There's nothing wrong with taking yourself out of the dating

In the book of inward victories, a young matriarch of modern courtship speaks with the calm of a seasoned pilgrim: “There’s nothing wrong with taking yourself out of the dating pool. You don’t need to be in a relationship because that’s what society expects of you or because your grandmother thinks you need to be married by a certain date. Those days are over. Instead, take a step back and say, ‘I’m OK alone.’ ” So teaches Whitney Wolfe Herd, and her counsel falls like cool water on a fevered brow. The line is not a quarrel with love; it is a defense of sovereignty. It says: the clock that rules your heart must not be wound by other hands.

What is the meaning hidden in this simple charge? To leave the dating pool is not flight; it is fasting. It is the wise pause before the next voyage, the choosing of clear water over noisy harbor. A relationship forged under the lash of society’s expectations is a house built in a storm—upright today, leaking tomorrow. But when a person declares, “I’m OK alone,” they are not renouncing tenderness; they are laying a foundation strong enough to bear it. In solitude rightly kept, self-respect grows roots, and the soul learns which hungers are real and which are borrowed.

Consider the chords struck by grandmother and calendar. Elders carry stories that deserve our reverence, but not our bondage. Their deadlines—“married by thirty, by spring, by whenever”—were often forged in economies of survival, not in eras where vocation, healing, and self-knowledge require unhurried time. To say “Those days are over” is not to scorn the past; it is to release yourself from its anxieties. The seed that is forced to bloom for the village’s applause will wither before summer; the seed that waits for its own season will feed many.

Let a real story walk beside these words. Mara, thirty-five, called an intermission: one full year outside the dating pool. She told her family gently, set down the apps, and picked up old instruments—a cello, a worn cookbook, a Saturday morning trail. At first she mistook quiet for emptiness; then the quiet filled with friends, craft, and sleep that healed. By autumn she could enter a room without scanning for possibility. When love finally knocked—late, unhurried, human—she opened not from scarcity but from surplus. Her yes was not a rescue flare; it was a gift wrapped in a life already bright.

History, too, keeps witnesses who chose the wide room of singleness to enlarge their service. Florence Nightingale refused a celebrated match, not from disdain for affection, but so that her hands could be free to rebuild the art of nursing. The world tried to seat her in a parlor; she chose the hospital ward and lit it with a lamp. Her life did not declare war on marriage; it declared friendship with purpose. So also the scholars, artists, and healers who, for a season or a lifetime, said “I’m OK alone” and turned their spared hours into gifts for strangers.

What is the clear lesson to pass down? That consent, not custom, crowns a relationship. That time spent in your own company is not a penalty but a preparation. That love offered by a whole person lasts longer than love begged by a frightened one. To step back is not to step away from life; it is to step toward yourself, so that any bond you later weave is threaded through with integrity and joy.

Carry these practical provisions. Mark a season—forty days, three moons, a year—outside the dating pool, and honor it as a festival, not a famine. Craft a small rule of life: sleep on time, move your body, read things that outlive trends, and meet friends whose eyes see you, not your timeline. When well-meaning voices—kin, grandmother, culture—press their calendar upon your chest, thank them for their love and return the clock. Learn your “bright yes” and your “clean no”: five qualities you seek, five boundaries you keep. And each morning, say aloud—like a key turning in the door—“I’m OK alone.” If love comes, let it find you standing tall; if it lingers, let your days be radiant anyway. For truly, those days are over when the village could command your heart. The new day is here, and it bears your name.