5 Reasons You Should Skip the Summer Fling and Fall for Yourself

Sure, we might all fantasize about a summer fling. Who doesn’t entertain the idea that they’ll make eye contact with another beach babe, hit it off immediately, and spend the next few weeks having a casual but wildly fun relationship? While some summer flings might work out that way, the reality often involves way more time alone in your bed, scrolling through weird messages on online dating apps, trying to figure out if you could put up with someone you would normally find intolerable as long as there was very little conversation involved in your whirlwind romance. If the summer fling just isn’t happening, don’t sweat it. Instead, spend the summer falling for the most important person in your life: you. Here are five reasons you should skip the fling and fall for yourself:

1) Summer is the worst season for a fling.
Yes, there are a lot of things that make summer seem like the perfect season for a fling. The minimal clothing, late nights out, and fast festival friendships don’t hurt. But in reality, your summer calendar is so easy to fill. There are events every evening, friends visiting from out of town, amazing books to read, beaches to lie on, and road trips to take. You could try to schedule in a summer fling, but why not wait until winter, when your plan for Saturday night is a bowl of soup, wool socks, and a Netflix series?

2) Summer is the perfect time to push past your comfort zone.[iframe https://giphy.com/embed/mtZuwyheL1BBe allowfullscreen="" class=^{{"giphy-embed"}}^ frameborder="0" height="418" width="750"]If you’re afraid to go to major events like Pride or music festivals alone, brave it this summer. If you never go to a movie theater by yourself, escaping the heat is the perfect excuse to buy yourself a ticket for Ghostbusters. Nervous about dusting off your swimsuit for the first time in years? Read this while you’re getting ready, and enjoy a day at the beach. Get out there and try something new and a little bit scary.

3) You can get introspective without getting sad.It might seem like winter is the best season to start a reflection journal, or sit at your table with a cup of coffee, thinking about what you really want out of life and if you’re on the right path. This is wrong. In winter it’s way too easy for a little reflection to turn into a massive existential crisis. One minute you’re thinking about how life would’ve been different if you’d continued piano lessons past fourth grade, and the next minute you’re questioning every decision you ever made—as if you even have free will at all—and it’s cold, and you’re out of groceries, and your landlord won’t adjust your radiator heat so you’re wearing a coat in your forty-five-degree apartment. In summer, you’re getting healthy amounts of vitamin D, and if a little reflection turns into a crisis, you can combat that by sweating the crisis out poolside.  

4) Summer is a great time to start taking care of yourself physically.If you’ve been in the habit of subsisting only on meals delivered by Grubhub, or you usually spend your weekends consuming more fruit flavored drinks than actual fruit, summer is the easiest season to give your body a little break. Treat yourself to a hike with a notebook and camera. Grab every sample at the farmer’s market, and pick up some fresh fruit and vegetables for the week. I would never suggest giving up Grubhub (my always reliable winter fling) entirely, but one cannot live on pizza and pad woon sen alone. Enjoy all the great seasonal produce while it’s available. Come winter, you’ll be digging through a giant pile of mealy apples at Trader Joe’s, so live it up now.

5) If you're still looking for a fling, loving yourself is the best way to have one.When you don’t spend a lot of time taking care of yourself, trying new things, or thinking about what you really want out of life, it’s difficult to attract people who are in the same place. If you spend your summer reading great books, going to events alone and with friends, and trying things you were afraid to try before, you'll have so much more to talk about than if you spend your summer on Tinder or OkCupid. If you are the kind of person you’d want to have a fling with, odds are you’ll attract that person too.