Why Being Single Feels So Intolerable - and Why It’s the Key to Your Healing

I run into this question repeatedly in my work with young women: Why is being single so intolerable? Every time it comes up, it challenges me.

We know the men we’re with aren’t healthy for us. Rationally, we know we could never marry them. Some are even outright abusive - and yet, we stay. Why? Because the fear of being alone feels scarier than staying in pain.

But how could that be? How could being with someone who hurts us feel safer than being alone?

The Personal and the Clinical

I approach this from both a professional and deeply personal perspective - because I’ve lived it. I was the woman who refused to walk away from a relationship that caused daily suffering and slowly eroded my sense of self-worth.

I remember once saying to my partner of 13 years, “I can’t stand you, but I’m not strong enough to walk away.” I even told him I could never see a future with him, that he would never make a good father - words that still haunt me.

Some might say I contributed to the dysfunction, and in many ways, I’d agree. If I despised this person so much, why didn’t I just leave?

Because like so many women, I was bonded by trauma; replaying old wounds and patterns learned from my parents and early experiences.

We stay where it feels familiar, even when everyone around us tells us we deserve better.

The Root: “I’m Not Lovable”

As a young woman living in that unhealthy dynamic, I eventually traced my fear of leaving back to a childhood wound, the belief that I wasn’t lovable.

If I left this man - who abused himself with drugs and alcohol and gaslighted me daily; I believed I’d end up alone forever. I didn’t know how to love in a healthy way. I was certain no healthy man would tolerate me.

When we finally broke up, he told me, “No one will ever love you like I did. You’re too jealous, insecure, and controlling.” And he was right, at least about that part.

But that’s the truth about codependency that’s often overlooked: as long as we focus on our partner’s problems, we get to avoid looking at ourselves.

The Biology of Attachment

 If you’ve listened to my Cracked Up podcast https://open.spotify.com/episode/1PFwzTZLajVCjIe7OW8apw?si=9xMpKJiySlSsg-xw1SGQcA or read my other work, you know I often talk about attachment theory. As a therapist specializing in relational trauma, I view relationships through the lens of attachment - how we learned to trust (or not trust) others with our vulnerability.

After my breakup, I became fascinated with the biological side of attachment. When I finally left my 13-year relationship, I felt utterly shattered -even suicidal. Despite having loving friends and parents, the empty void was unbearable.

It sounds dramatic, but it’s real. This is why so many people rush to dating apps or casual hookups after a breakup - the withdrawal is intense. We chase the dopamine hits of likes, swipes, and sexts with strangers because it numbs the pain.

In clinical terms, this is about our window of tolerance. Mine, back then, was tiny. A friend once told me the pain of her breakup was worse than when her father died. That stuck with me.

In September 2015, I wrote in my diary that I couldn’t stand the pain, but my friends promised it would get better. One friend said, “Take it one day at a time.”

It sounded cliché, something out of AA, but it worked. Maybe I was in fact an addict. I wrote that I’d try this “abstinence” from the relationship until spring. If I didn’t feel better by then, I’d go back... or end my life.

Thankfully, I did neither. I survived. And in that survival, I discovered how powerful my attachment really was - and how much healing it required.

Why It Feels Like Life or Death

As infants, our attachment to our mothers (and her milk, her warmth, her voice) literally keeps us alive. When she attunes to our needs, our nervous system learns regulation and safety.

As adults, those same systems still fire when we lose love. On a biological level, a breakup can feel like life or death. Our rational mind knows we’ll survive, but our limbic system - the emotional brain, screams abandonment. 

That’s why even the strongest, smartest women run right back into the flames of unhealthy love. Our biology mistakes danger for safety - because chaos once meant connection.

The Question That Changes Everything

When I work with women who can’t leave unhealthy relationships, I always get curious about three things:

1. Their relationship with their parents.

2. What they witnessed between those parents.

3. The beliefs they formed about love.

   
   

A powerful question to ask yourself if you’re in a less-than-ideal relationship, and can’t leave is: What am I scared of?

For many women, the tears start before the words. I did this exercise myself, and my answer was: “I’m scared no one will ever love me.”

I’ve heard countless versions from clients:

• “I’ll never find a connection like this.”

• “I don’t want to start dating again.”

• “Being alone is too scary.”

The Cultural Lie 

Even if biology plays a role, I can’t ignore the cultural messages that reinforce it.

We all know that feeling - being the only single girl, the third wheel, the dateless one at the wedding who throws back shots at the open bar, hoping tonight will be the night I meet my knight in shining armor. Lots of people meet their spouses at weddings, right?

We spend endless nights swiping through the apps, getting dressed up on the weekends, trying to finally end this intolerable journey. We’re tired of sitting at tables full of couples, or being asked by Aunt Sharon at every holiday, “So when do you think you’ll settle down?”

When a man is single, he’s a bachelor, confident, desirable, powerful.

When a woman is single, people whisper: “She must be difficult,” or “She can’t keep a man.”

We never ask why the man couldn’t keep her.

The chronic insinuation of being a single adult woman is that we are flawed. We rarely get credit for walking away from an abusive partner or divorcing a cheating husband. Instead, we get shamed for not being chosen -in a world that taught us our worth lies in being the “nice, pretty girl” so we’d eventually be chosen.

Our souls crush a little more each time we see another engagement post on social media, that tug of war between wanting to be happy for our friends and battling the insidious envy that eats away at us.

It can be one of the most distressing feelings in the world. So doesn’t it make sense that we sometimes settle for relationships that are unfulfilling, or even harmful?

I hold no judgment for those who stay. But I am, and always will be - a fierce believer in never settling.   

The Promise of “Never Settling”

I’ll never forget a night after one of my bar shifts years ago. An older man I barely knew said to me, “No matter what you do in life, never settle.”

Those words changed me.

They carried me through my master’s program, following my dreams of launching my private practice, and every moment of choosing myself over people who couldn’t love me fully.

That’s what I now teach other women to do: stop settling - in relationships, careers, or self-worth.

Why This Work Matters to Me

Today, I help women unlearn what I once believed- that being single means being unlovable, and that love from others is the only thing that makes us whole.

I don’t care how many mistakes you’ve made, how dysfunctional your upbringing was, or how messy your relationships have been. You are still worthy of love.

That doesn’t mean avoiding accountability, it means healing within yourself, not through someone else.

So please, don’t stay because you’re scared to be alone. Don’t stay because you think there’s nothing better out there. Don’t stay if even a small part of you knows you deserve more.

Trust that voice. You do deserve better. You will find it.

Stop settling for half-love. Being single is not a punishment. It’s the beginning of your power.

If this story spoke to you, take the next step toward healing your self-worth. ✨ Download The Self-Worth Reset — a free guide I created to help you quiet self-doubt, stop settling, and start choosing yourself again. It’s a gentle reset for the part of you that’s ready to believe you are enough.

Because you - just as you are - are worth it.