Elia, 25 years old: “The concept of a soul mate is pure toxicity”

• First name : Elijah
• Age : 25 years old
• Singles from: 8 months
• Pronouns : she she
• Sexual and romantic orientation: hetero
• Place of life: Paris

How long have you been single?

I have been single for 8 months. Before that, I was in a relationship for 3 years (2 years in an exclusive relationship, 1 year in an open relationship).

I was in a relationship with a very healthy, respectful, caring, nice person who caused me absolutely no harm and brought me nothing but love and happiness. If there may have been any downsides to being in a relationship, it’s not due to this person but to the couple, basically.

What is your relationship with being single?

When we are in a relationship, we can tend to merge with each other. In my case, I was in a relationship at a pivotal point in my life, between my 21 and 24 years. Suffice it to say that I have grown a lot during this time, and that I have evolved with my partner. The moment of the breakup and the weeks that followed made me realize that the couple had enormously influenced my relationship with the world and with myself, without realizing it. I didn’t know, for example, that I had never learned to be alone.

It is extremely difficult to “separate” someone. But what you get in terms of hindsight, rebirth, lessons about yourself and your relationship with others is priceless. I have since found myself.

Does being single affect your friendship or family life?

In particular, I realized that my torque had exacerbated (or maybe even provoked, I don’t know) a visceral fear of loneliness. Looking back, I’ve realized that I’ve stayed in a relationship, while being very, very, very unhappy in this seemingly perfect match, because of it.

Today this fear is sincerely fulfilled by my family. But in the future, I want to get rid of this obsession with friends and lovers, because I don’t think it’s healthy, it becomes a form of dependence on a person. Getting rid of this fear means being more at peace with your romantic and loving friendships, making them healthier, lighter, more sincere.

“I stopped looking for validation from mediocre guys”

Feminism has clearly been the biggest determining factor in my emotional, romantic, and sexual life.

When I was a teenager, I tried to be within the norms of womanhood at the expense of myself, I ran after the validation of (otherwise mediocre) boys. Then, feminism made me question my gender identity, the heterosexual norm, patriarchy, even racism because, as a racialized person, I also happened to be the object of fetishizing fantasies, which I “accepted,” for lack of a real understanding of what was happening.

At that point, I was much more at peace with myself, I never looked for validation from anyone again, and I met the person I had been in a relationship with for 3 years. She was a feminist person, so we built our relationship learning together, reading books, exchanging a lot about these topics. One important detail: this person was extremely nice and I know it that before I was a feminist I wouldn’t tell her the time. I preferred a little uglier and more unattainable people, after all people that culture and representations teach us to consider desirable.

The couple taught me to see their qualities I needed between the ages of 21 and 24: feminism, listening, kindness, and to settle down rather than run around after validation. Today I have digested all its phases and am at peace by myself.

Do you feel that being single affects your morale on a daily basis?

I’ve been happy since I was single because I’m deeply free and independent (although this sentence is terribly clichéd). Even though it took me months to successfully break up with my ex, I ended up grabbing myself by the neck and saying to myself: get out of your comfort zone, leave this person and finally manage yourself as a person, not as a couple.

Even though the positive is largely in the majority, I also sometimes have anxiety attacks where I become irrational and tell myself“Oh my God, why did I let this person go, I’m alone and it’s my fault” but these crises are never very long.

Do you think being single allows you things you couldn’t do as a couple?

From a pragmatic point of view, I have never been hindered by my relationship. I had no restrictions. I joined an open couple to seek friendship and sexual relations as soon as I felt like it — I stopped when I saw that it didn’t help much, other men were useless anyway, and they were mostly sexually void as the sex education of straight cis men is often catastrophic.

On the other hand, it was mostly in my relationship with myself that I was hindered in my relationship. For example, if friends invited me for a weekend, I would spend the next two months thinking about whether or not to invite my partner. For me it was an implicit form of impediment, which no longer exists today.

Conversely, do you think being single prevents you from doing things you could do if you were in a relationship?

I think that one of the worst tricks of the French capitalist and individualist society regarding the couple is to do so sanctify couples in relation to friendships. From this it follows that sometimes it is difficult to give yourself blind trust in your friends, not be afraid to disturb them. For example, it’s not easy to tell a friend: “ Come this weekend we sit in your house and do nothing for 2 days because patriarchy and capitalism and racism is exhausting. when it feels right to do it as a couple.

Are you actively trying to find a romantic relationship?

I admit that I need love, tenderness, laughter! Relationships are too much too big, even without necessarily being related to the couple.

Do you feel any form of pressure to actively seek out a partner?

YES ! I’ve noticed that since I was 25, I’ve been plagued by the concept of “soul mates,” even though I know it’s just pure toxicity. It implies that if fate decides not to let you meet your soulmate, will you never be complete? Will you always be only half? Busy watching (or waiting) instead of full? And then it is a formula that takes things out of their social context and therefore subject to injunctions, relationships of domination and gender norms.

However, despite myself, I often say to myself: imagine not meeting anyone between your 25 and your 35 years? Nobody nobody? It leads me, as soon as I meet someone, to consider them from the point of view of seduction or to ask myself: “Hey, can I catch this person? ». I think it sucks, it’s something I don’t like.

Do you feel a form of injunction to have an affair?

YES ! I find it very difficult not having someone to talk to all the time and do things like sleep with. I guess there is an injunction in there, but I find it hard to see what depends on my personality, my social construction and what the collective injunction is.