This has been my evolution on the subject. Excuse the long post, I don't think I've ever told this story in full before so it's good to get it all out:
When I was growing up, starting early high school, getting a girlfriend was a huge focus. But then, it was less about the girl and more about the social status that came with having a gf. The only serious qualifier was how pretty she was.
When I moved out of home to go to Uni, that attitude continued for a bit but soon shifted. I became uninterested in girlfriends for show and wanted a partner I could settle down with for life. The afternoon after my final exam in fresher year, I read an article about how to find your life partner, and the advice was to visualise everything about her in great detail and write it all down - everything about her appearance, what her upbringing was like, what her family was like, what her opinions are, what her values are, etc. I wrote about 2 pages detailing everything about my perfect girl. And the very next day I went for a walk in the park and met her. She was walking her dog and caught my attention immediately because she matched the physical description I'd laid out, and the second she looked at me I almost went weak. I could tell she felt it too and conversation flowed quickly and easily. I told her about the list straight away and showed it to her later that day - it was really uncanny, she was the person I'd described. I'd found the one.
The next few years just kept confirming that and I decided to pop the question and she said yes. I think it was only then I realised this wasn't just some miraculous luck about to end at any moment but she was my entire life now. Forever. I mean I'd fantasised about it constantly and planned a lot for it but I dunno it never quite seemed concrete and real until then.
I had to be the bread winner now. When we met, she'd just finished year 12 and I'd just finished fresher year. She decided to get a job to support us until I finished my degrees, then the assumption was I would become a lawyer and she would stay home and raise the kids. But I proposed after less than a month into my new "career". It was already quite overwhelming and only got worse. Over the next year, I began to really hate it and it became clear this couldn't be my life. I was working 60+ hours per week at a job I hated, everyone else I knew from law school was in the same boat, and most depressing of all the 60+yo partners worked even longer! This was never going to stop. So I quit.
That was the beginning of the end. How could we start a family now? We couldn't. I had some money saved up so I said let's take a long trip overseas. Clear our heads. Work out what to do with our lives. We can have the wedding whenever we want. If we decide to have kids, there's no rush. She reluctantly agreed but I knew something had changed. To her, the dream she had built for was crumbling. About a week before we were set to leave, she said she wasn't going to come. She needed her own space to work things out. So we decided to take a "temporary" break. I'd go overseas, she'd go back home, we'd work out our individual priorities then see if we could make it work. And that's what happened. Except we never spoke again. I know from Facebook that she got married 8 years later and now has 3 kids.
I didn't come back from my overseas trip for almost 8 years. I started an online business, travelled frugally and did many long treks, perfect for soul searching. That young love honeymoon period we had was incredible. It really was. But it doesn't last a lifetime. It became apparent to me very quickly that being a lawyer was never going to work for me. I enjoyed the philosophy of it but the practice held no interest at all. And me having kids would have been a complete disaster. That was built out of fantasies that didn't consider the day to day reality. Within a few months overseas, I knew having kids and a career were never going to happen. Given both of those things were essential for her dream, the relationship was doomed. And as the months turned into years and I read much more widely and spent more time in contemplation than most will in multiple lifetimes, I decided my journey from here is an internal spiritual one. I'll become a hermit with very little need for money so that I can get by with minimal work from my business, and spend the rest of my life in meditation/contemplation, cut off from the world. Sticking with my relationship would have prevented that, so I feel blessed now that it turned out how it did.
So for me, single life is the ultimate now. But I've gone through a few phases to get there. And I think I'm an unusual case. Loneliness is not something I have felt for maybe 30 years, despite being completely alone virtually 100% of the time for the last 16. And having a partner has always felt like an option I could choose, but ultimately opted against. I'm often too quick to judge people who think not being able to find someone is the worst thing imaginable, because from my angle being able to find someone is not even remotely important and something I would give away like old shoes. But that certainly wasn't always the case and it would only take a few tweaks in beliefs or personality to change that.
If you made it this far, thanks for sitting through my novel. I owe you one!