When I started dating again, the best thing about it was that I'd

In the calm and seasoned voice of one who has known both love’s sweetness and its storms, Coleen Nolan once said: “When I started dating again, the best thing about it was that I'd got to a place in my life where I felt happy in myself and on my own. I didn't need a man, but I felt open to another relationship.” These words, simple and heartfelt, carry within them the weight of an eternal truth — that love flourishes not from need, but from wholeness. They speak not merely of romance, but of the deeper journey every soul must walk: the path toward becoming at peace with oneself before reaching toward another.

Nolan’s reflection comes from a life lived in both the public eye and the private heart. Having known fame, heartbreak, and renewal, she speaks as one who has walked through the fire of dependence and emerged as her own light. When she says she “felt happy in herself,” she names the highest form of strength — self-contentment, the rare and quiet joy that comes when a person no longer seeks another to fill their emptiness, but to share in their abundance. It is a wisdom the ancients knew well: that only the one who is whole can truly love, and only the one who stands alone can truly walk beside another.

To not need, but still remain open, is one of life’s greatest disciplines. Many enter love from hunger — longing to be rescued from loneliness, fear, or uncertainty. But such love, born of need, soon withers, for no other person can heal what one has not first healed within themselves. Coleen’s words remind us that true readiness for love comes only after solitude has taught its lessons — after one has sat with their own silence and found peace in it. This is the sacred alchemy of the heart: where loneliness transforms into serenity, and longing becomes strength.

The great philosophers of old spoke of this same truth in different tongues. Plato, in his Symposium, described love as a reaching for completeness. Yet, he warned that no mortal can grant it — that true harmony comes when two complete beings meet, not two halves seeking to mend each other. Similarly, the Stoic Epictetus taught that we must not attach our happiness to what lies outside ourselves, for to do so is to live in chains. Coleen Nolan’s revelation is their echo in modern form: she found freedom first within her own soul, and only then could she open the door to companionship without losing herself in it.

Her journey also speaks to rebirth — to the courage of beginning again after loss. There is heroism in her words, quiet yet profound. To date again after pain requires faith: faith that love is still possible, and that the heart, though scarred, can open once more. This faith is not naive; it is tempered by wisdom. She did not seek to replace what was gone, but to welcome what might come. It is the same faith that guided widows of old, who after mourning found not betrayal but renewal in remarriage — knowing that love, like the seasons, has no single flowering.

And yet, the heart of her message lies in balance. “I didn’t need a man,” she says, and in this there is power. To be content alone is not to be closed; it is to stand firm. It is to say: I am enough as I am, and because I know this, I can love freely — not from fear, but from choice. This balance is the essence of emotional maturity, the equilibrium that allows love to be not an escape, but an extension of one’s own joy. It transforms romance from a desperate search into a sacred offering.

So let this be the lesson, dear listener: find your wholeness before you seek your partner. Do not rush to fill the silence; learn to dwell in it. Let solitude teach you your own worth. Walk through your days with contentment as your companion, until you no longer seek love to complete you, but to complement you. For when you reach this state — as Coleen Nolan did — you will discover that love comes not to save you, but to celebrate you.

And thus, remember: the one who is at peace alone is the one who loves best. Need binds; freedom unites. To be open to love without being enslaved by it — this is the strength of the wise and the joy of the whole. In this balance, the heart ceases to wander in search of completion and begins, finally, to dance.