I’m single at 40 and depressed. What should I do?

So, you recently turned 40 years old and you’re still single.

You’re feeling lonely and depressed and maybe even starting to freak out a little – this is not how you imagined life at 40. What should you do?

Don’t despair! Instead, embrace the single life.

There are actually a lot of benefits to being single in your 40s.

Let’s look at 10 positive sides of being single at 40:

1) Freedom to do what you want

Picture this:

It’s Saturday morning.

You get to sleep in as long as you want. Then you get to take your sweet time making coffee, reading the paper, and deciding what you want to have for breakfast.

You get to decide what you want that day:

• You can go for a jog or do some yoga.
• You can go to a museum or art exhibition.
• You can go catch an early show at the cinema.
• You can call up some friends to have coffee with.
• You can listen to music at full volume and not worry about disturbing anyone (except the neighbors).
• Or, you can just watch NETFLIX in your PJs all day.

The point is, you have the freedom to choose how you want to spend your Saturday.

Now, for a married person with kids, it’s a completely different story.

They’d be lucky to sleep until 7.

Then it’s running around dressing, feeding, and entertaining the kids all day. Their weekend is essentially spent catering to the needs of their spouse and kids, they have no time for themselves, and they can’t do whatever they want.

They certainly don’t have the luxury of doing anything. 

In short: Enjoy your freedom while you can.

2) You have no obligations

If you’re single in your forties, then you have no kids, spouse, or dependents.

You can spend your money how you want. You have the freedom to do what you want when you want with whomever you want.

It gets better!

You don’t have to answer to anyone. You don’t have to make compromises.

You can pack up and move across the country on a whim if you want to.

The bottom line is that if you’re 40 and single, you have no obligations.

You get to do whatever YOU want. You don’t need anyone’s permission to go out and meet other people.

There’s no one waiting at home who needs to be taken care of when you get back home.

3) Don’t give up on love

If you’re 40 and single and scared that you’ll never find love, don’t give up!

Why can’t it be how you imagined growing up? Or at least make some sense…

When you’re dealing with getting older and being single it’s easy to become frustrated and even feel helpless. You may even be tempted to throw in the towel and give up on love.

I want to suggest doing something different.

It’s something I learned from the world-renowned shaman Rudá Iandê. He taught me that the way to find love and intimacy is not what we have been culturally conditioned to believe.

In fact, many of us self-sabotage and trick ourselves for years, getting in the way of meeting a partner who can truly fulfill us.

As Rudá explains in this mind-blowing free video, many of us chase love in a toxic way that ends up stabbing us in the back.

We get stuck in awful relationships or empty encounters, never really finding what we’re looking for and continuing to feel horrible.

We fall in love with an ideal version of someone instead of the real person.

We try to “fix” our partners and end up destroying relationships.

We try to find someone who “completes” us, only to fall apart with them next to us and feel twice as bad.

Rudá’s teachings showed me a whole new perspective.

While watching, I felt like someone understood my struggles to find and nurture a love for the first time – and finally offered an actual, practical solution to accepting being 40 and single.

If you’re done with unsatisfying dating, empty hookups, frustrating relationships, and having your hopes dashed over and over, then this is a message you need to hear.

I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

Click here to watch the free video.

4) You know who you are

Ok, nobody ever gets their sh*t together 100%, but by the time you’re 40 you have a pretty good idea of who you are.

This makes dating so much easier than in your 20s and 30s when you spend all your time changing yourself trying to be the perfect match for someone – always trying to prove yourself to be worthy of someone else’s love.

Once you reach 40, you don’t have to prove anything about who you are; you know who you are and if someone doesn’t like you, well, that’s their problem.

5) You know what you want

At 40 you’ve had some life experience. You’ve been around the block.

You know what you are looking for in a relationship and you definitely know what to stay away from. You’ve been in love and had your heart broken, you can see the truth from a mile away.

You’ve seen what love is and what it isn’t.

You no longer want to play games trying to make someone love you. You don’t feel like competing with younger, more attractive women.

And why should you? At 40, if a guy doesn’t like you for who you are, then he’s not worth your time anyway. You don’t need him.

6) You can travel the world

Have you always dreamed about taking a road trip? Visiting far and exotic lands?

In college, you had no cash. In your 20s you were barely making enough money to pay rent. In your 30s you were building your career.

