Single In The City: The Joy Of Dating Yourself

Dr. Freya Bajandouh, PhD
Being single is now viewed as in vogue; or so we are told by the new generation of feminists who are waving goodbye to the old-fashioned ideas of settling with a husband before they hit 30, and hello to a life driven by their own dreams and desires.

This is great news for those who are content to live a single life, but what about the women who are looking to settle, and who feel their single status is a misfortune?


Being single and living in a city such as Singapore offers many rewards, such as having the freedom to pursue your own interests, appreciating quiet moments of solitude and learning how to enjoy your own company. However, being single in the city can also feel isolating.


It is likely your weekends are spent at parties surrounded by couples, your social media is full of engagements, weddings and babies, and when you drag yourself to family events, you get the dreaded “why aren’t you married yet?” question.


Dating for women can be difficult in a place like Singapore. If you are an expatriate, you will have found that many expatriate men have come here with their partners. For those men who have arrived single, the party lifestyle and staying single can be all too enticing.


Finding a man who is looking to settle down can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack.


Even when a woman finds a man who is looking for something serious, there is always the risk they will be whisked away to another country due to work or family commitments. It can be confusing and disheartening to be living in such a transient city.


While you can increase your chances of meeting the right man, there is a large element fate, chance and divine intervention in whether you will meet ‘Mr Right’. However, you do have some influence over these outcomes, so let’s focus on gaining power over things you can change and let the rest happen naturally.


You can influence your happiness because ultimately, you are in control of the choices that lead to it.


Happiness is described as ‘the overall experience of pleasure and meaning’. Meaning is needed to give you a sense of purpose in life, and pleasure provides a sense of joy.


If you want to feel happier, add pleasure or meaning to your life. The best thing about this? You do not need another person to help you.


Here are 4 ways in which you can increase your happiness while you wait for Mr Right to come knocking at your door.


1. Why wait to date a man? Create your own dream dates.


Why are you waiting for someone else to cook your favourite meal, light candles, play your favourite music or to run you a luxurious bubble bath? Do it for yourself and enjoy being cared for by the one most important person in your life - you.


Me-dates do not need to be kept at home. Doing things alone can be incredibly uplifting as you come to enjoy your own company. Start with a coffee alone, then go for lunch. Build up your confidence until you feel comfortable to dress-to-impress and eat at a fancy restaurant - the difference here is that the only person you want to impress is yourself.


Why stop at simple date nights? Book that trip you have been dreaming of and join the thousands of people who are traveling solo. A study released in May 2018 found that “there is also a surge in solo travel.. with 40% of baby boomers having taken a solo trip in the last year, and a further 21% planning to take one in the future”.


By going out of your way to look after yourself, you begin to cultivate your self-esteem. This is something that many people overlook but it is one of the most significant aspects to feeling fulfilled.


It is important that you can rely on yourself to nurture your self-esteem and not become reliant on the opposite sex to make you feel worthy. You ARE worthy, and the better your treat yourself, the more you will start believing it.


2. Mates-dates will have you laughing so hard your tummy hurts.


Gather your girls for a pizza night, evening of cocktails or a healthier option such as a long walk or yoga class. Make it even simpler and take your best friend out on a date of their dreams. Making others happy will in turn create that warm fuzzy feeling for you too.


The support of your friends may enable you to try something more adventurous such as a new exercise class or learning a new skill. Weekends away exploring nearby attractions adn trips abroad are also a great way to connect with friends while at the same time exploring the world.


You may have heard the phrase, “friends are the family you choose for yourself”. This illustrates the importance of nurturing your friendships and keeping the connections strong. This can be even more significant for expatriates who live many miles from their family and require a strong support system around them in their new home country.


3. Focus on what you have, not what you do not have.


It is easy to look at people in relationships and wish that could be you. When you find yourself doing this, I urge you to focus not on what is lacking in your life but instead focus on what you do have.


Gratitude is repeatedly hailed as the secret to happiness and it is so for a reason. When you feel you are going down a negative thought pattern, make a list of 10 things you are grateful for. The list can be mental, or you can write it down. Personally, I prefer to write it down as this helps to cement it in my mind. Your list can include small details such as being grateful someone held the door for you at work, or it can include bigger details such as having supportive and loving family/friends.


