Why You Don't Want To Stay Single.

The last thing in the world that I thought I'd be writing about is a hub about why you don't want to be single. In fact a few hours ago I didn't even know what a hub was, or that they even existed. You see I came to learn about them because just a few hours before our cat had died. His name was Tiger. He was only four years old. A few days ago he was running around completely carefree and happy, always purring, always looking for something (or someone) to rub up against, and he always had the knack to make us smile, even if we were feeling down. Earlier this week out of nowhere he started howling in the middle of the night. That was out of character for him and he was also constantly running to and from his cat litter box. Then one night I noticed blood on the bathroom floor alongside a paw print of his. Naturally I thought he might have cut himself, so I checked to see if he was OK, but I couldn't find anything wrong, so the very next day I took him to the vet. They told me that he probably had a kidney infection, so they gave him some antibiotics and I figured in a week or two he'd be running around again, always purring, always looking for something (or someone) to rub up against, and always making us smile. I had a kidney infection once, and let me tell you the pain was excruciating. I could only imagine how painful this must have been for this poor little guy. I wish there was a way that I could have absorbed all of his pain for him. Unfortunately I guess life doesn’t work that way. His kidney infection also made him weak, and he refused to eat or drink any water, so the vet gave me a large syringe to feed him, and give him water with. I even went to the store and bought him some special cat vitamins, as I wanted him to get strong and healthy as quick as possible. The vet instructed me to check on him every 3 hours or so, making sure that he was well hydrated and/or not hungry. I even set my alarm clock to wake me up every 3 hours, so that I could check on him and he could regain his health as soon as possible. Then Saturday afternoon for the first time it looked as if he was actually getting better. He was walking around a little, he was eating well, and I truly believed that the worst was behind us. Then Saturday night I heard him stumbling around the living room. He was just laying there on the floor, so I went over to him to see if he needed anything. He just looked up at me and started howling. It was heartbreaking, and I tried to comfort him as much as I could but sadly there was little I could do. Before I knew it he started to have spasms… and then he died.

Now I’m here with tears in my eyes wondering what happened. I have never been a selfish man and so while my heart wishes that he was still here to hold, I know that wherever he is, he is no longer in any kind of pain. I know that’s what’s best for him. Sure I still long to see him here, even if it was for one more day, but I guess that it would be selfish of me to want him here. The right thing to do, however painful it is for me, is to accept that he is gone and that he is no longer in any kind of pain. I know that I did everything possible to help him, but I still wish that I could have done more for him. Before we found him he had a rough life as a kitten. In the middle of winter, with two feet of snow on the ground, someone just threw him outside. He had no food, no water, no shelter. Luckily we heard him meowing underneath a car in our driveway, and brought him in our house to get warm, wondering who could have left a kitten alone out in the cold like that. We fed him, and originally were just going to take him to the animal shelter so that someone could adopt him, but my mother fell in love with him, and it turns out that we were the ones doing the adopting.

So what does any of this have to do with why you don't want to be single? Well, as it turns out after he died I didn't know what to do with his body, and the only thing I could think of was to use a search engine to find out how to bury him. That's when I first learned about hubs, when I came across an article here which explained how to bury a pet properly. The woman who wrote the article was very insightful, and it was clear that she had an incredible heart. I happened to notice that there was a link where she also wrote an article about how to make a pet casket, so I took a look at it also. That is when I noticed that she wrote another article about why it's (supposedly) good to be single. I was interested to see what she had to say about this topic, as I made that same decision once and now I regret it. With the loss of our cat I am now reminded of how fragile and precious life is. As we speak my mother is now dying of Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s disease. She is also deaf and going blind. My father died around a year ago and so I became her only caretaker. It is very hard to watch her slip away a little more each day. I bring this all up because it is true, none of us know how much time we have on this planet, or when we’ll be spending our last day here. My hope for you, is that each day you are surrounded by, and feel the true meaning of love. If you are planning on spending the rest of your life being completely single, then at best, you will only feel love sporadically. You deserve better.

If you've read this far then I thank you and I promise you that the rest of this article will deal only with why you really don't want to be single after all. After I finished reading her article about staying single, I noticed that there was no place to respond to her article, so I guess that's what pointed me in the direction to write this article. You see I once swore that I would never date again, and there’s been a lot of time between me and when I first decided that. Hopefully this article will help you to see the topic from both sides, and help you to make a better personal decision.

I've always been a very passionate person about everything that I have ever done in my life. In each and every relationship I have always given 110% of my heart, always tried to be a good listener, and have always been completely faithful (yes there are a few guys who still firmly believe in that sort of thing). I have even gone so far as to be engaged, and we went through all the usual motions of setting up a wedding, but it was a wedding that I would never see, because she tragically died just a few short months before we were to take our vows. I have seen life from many angles, and the best thing I can tell you is something I learned from a quote by Albert Einstein, “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow”. As I was reading the article about why (supposedly) it would be better to be single, I kept thinking in the back of my mind that the author must have truly loved people in her life, and was then hurt by them. She kept basking in the word freedom as if it was a goal, and while freedom is usually a good thing, be careful what you wish for when it comes to being free from love. Freedom like that can sometimes be like sugar, too much of it and it is no longer sweet. I have learned that all you can do in life is to genuinely love someone from your heart, and then not worry about the results. Sending love out is what love is all about. If you love someone and always expect to have it returned tit-for-tat, then sooner or later you will be disappointed. People are not mirrors. And while people always look to find someone to blame when a relationship goes bad, sometimes it's not the person who (ends up) hurting you that's the enemy, sometimes it's just life that's the enemy of love.