Now, you’re financially stable and you don’t have to spend your money on diapers and formula. You can travel! Do you know how many people would gladly trade places with you?

Think about it.

You get to do whatever you want and if you want to go on an exotic adventure, you can.

Embrace being single at 40!

7) Enjoy going out on dates

Once you get married you’ll miss going out on dates and meeting new people.

Now, don’t get me wrong, being married to the love of your life is great, but sometimes, you miss the thrill of going out on a date. You miss the butterflies in your belly. The excitement before a first kiss.

Being single at 40 is great because you can have dinner with a different person every night. You can get to know a lot of different people, have countless conversations, and have as much fun as you want.

What’s more, you get to enjoy the freedom of having multiple sexual partners before you get settled down.

8) Don’t wait to be in a relationship to pursue your goals

If you’re feeling pressure to be in a relationship just because you turned 40, ask yourself what a relationship would change.

Do you want to buy a home? Do you want to have kids?

Maybe when you were growing up you didn’t picture doing those things singly, but it’s 2022!

If there’s something you really want, you can do it by yourself, you don’t have to wait for the perfect partner to come along.

The bottom line is that it’s easy to fall into the trap of wanting to be in a relationship just so you can get married and have kids and pursue your goals. But you don’t need someone else to validate you by marrying you; you’re a perfectly capable adult with your own life who has every right to pursue all of your goals.

9) You have time to find your purpose

Being single at 40 gives you the freedom to explore your spiritual side.

What would you say if I asked you what your purpose is?

It’s a hard question!

And there are far too many people trying to tell you it will just “come to you” and to focus on “raising your vibrations” or finding some vague kind of inner peace.

Self-help gurus are out there preying on people’s insecurities to make money and selling them techniques that really don’t work for achieving your dreams.

Visualization.

Meditation.

Sage burning ceremonies with some vaguely indigenous chanting music in the background.

Hit pause.

The truth is that visualization and positive vibes won’t bring you closer to your dreams, and they can actually drag you back into wasting your life on fantasy.

But it’s hard to embrace being single at 40 and staying positive when you’re being hit with so many different claims and expectations.

You can end up trying so hard and not finding the answers you need that your life and dreams begin to feel hopeless.

You want solutions, but all you’re being told is to create a perfect utopia inside your own mind. It doesn’t work.

So let’s go back to basics:

Before you can experience a real change, you need to really know your purpose.

I learned about the power of finding your purpose from watching Ideapod co-founder Justin Brown’s video on the hidden trap of improving yourself.

Justin used to be addicted to the self-help industry and New Age gurus just like me. They sold him on ineffective visualization and positive thinking techniques.

Four years ago, he traveled to Brazil to meet the renowned shaman Rudá Iandê, for a different perspective.

Rudá taught him a life-changing new way to find your purpose and use it to transform your life.

After watching the video, I also discovered and understood my purpose in life and it’s no exaggeration to say it was a turning point in my life. 

I can honestly say that this new way of finding success by finding your purpose actually helped me to appreciate living in the moment and not worry about getting older while being single.

Watch the free video here.

10) Enjoy going out with your single friends

When people get married, they tend to spend more time with their spouses and see their friends less.

Once they have kids, it becomes almost impossible to go out and hang out with their friends on a whim. This is especially true for women in the first few years of a child’s life.

There’s no denying it, marriage and kids are life-changing, for better and for worse.

My advice is to enjoy going out with your friends as often as you can, while you can. Although many of your friends might already be married, I’m sure you still have a few single friends to hit the clubs with.

Hey, it’s also a good opportunity to make some new – maybe slightly younger – friends to hang out with.

Conclusion

Though it may seem scary to be single at 40 because of the societal pressure we feel and the expectations we grow up with, there’s really no need to panic.

Some people get married very young and live happily ever after – others, get divorced.

Many people start having families in their 30s, yet others are single at 40.

Some people choose to stay single forever. Everyone is different and has their own pace.

40 is the new 30 so don’t let being single at 40 get you down.

Remember to look at the bright side – you’ve acquired wisdom, and you have money, freedom, and independence! You can do whatever you want.

And as I said, if there’s something you really want, you don’t need to wait for a relationship to get it.

If the only reason you want to get married is to have a child, then stop waiting for Mister or Miss Right to come along and think about going at it alone.

All in all, learn to look at things with fresh eyes. Forget how things are usually done and what is expected of you. Do what you feel is right for you.