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the more you can deal with the discomfort of being single, the more you'll be able to enjoy your relationship when you find one. Right now you're practicing how to stay balanced on your own - it's a crucial time to discover your deepest self, and your most archetypical fantasies are an essential part of that. What I take from what Cary's saying about being receptive to others is that you can only really partner with someone when you can accept yourself. When you accept that your life will always have some great, missing element, desires unfufilled, dreams just out of reach, you can relax and enjoy the ride, single or partnered.
Did you ever think that the underlying message of any romance narrative is actually the story of how an individual becomes balanced and complete? It doesn't happen in the "real", outside, world - it happens inside your soul when you fall in love with yourself.
Let yourself experience every bit of it - even the longing and the loneliness.
Once partnered, you might miss those long hours of maiden solitude, find yourself fantasizing about a free-wheeling self-sufficient single girl who has lots of friends and makes all her own decisions without consulting anyone. Enjoying those memories can help you stay healthy in your relationship.
My favorite romance stories are taken from "real life": for example, the night John Lennon fell in love with Yoko Ono, he went to see her first(?) solo show in London. In one room, there was nothing except for a ladder reaching up to the ceiling. When he climbed it, he found a magnifying glass, and using it to see the tiny letters written on the ceiling, he was able to make out a single word: YES.