The way you love can teach a thousand others of the true value of love, in the same way that you can light a thousand candles with a single candle, and the flame of the first candle will not lose any of its brilliance. In other words, love never decreases in value because it is shared. If you're seriously considering staying single for the rest of your life, just remember there are two sides to every story, and what might sound like heaven to you now, might well become your self-made hell of tomorrow. People all too often become lonely in their life because they all too often build walls, instead of bridges. Remember, life in general is what it is, and we will all stumble while living it from time to time. That's why we instinctively find it natural to go through life hand in hand with someone beside us. As humans, like it or not, we are involved in many different types of relationships each and every day. Studies have shown that we could not survive if it wasn’t for these various types of relationships.

The most fulfilling relationship of all, is the personal relationship that we share with someone special. Nothing on this planet can replace that kind of relationship. Nothing. And when it’s missing you will feel the sting of its absence. because when it comes to love nothing can substitute for it. I'll give a quick example; I was once lucky enough to win the lottery. I was only one number from becoming a millionaire, but as it was I had enough numbers to win thousands of dollars. Now you would have thought that when this happened that I would've been very happy, and I guess I was happy in a way, but because there was no one beside me to share this good fortune with, I instinctively knew deep down inside that I was not as happy as I could've been. I'll give you another quick example that comes to mind; I have worked all my life with hopes to one day be able to walk into any car dealership and buy any new car that I wanted, and to be able to pay for it then and there in cash. A few years ago I was able to have this life long dream come true. I found an incredible car, which had every possible option on it that you could imagine, and it was even in the color combination that I had always wanted. I was in the position to pay for it cash and drive it off the lot. This is actually what I ended up doing, and again you would think that I would be happy to be able to experience this life long dream, but in my heart I knew that as happy as I was, that I would have been ten times happier if I could have shared that moment with someone special by my side.

When you have been hurt and disappointed by people that you have genuinely loved, and it has happened to you more than once, freedom, like the imagined greener grass on the other side of the fence, sounds great. But I assure you that in time that feeling wears thin, and your heart reminds you of what you are truly longing for, which is to have someone special beside you, someone that you can happily spend the rest of your life with. Someone that you can give your love to and know that they will appreciate it. Someone that you can give your heart to and know that they will protect it. Someone that you can grow old together with. Someone who is always your best friend. A lot of people convince themselves that they want to stay single because deep down they are afraid of taking the chance of getting hurt again. I understand that. No one likes being in any kind of pain, and if you can avoid it – it should be a good thing right? But what happens when you've been hurt and the pain is like a blindfold masking what you really want, which is to finally find someone that understands you and accepts you worts and all.

I think one of the problems with picking the wrong person to love is that we are an extremely visual society. All to often we pick the wrong person based mostly on looks. I know as a guy that I always grew up believing the myth that you want to be with the most beautiful girl in the world. I was actually lucky enough to date several professional models. With each one of them what I ended up learning was that being with someone who is drop dead beautiful isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Both of these women had paper thin personalities. Both of them were also very vain. But I don't regret having dated them because in each case I learned something very valuable, which was that more than anything, I preferred finding someone first and foremost with a good personality. To me that is what truly matters. Let's face it, everyone is eventually going to get wrinkles and gray hair if you're lucky enough to live that long. If you (or the person you’re with) is basing your happiness on looks, sooner or later one of you is going to hit a brick wall. It’s not a matter of if the relationship will end, it’s just a matter of when. I ask you, seriously, doesn't it make more sense to find someone who understands you and accepts you, and then what ever they happen to look like, make that your pinnacle of beauty.

I just know there's a lot of good people out there reading this, who are under the delusion that they will be happier "being single" under this false banner of freedom, and they really need to do some soul-searching before it's too late. Like it or not love is the foundation that we humans were built upon. The person you were meant to spend your life with might just pass you by, because you have gone out of your way to batten down the hatches to your heart, and so your heart wasn’t open when it should have been. Instead of carving the mantra of being single into your heart, why not just give your heart all the time that it needs to heal, take what you’ve learned about relationships, and one day try to love again.

Are you afraid that someone might hurt you again, or are you afraid that you might once again pick the wrong person to fall in love with? Fear is a very primal emotion. It runs very deep in our human DNA. It was probably the first feeling that we as humans ever felt on this planet. We developed it so that we could survive. In the early days of the Earth there was a lot of scary animals that could literally eat you if you weren’t careful, and prehistoric man wasn’t always careful. As time went on and we developed, we learned which animals to stay away from, but our fears were all still very much intact. There are so many types of fear that we frail humans have. Modern day humans rightfully fear getting hurt in a relationship. None of us wants to get hurt, but the simple fact of the matter is that you can’t protect against it. Life is filled with hurt, and it all to often comes out of nowhere, like it did for me this past Saturday with the loss of our pet. Somehow hurt is going to find you and it will creep into your life. So when hurt does creep into your life, don’t you think it would be nice if there was someone there who truly loves you, to comfort you and to help get you through it? Sure, staying single will give you freedom, but maybe it’s not freedom that you really want, maybe what you reallywant is for someone to truly love you freely as you are.