to cope if you’re struggling with being single. You might take yourself on a date, practice self-care, and nurture your other connections.

I personally celebrate Singles Awareness Day more than Valentine’s Day because while I do always think that there is love in life, putting myself out there can be challenging. And even if I try when there comes the time to go to the next step, my anxiety kicks in turbo drive and the only thing that I can think of is getting out of the situation immediately because that is the way that my brain wants me to think about doing.

There is a reality that the thought of being in a relationship can be scary and in fact I have been there, sometimes because I didn’t understand social pragmatism and was automatically thrust into it. Being autistic, navigating the social landscape can be challenging and drives a constant state of anxiety of which the only thing that I want to do is avoid the situation because it is outside of my comfort zone and makes me uncomfortable.

Life in general can be complex and challenging for an autistic person who lives independently such as myself, when you throw on top of that the romantic connection with another human being and navigating the social pragmatics that come with it, it can be too much at times and cause someone such as myself to break down and crash. It can also hurt the other human that is connected and that is something that I don’t want to ever do again because of me not being able to knowingly be in a relationship.

 Now, putting the fact of relationship aside, you may think that being single is boring. The fact that is not exactly true and that there are many other ways to connect with humans on a different level than committing to a relationship. I particularly find that friends work equally as well for me and that there can be just as an equal value in that than just having as close as a connection than you have in being connected romantically with someone just because society thinks that it is a societal norm.

The fact that I enjoy being single and seeing things concretely and now know that navigating the social landscape and being able to interact with others as close that is necessary in a relationship is something that just isn’t in the cards for me. Navigating life for me can be complicated within itself with all the things that I have to do in life and that I just don’t have the desire to connect with other human beings on that level and that is OK. It is perfectly acceptable to connect with other human beings in the ways that I see fit.

So if you are choosing to live the single life today like me, know that today is a special day in our books and that it is OK for us to be who we are and we do not have to fall within the cusp of mainstream society. Relationships are not always possible for everyone and that is OK. Be who you want to be!