Among the many skills required to have a good relationship, one stands out above any other: the capacity to live without a relationship.
Only those who fully made their peace with the prospect of being single can have the calm, steadiness, and courage to face down the problems in love with a necessary conviction, or outside of relationships, to endure the many months, even years or decades, that it might take for the right person to appear.
Only if we know we can survive alone can we ever have the confidence to ask for changes from a partner and be known to mean it.
Our ultimatums can't be faked.
Our partners have a sixth sense of how far they can push us before we walk away.
And if we never can, if we dread solitude more than we do mistreatment, we can be toyed with without end.
We must always be aware that we might need to get out only in order to foster the conditions that mean we will never need to.
We must be like a nation that every year practices a military drill, not because it knows it will be attacked, but in order to reduce the chances it ever will be.
Even in the midst of the greatest coziness, wise lovers know that they might yet need to make use of a metaphoric getaway bag that they keep under the bed.
Likewise, while dating, we must make our peace with ongoing singlehood in order to have the clarity to turn down person after person, date after date, who doesn't attract or interest us sufficiently.
