The False Choice: Why Women Are Sold the Lie That We Must Settle or Be Alone

Everyone has an opinion about your love life. Especially when you've been single for longer than society deems acceptable, or when you've walked away from relationships that looked good on paper but felt empty in your soul.

"You're too picky." "You are expecting too much." "You should be grateful for what you can get." "Why don't you just focus on yourself and stop looking?"

As if the problem is that you want too much, rather than that you've been offered too little.

You've heard it all. The well-meaning advice from married friends who seem to have forgotten what it's like to date. The family members who just want to see you "settled down" with anyone who has a pulse and a steady job. The cultural messaging that suggests wanting genuine partnership somehow makes you needy or unrealistic.

And underneath all of that noise, there's this persistent voice inside you that refuses to accept the choice everyone seems to think you should make: settle for someone who can't truly meet you, or resign yourself to being alone forever.

But what if this entire choice is a lie? What if the real problem isn't that you have to choose between crumbs and emptiness — but that you've been sold a false story about what your life should center around in the first place?

The Ridiculous Messages We've Been Fed (From Cradle to Grave)

From the moment we're born, women are fed a steady diet of messages that teach us to make ourselves smaller, more palatable, more accommodating to ensure we're chosen by someone — anyone.

As little girls, we're told fairy tales where the princess waits to be rescued, where her value comes from being beautiful and sweet enough to capture the prince. We learn that happily ever after means being chosen, not choosing. That our story ends when we get the guy, not when we become ourselves.

As teenagers, the messaging intensifies. Don't be too smart (you'll intimidate boys). Don't be too successful (men need to feel needed). Don't have too many opinions (men like agreeable women). Don't be too sexual (but don't be a prude either). The entire focus of adolescence becomes contorting yourself into whatever shape might make you desirable to the male gaze.

In our twenties, we're told to "play the field" but not too much (or you're a slut), to be independent but not too independent (or you're cold), to have standards but not too many (or you're high maintenance). The career advice? Make sure you're not so focused on work that you become "intimidating to men."

In our thirties, the pressure ramps up exponentially. Your biological clock is ticking! You need to settle down! Don't wait too long or all the good ones will be taken! The message is clear: your window for being chosen is closing, so you better accept whatever comes along.

In our forties and beyond, if you're still single, you're treated like a cautionary tale. The narrative becomes about what you did wrong, why you're alone, how you should have settled when you had the chance. If you leave a marriage, you're warned about how "hard it is out there" and how you should have been more grateful for what you had.

Every single stage of a woman's life is framed around her relationship status and her desirability to men. Her worth, her success, her happiness — all measured by whether she's been chosen and how well she maintains that choosing.

The Real Message Behind All These Lies

Here's what every one of these messages is really saying: You are not the main character of your own life. Your job is to be a supporting character in someone else's story.

Your dreams, needs, desires, boundaries — all of these are secondary to the primary goal of making yourself attractive to and accommodating for a partner. Your entire existence should revolve around being chosen and keeping that person happy once they've chosen you.

This is why the choice between settling and solitude feels so impossible. Both options assume that your worth, happiness, and life satisfaction are dependent on your relationship status rather than on your connection to yourself and your ability to create a life you love.

But what if that entire framework is wrong?

What if you're not supposed to be organizing your entire life around whether someone chooses you? What if your job isn't to make yourself smaller so someone else can feel bigger, or to manage your needs so someone else stays comfortable?

What if you're actually supposed to be the main character of your own story?

What It Means to De-Center Men and Re-Center Yourself

De-centering men doesn't mean hating men or rejecting partnership. It means stopping the exhausting practice of organizing your entire existence around male approval and instead building a life that works for YOU first.

It means asking different questions:

• Instead of "How do I become more attractive to men?" — "What makes me feel most alive and authentic?"
• Instead of "What do men want in a partner?" — "What do I want in a partner?"
• Instead of "How do I keep him interested?" — "Am I interested in who he actually is?"
• Instead of "What's wrong with me that I'm still single?" — "What kind of life do I want to build, and who would enhance it rather than complicate it?"

When you're the main character of your own life, your relationship status becomes one aspect of your story, not the entire plot. Your worth isn't determined by whether someone chooses you — it's inherent in who you are.

You start making decisions based on what serves your wellbeing, your growth, your joy — not what makes you more palatable to potential partners. You stop contorting yourself to fit into someone else's story and start creating a story worth someone wanting to join.

The Biological Truth About What You Actually Need

Here's what happens when you truly center yourself: you discover that your desire for partnership isn't about being completed by someone else — it's about sharing your completeness with someone who can complement it.

We're biologically wired for co-regulation — for our nervous systems to sync with other regulated, healthy nervous systems. This isn't about dependency; it's about how humans are designed to thrive.

But here's the key: you can only co-regulate with someone who is also regulated. You can't create nervous system balance with someone who's chronically dysregulated, emotionally unavailable, or unable to handle your full authentic self.

When you center yourself first — when you understand your own nervous system, your own needs, your own patterns — you become incredibly discerning about who gets access to your energy. You stop trying to create co-regulation with people who don't have the capacity for it.

The solution isn't choosing between settling and solitude. The solution is getting so familiar with your own nervous system, so clear about your own needs and boundaries, so connected to your own desires, that you become magnetic to people who can actually meet you.

Keeping the Door Open for Real Partnership

Here's what's beautiful about centering yourself: you don't close off to love. You become incredibly selective about who gets to love you.

Instead of accepting anyone who shows interest, you're looking for someone whose nervous system can dance with yours. Someone who enhances your life rather than complicates it. Someone who celebrates your authentic self rather than needing you to be smaller.

You're not waiting to be chosen — you're choosing.

You're keeping the door open, but only for someone who can walk through it with the emotional maturity, availability, and capacity to meet you where you are.

This isn't about finding someone perfect. It's about finding someone real — someone who's done their own work, who can co-regulate, who sees your standards as attractive rather than intimidating.

The Women Who Chose Themselves First

The women who break free from the false choice between settling and solitude aren't the ones who lower their standards or give up on love. They're the ones who center themselves so completely that they become magnetic to healthy, available partners.

They stop organizing their lives around being chosen and start creating lives so fulfilling that partnership becomes an addition to their joy, not a requirement for it.

They discover that when you're the main character of your own story, you attract people who want to be supporting characters in that beautiful narrative — not people who need you to disappear so they can feel important.

Your Story Starts with You

You were never meant to be a supporting character in someone else's life. You were meant to be the main character of your own magnificent story.

The choice between settling and solitude is a false choice designed to keep you small, to keep you organizing your entire existence around someone else's needs and comfort.

But when you center yourself — when you get intimate with your nervous system, clear about your needs, firm in your boundaries — something magical happens. You stop accepting crumbs because you know what a full meal tastes like.

You stop settling for familiar dysfunction because you've learned to recognize genuine safety. You stop making yourself smaller because you've remembered how good it feels to take up space.

And from that place of centeredness, that place of knowing who you are and what you need, you become magnetic to the kind of love that enhances your life instead of requiring you to abandon it.

The door stays open, but only for someone worthy of walking through it.

If you're ready to stop being a supporting character in your own love life — if you want to learn how to center yourself so completely that you become magnetic to genuine partnership — we created something specifically for you.

The Alchemy of She is an 8-week program that teaches you how to get intimate with your own nervous system, clarify your authentic needs and boundaries, and recognize the difference between familiar dysfunction and genuine co-regulation.

You'll discover how to be the main character of your own story while keeping the door open for someone who can truly meet you there.

 Become the main character of your love life with The Alchemy of She