New Year's Resolution

I am starting the new year by breaking my rule of not making new year's resolutions.

For 2023, I am giving up on looking for a man.

It isn't much of a resolution, given the minimal effort I made in 2022 to find a partner, and the complete lack of success in getting beyond a first date with any of the few I went that far with.  But it is a mental adjustment that I think needs some specific rules for it to stick.

So here are the rules: 

• First and foremost - no online dating.  I have zero profiles on zero sites at present, and I will keep it that way for the entirety of 2023.  
• Secondly, no pub or club or otherwise in-life hook-up attempts.  Including no drunk-texting (or sober, lonely texting) of either "back-up men" or exes.  And of course, as per rule one, no drunk (or lonely, ego-boost-desiring) tinder-rejoining.
• Finally, no more looking at every vaguely appealing man as "potential".

In the unlikely event that a man in real life should pursue me - for romance, or more realistically for sex - I am allowed to say yes should I so wish.

I am publishing my resolution here to hold myself to it, of course.  And also, to document the outcome; my feelings, and also the reactions.

I was inspired to take this course when contemplating the annoying phenomenon of other people wanting me to "meet someone".  It seems that just as nature abhors a vacuum, so society abhors a singleton; a single person is seen as merely a person-yet-to-be-coupled, half of a future couple.

And it takes its toll.  I can genuinely prefer having my bed and life to myself, profess as such without defensiveness, and still people say "I'm sure you'll meet someone".  And I start to believe it.  I start to wonder... where is he?  Will I meet him soon?  And then I get tired of waiting, head back to the dating sites, and suffer the inevitable disgust, disappointment and disillusionment.

So let me be single.  Indefinitely.  And with intent... at least for 2023.