4. Take the time and energy to develop self-awareness.


As a therapist, I am naturally a big proponent of therapy. It can be very beneficial to spend time with a therapist and explore exactly who you; what are your desires, values and goals and how can you ensure you are fulfilling these in your life.


Self-awareness can also be fostered through meditation. Sit comfortably, close your eyes and observe your thoughts. Do not try and change them, or judge them, just observe them. It can feel strange at first, but try to embrace all of the emotions you are feeling. Having a meditation practice can be an incredibly self-educational experience when it is practiced consistently.

 

The ideas I have provided here I recommend to anyone, no matter what your relationship status may be. The outcomes of the above actions are increased gratitude, understanding and acceptance, which are the pillars for feeling fulfilled.

 

Single in the City: The Joy of Dating is the first in a series of blog posts aimed at supporting those who are finding it hard living as a single person. If this resonates with you, do not hesitate to contact Dr. Freya who specialises in self-esteem and can support you to overcome any negativity you are experiencing.


About the Author: Dr. Freya strongly believes in the science of Positive Psychology and uses her wealth of knowledge in this area to help clients overcome issues they face, enabling them to feel more positive towards themselves and their lives. Freya has a PhD in Psychology, is a qualified Yoga Teacher, and has completed courses in Meditation and Buddhist Studies. Read Full Bio >

Hope and Healing Trauma : I’ve learned that hope isn’t about perfection and healing isn’t about erasing the past.

By Fitz Anugerah • September 1, 2025
When I volunteered to write this month’s note on Hope & Healing Trauma, my mind was overflowing with ideas. There’s so much to say, so many perspectives, so many lived experiences. But as I began writing, I realised I had to bring it back to basics…the simplest truth. My wish is that if you take away just one thing from this note, it’s this: At the end of hope, lies your potential. Hope is a tricky thing. It can lift you up or it can feel completely out of reach depending on where you are in your healing journey. For someone carrying the weight of trauma, hope can feel foreign, almost unrealistic. And yet, even the tiniest glimmer of it can create the spark that helps us climb out of the darkest places. I’ve been there. I’ve had to pick myself up after the heartbreak of a toxic relationship that broke down my self worth in my twenties. I’ve had to rebuild form burnout at work, restart my finances after leaving a five figure corporate job to pursue entrepreneurship and even fight through a cancer diagnosis that changed everything I thought I knew about life. Reading these words here may make them sound neat and manageable, but what’s missing are the tears, the anxiety, the worry behind the scenes. What carried me through those moments wasn’t grit or resilience alone, it was hope. Hope that the only way was up. Hope that if I kept showing up for myself, I would eventually find light on the other side. But here’s the truth: healing is not linear. It’s messy. It’s haphazard. Some days you feel like you’re making progress and other days you feel like you’re back at square one. That doesn’t mean you’re failing, it means you’re human. The true goal isn’t to avoid setbacks, but to get better at picking yourself up when they happen. For years, I lived angry; angry at relationships that hurt me, angry at an environment I didn’t feel I fit into, angry at life’s unfairness. But when I turned inward, I realised the anger wasn’t really about others. It was about me. I wasn’t showing up authentically for myself. I wasn’t giving myself permission to heal. That realisation became my tipping point. It wasn’t easy. It took years of counselling, meditation, journaling and one practice that profoundly shifted everything for me: BodyTalk . BodyTalk is a holistic healthcare system that looks at the whole person; your mind, your body and your experiences, not just your symptoms. Our bodies carry stories: traumas, emotions and unresolved memories that show up as stress, illness or pain. In BodyTalk these stories are gently uncovered and released. For me, it meant letting go of emotionally charged experiences I’d been unconsciously holding onto as my identity; stories that were taking up unnecessary space in my mind and body. When I allowed myself to release them through BodyTalk sessions, something incredible happened. I felt freer. My body felt lighter. And more importantly, my mind felt spacious again. Ready to hold, not pain, but potential. That’s where hope led me: to potential. The potential to be myself. The potential to heal. The potential to live differently, to go against the grain and be okay with it. So if you take away just one thing from this note, let it be this: hope is not about perfection and healing is not about erasing your past. Trauma doesn’t have to define you. When you stop letting it own you, you begin to uncover the space for who you are meant to be. And at the end of hope, always, lies your potential.

