How to Enjoy Being Single Over the Holidays

How easy it is to feel left out at family gatherings when you are single. The holidays tend to make you feel like a fifth wheel when you are surrounded by couples, happy families and of course all of those older family members who look at you as if there is something wrong with you if you aren't happily married before you are 25. Even if you normally enjoy being a care free single person you may start to feel those twinges and wondering what you are missing out on.

There are several things to remember at the holidays to help you feel grateful to be unencumbered or tied down. Live it up and enjoy being yourself, exactly as you are.

• You can go where you feel like going for parties and celebrations. No need to fit in a visit to the in-laws or the other person's friends houses. You can hang with your family and your friends, no need for a tight schedule to fit in all the obligatory visits.

• If you don't enjoy children, you can limit the time you spend in their company. It's not like when you have your own little family to tote from place to place. Look across the table at your sister who can't finish her meal because she keeps has to keep running over to the kids table to wipe up something or settle a squabble, savor a drink of wine and smile.

• On New Year's Eve you can kiss whoever you want to, it may be the start of a fun new dating situation...or not. Your choice because you are single, footloose and fancy free.

• If your Christmas morning tradition is to sleep in, the stumble into the kitchen for coffee before dragging yourself to your parent's house mid afternoon, you don't have to change a thing. There's no one to wake you up, or want a big holiday breakfast, you are on your own to make your own schedule.

• As a single person you can take advantage of your local watering hole with a group of similarly single friends for a special holiday night out. Most places are less crowded around the holidays and have lots of specials on drinks.

Basically, if you enjoy being single throughout the year that should not change over the holidays. When the time comes that have someone special then you will make the adjustments necessary and integrate that person into your holiday plans just as you do into your everyday life.