Partnering

I'm watching, it seems like most everyone is engaged in partnering, where most actions, decisions, plans are in the context of what works for the significant others, spouses, loves, children.
I'm learning to do that with me.
It's perhaps the biggest change since Gil's death; my job is to make decisions based on what will further the action of me and (who knows?) what I'm becoming.
It's very disorienting.  I've always had a partner who I've been tuned to.  I miss the ease that having someone else's needs to use to make decisions,  gives.  It's so much more work to have to stop and think, "so what do I really want?"  And it's liberating.  The background noise of my life is still there, but I am emerging, as if from a great sleep, so much more solid and strong than I was in college, the last time I was truely a single.   I'm tired and it's a lot of work setting boundaries with folks or saying "no", but I'm learning.  I have no fear of becoming selfish or a narcessist (anymore than we all are) and I don't seem to miss being in a partnership, at least so far.
I'm just surprised at how different the world looks to me seen straight on through the lens of just my own life.