The firm I work for puts a huge emphasis on “significant others”. At every work event, you’re encouraged to bring yours and proudly present him or her to everyone. You cannot bring your best friend, a random guy you find on the street, or your mom: you can only bring your sweetheart.

We recently all went on a trip to the Caribbean, where I have met way too many significant others and listened to enough “how we met” stories to create my own Nicholas Sparks movie.

On every part of the trip, I imagined how it would be if I had one. On the 11-hour plane ride, with an old guy who kept snoring next to me. Having lunch staring at my backpack on the seat in front of me. At night, going to sleep in a bed that was too big, thinking “Well, maybe there’s someone I could text” and realizing that there was no one.

Right now, there’s absolutely no one in my life. No one to drunk text, no one to stalk on Instagram, no one to think “What would our kids look like?” I’m great at problem solving but love has just become this huge issue in my life that I truly believe I will never be able to solve. My new catchphrase is “I’ll probably be rich but have no one to inherit my things if I ever pass away”.

It just doesn’t make sense. I’m an independent working woman, not too beautiful but not too ugly, with a good sense of humor, a good family and a great career. I’m caring (sometimes way too much) and can talk and listen for hours. I might not be the best woman you’ve ever met, but also not the worst.

I always pay for my share on dates, I give good birthday presents, I take a while to text back to not seem desperate.

I’m okay at cooking (but tell guys I’m great, because society taught me it’s a clever thing to do), I match the colors of my underwear when I know it might get serious, and I am great at faking an interest in things other people love (I once had a 5-hour conversation with a guy about Star Wars, and I haven’t even seen one movie).

Yet, for my next work event, it might be easier to get a diamond Rolex than a significant other.

And then I think “Well, maybe it’s okay to not have a significant other yet”. Maybe it’s great that I’m 22 years old and can enjoy being single, with no attachments and no one to owe something to. It’s great that I don’t need to think about my future family, because so many other things should concern me rather than that. It’s great that no one is sitting next to me on the plane, because today it’s an old guy snoring, but tomorrow it could be some European prince. It’s great that I have no one to text, because I can spend that time improving my Russian on Duolingo.

But then, at some point of the night at the party on the beach, I see this cute couple dancing. They can’t take their eyes off each other and they are not following the rhythm of the song at all, but they don’t even care – You can see and feel there’s nothing else they care about more than each other. I see them, and then I go back to me: my insecurities that I hold as hard as I’m holding the glass of wine I’m drinking to try to forget about them. The dress that I spent so much money on so someone would think it’s cute. How tired I am of being alone.

I’m tired of the first conversations on an app with the fight to be creative but always basically saying the same thing, the first dates where I go crazy to cover all the silences, and the last dates, where no one dares to say what we both know: “I’ll never see you again but I’ll keep following your Instagram stories!”

I’m tired. I do not believe that love will come and I do not believe in fate. If I like a guy, I know there’s more chance of him hooking up with another girl in front of me (which keeps happening) than him ever going after me. And I’m terrible at flirting: I’m from the generation where dating became digital, and I literally do not know what to do when I like a guy. I just wish there was a “Tinder for people you know”, to let the guy know that I like him.

But here’s the thing: despite it all, I’ll keep wishing for love whenever it’s 11:11. I’m very tired, but I can only hope – hope that someday it will happen to me. I won’t force it with multiple Tinder dates. I’ll stop insulting it whenever I see a couple overdoing the PDA. I’ll just wait.

And if it never arrives: I have free tickets to the Caribbean! So if you’re a single guy, just text me 😉

(Illustration: Shutterstock)