Hope & Healing Trauma: A Gentle Path Back to Wholeness

By Jeanette Qhek • September 1, 2025
Trauma can feel like a fracture - a sudden break in the rhythm of life. It lingers not only in our memories, but also in our bodies, our nervous systems, and the quiet ways we hold ourselves back. At first, healing can feel impossible. Hope can feel far away. And yet, again and again, I’ve witnessed that hope has a way of returning, sometimes softly, sometimes like the first crack of light after a long night. Healing from trauma is not about erasing the past, but about learning to carry it differently. It’s about reclaiming safety, connection, and trust in ourselves, one step at a time. When Trauma Stirs Old Wounds Often, what makes trauma feel so heavy is not only the event itself, but the way it awakens older wounds beneath the surface — fears of rejection, abandonment, or not being enough. These layers of pain can leave us feeling raw, isolated, and unsure of who we are without the identities or roles we once clung to. I remember this in my own journey. When life shifted suddenly and a physical skin illness pulled me away from the familiar roles and anchors of career and identity, it felt like everything I had built myself upon crumbled. On the surface, it may have looked like “just” a physical setback, but beneath it stirred deeper fears I had carried for years — the fear that without my achievements or image, I would not be enough. Like many people, I had learned to protect myself through identities: the achiever, the perfectionist, the one who blends in. These strategies helped me survive, but they also muted the most authentic parts of me. And yet, in the collapse of those identities, something unexpected happened: what felt like an ending became the beginning of something deeper. It wasn’t only a trauma healing journey — it became a path of rediscovery of myself. The Role of Hope Hope rarely arrives in dramatic ways. More often, it appears in small, almost ordinary moments. For me, it came in glimmers: Sitting quietly and realizing I could breathe again. Starting a small creative project during one of the darkest seasons of my life, just to make sense of what I was going through. Discovering the simple joy of being in nature, or feeling my body soften in therapy when I felt truly seen. The gentle presence of my therapist, who reminded me that I wasn’t broken. These moments didn’t erase the pain, but they reminded me that maybe things didn’t have to stay that way forever. Hope didn’t come as a single breakthrough; it came as tiny openings, each one widening my capacity to see possibility. And this is often how hope works. It doesn’t always arrive as a grand transformation, but as soft reminders that healing is possible. Step by step, we begin to reclaim the parts of ourselves that have been muted — the playful child who wanted to create, the intuitive self who sensed more than what could be “proven”, the tender parts of me that longs for connection without performance or perfection. What looks like collapse may, in truth, be initiation — a cracking open that makes space for authenticity. What Helps Us Heal Through my lived experience and my work as a psychotherapist, I’ve learned that healing is both universal and deeply personal. Safety comes first. Healing happens when there is enough safety — with ourselves, with others, or in a therapeutic space. The body remembers. Trauma imprints itself into the nervous system, which may keep responding as if the danger is still present. Healing means teaching the body it is safe again, so we can reconnect with who we truly are. Connection heals. True healing often comes when we allow ourselves to be seen, not hidden. Self-trust grows slowly. Over time, we can learn to trust our inner wisdom — discovering that love, acceptance, and authenticity flow naturally from it. Hope as a Practice Healing trauma doesn’t mean forgetting the past. It means weaving it into the tapestry of who we are — not as the whole story, but as one chapter. For me, hope has become a practice of unmuting — expressing myself more fully, even when it feels scary. It’s about remembering that being seen isn’t dangerous. It’s deeply healing. Hope whispers that our story isn’t finished. That we are more than what happened to us. That the same energy once used to survive can also be used to create, to love, and to thrive. Even on hard days, hope reminds us: you are not broken — you are becoming.

