Dating during the holidays can feel like the most magical time of the year. But that’s not often the case when you’re celebrating alone.

Couples who typically spend the holidays together usually end up taking their relationship to the next level. This often involves meeting the relatives, or even an engagement. Now, who doesn’t want that kind of surprise on a snowy Christmas day?

On the other side of the spectrum, we have those seasons when we are not dating anyone at all. And it can be brutal. Almost worth not celebrating the season altogether for the sheer fact that we want to avoid every friend and relative. Why? Because they’ll ask about our love-life and wonder why we are still alone.

But not only that, if we are single during this time of year, there’s an added source of pressure to fake it as though you are totally ok with that choice. We have to prove all season long that being single is fun and happy and not affect us in any way.

Yup. I’ve been through that before.

I remember getting dumped just four days before Christmas. All season long I was planning to travel to my boyfriend’s house to spend the holidays with him and I ended up spending them alone. Watching “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Wondering how in the world did my life become so miserable so suddenly.

I’ve never felt more alone in my entire life and all I wanted was to get my old boyfriend and life back. But God had other plans.

In this featured post, I share my struggling holiday season experience, where I was alone and craved a man, but I needed so much more!

Being single during the holidays can be rough at times. There is nothing that used to aggravate me more during the holiday season than visiting all of my friends and relatives and they just had to ask me about my love life:

“You’re still single?”

“What ever happened to so-and-so?”

“Um… How bout you mind your business?!”

Just thinking about the relationship goals I used to have, only to be let down once again and walk into a gathering without a date left me pretty bitter. There was this underlying pressure, and if I was not romantically involved with someone by this time of the year then I was somehow deemed not happy, or not “whole”. People would instantly pity me. And then I would begin to pity myself.

Don’t get me wrong, I was totally thankful for everything that I did have in life: good health, family, friends, opportunities that women living in other parts of the world did not have. Yet, despite all the things I was thankful for… it wasn’t enough.

I still wanted more, and as my family reminded me, I apparently needed more. I wanted the guy; I wanted the happy Instagram-perfect relationship; and I wanted the luxury to plan out a future family of my own. This desire for love left me with a painful void that carried into the very spirit of the holidays. It was a coveted arrow thrown at the Spirit of the Joyful Lord I worshipped.