How Mealtime and Young Mental Health is Connected

By Claudia Correia • July 30, 2025
Do you prioritise family mealtime? In today’s fast-paced environment, where everyone often feels pulled in different directions, family meals can be easily dismissed and missed. Family meals can be truly magical; besides nourishing, they pull families into unity and support mental, physical and emotional health. The benefits span across all age groups. In teenagers specifically, a large body of research shows that families who have meals together show: • Better school performance, with a higher likelihood of achieving A’s, is in school. • Lower the risk of teenage behaviours such as smoking, substance abuse, eating disorders, teenage pregnancy and violence. • Lower risk for depression and anxiety, and higher self-esteem • Lower obesity risk and better cardiovascular health Family meals can play a vital role in strengthening family bonds, promoting stability, and fostering a sense of unity and connectedness. They also have the potential to enhance the developmental assets of adolescents, including problem-solving skills and social-emotional growth. Additionally, family traditions and routines, such as shared meals, provide a sense of consistency and an opportunity to connect while promoting healthy attitudes and behaviours related to food. Family meals are also powerful for adults, as well, with parents having better nutrition, less dieting patterns, more self-esteem and lower risk of depression – I see this happening every day in my practice. Eating meals together as a family also has a profoundly positive impact on the child’s and adolescent’s eating habits and diet quality; the more meals eaten together, the greater the impact. Number of meals together In today’s world, where schedules are packed and families barely meet, meals together can sound like quite an unrealistic task. Frequent regular family meals are usually defined as 3-7 times a week, keeping the consistency, reflect a sense of connection and priority. So, if you have only one meal a week together, consider how you can adjust your schedule to increase the number of family meals you have routinely. We have at least 16 possible times for families to eat together—seven breakfasts, seven dinners, and two weekend lunches. And let’s not forget snack time or bedtime snacks, which can also be used as a meaningful connection time over a fruit, nuts, and a glass of milk or a cup of yoghurt. Making family meals engaging and welcoming The ideal meal combines nutritious, balanced, and delicious food with fun and conversationbut not always easy to cultivate a welcoming and open environment and dining table. If keeping the conversation with your teen is hard, thefamilydinnerproject.org has some creative tips. Here are some: • Set an example and keep devices out of the dining table, and avoid getting distractedby them. • Encourage Sharing. Invite each family member to share highlights from their day or something they’re looking forward to. This sets a tone of openness and encourages everyone to participate. Start the conversation by sharing something about your day and asking for feedback from the children, e.g., how would you suggest Dad deals with his co-worker in that challenging situation? • Celebrate Small Wins . Use mealtime to acknowledge achievements, no matter how small. Celebrating these moments can boost a teenager’s self-esteem. • Cook Together. Involve your teenagers in meal preparation. This not only teaches them valuable life skills but also creates a shared experience that can make the meal more enjoyable. Play games if talking and sharing at the dining table is not something you are comfortable with yet ; games are a great way to break the ice. Here are some examples: • 20 Questions: One person thinks of an object, person, or place, and the others take turns asking yes-or-no questions to guess what it is within 20 questions. • Would You Rather?: Pose fun or silly hypothetical questions, like “Would you rather have the ability to fly or be invisible?” Everyone takes turns answering and discussing their choices. • Story Building: One person starts a story with a sentence, and each person adds a sentence to continue the story. This can lead to some funny or creative narratives! • Two Truths and a Lie: Everyone takes turns sharing two true facts and one false factabout themselves—the rest of the family guesses which is the lie. • Table Trivia: Prepare some trivia questions about family history, fun facts, or themes related to the meal or occasion. • Guess the Song: Hum or tap a rhythm of a song, and others try to guess what it is. You can even create categories like “Disney songs” or “80s hits.” • Charades: Act out a word or phrase without speaking, while the others guess what it is. This can be themed according to the season or a holiday. In Conclusion The link between family meals and mental health outcomes is clear. By prioritising shared mealtimes, families can not only improve their physical nutrition but also enhance emotional well-being through the connections formed around it. Even if it starts with just a few meals a week, the long-term effects on mental health and family bonds are profound. So, consider making family mealtime a cherished routine—you might be surprised by the positive changes it brings to your family dynamic One last note – don’t beat yourself up if family meals are not picture-perfect or don’thappen with the “right” consistency. Knowledge is power, and being aware of the benefits of family meals is important; therefore, this article. However, we also know that “life happens” sometimes, and family mealtime might be put on the backburner during these busy periods. That will not make you and your partner a failure, only human. Just restart building these routines again, step by step – these habits are utterly worth fighting for. Claudia Correia Dietitian and mother of two Accredited Dietitian of Singapore References Harrison, M. E., Norris, M. L., Obeid, N., Fu, M., Weinstangel, H., & Sampson, M. (2015). Systematic review of the effects of family meal frequency on psychosocial outcomes in youth. Canadian family physician Medecin de famille canadien , 61 (2), e96–e106. https://thefamilydinnerproject.org/ https://www.raisingteenagers.com.au/power-familymeals/