[humanser] The Trials of Being Alone After a Big Change in Your Life

[Mary Ann Robinson]

The Trials of Being Alone After a Big Change in Your Life
  Salon By Tracy Clark-Flory August 6, 2012
  I recently went through a breakup.  It was the worst -- they
always are -- but as I wrestled with sadness over the end of the
relationship, another perplexing challenge arose: how to be
alone.
  I've been through a million -- OK, three -- breakups before.
I've spent plenty of time single in between.  I thought I'd be
good at this alone thing by now.  I'm an only child, for crying
out loud.  Instead, on the heels of another split, I'm amazed at
how difficult just being by myself can be.  I have friends --
they are wonderful -- but I feel a suffocating solitude at the
end of the night, in the morning or at any moment of the day that
isn't scheduled with distraction.  It wasn't this way when I was
coupled.  Just the knowledge that I had "a person" to call my own
(even though I know in my bones that you can never truly call
another person "your own") was a comfort; that knowledge itself
was a constant companion.
  How does one become good at being alone? This question might be
uniquely poignant for those of us fresh out of a breakup, or
still in our 20's, but it's a question people confront at all
stages of life and for all sorts of reasons, whether it's a big
move to a new city, an unexpected death, a divorce or any
countless number of things that life can throw your way.  And
regardless of your romantic status or friend count, it's nice to
be capable of enjoying a movie or dinner alone.  A friend told me
a story about an acquaintance who is married with kids: She has a
meltdown whenever her family goes out of town; she doesn't know
what to do with herself.
  So, I decided to seek out the world's wisdom on how to be
alone.  (As I tweeted earlier this week, "One of my favorite
things about being a journo? Being able to take my own burning
questions to experts under the pretense of public service.") In
terms of romantic aloneness, Anna David seemed like a good first
stop: She wrote the memoir "Falling for Me: How I Hung Curtains,
Learned to Cook, Traveled to Seville, and Fell in Love," and
understands the ache of singlehood all too well.  "I spent so
much time where everything was filtered through this lens of `but
I'm alone.` And I was haunted by the thought, `I'm going to be
alone forever,`" she says.
  It took a long time to move past that fear.
In fact, it took setting out to write a book about bettering
herself in order to land a man.  "The idea I pitched Harper
Collins was very much `Let me get totally perfect so that I can
find the perfect guy to fall in love with me and the last chapter
will be about how in love we areea`"b she says, but none of that
happened.  While the book ultimately delivers a happier message
of self-love, she privately felt like a failure for still being
single.  Shortly thereafter, though, she "bottomed out" in a
relationship where she says, "I just got crazy and obsessive and
I started to believe ...  it's this guy or a lifetime of eating
dinner with my cat." Either through the writing of the book or
that final relationship disaster, she says, "I basically realized
that it was the old cliche: that no guy was ever going to make me
happy," she says.  "I was buying into this age-old fairy tale
that at the end of the movie you end up with a guy."
  In my search for wisdom on spending time alone, regardless of
relationship status, I quickly found that very few experts want
to talk about being alone; they'd rather talk about how to not be
alone.  Judy Ford, the author of "Single: The Art of Being
Satisfied, Fulfilled and Independent," is a rare exception to
that: "We are born alone and die alone, and deep within our souls
we live alone," she tells me in an email, instantly invoking
those universal truths that hurt the most.  "No one else ever
abides in our skin.  If we haven't yet come to terms with this
ultimate truth, we are scared out of our minds to be alone." She
adds, "The fear of public speaking is a mere tickle in comparison
to the seismic ripples of horror that reverberate through the
heart when faced with spending the weekend alone," says Ford.
"People are more courageous about going to the dentist than they
are about eating in a restaurant alone." That's true for young as
well as old: Many seniors feel lonely "because they have not
developed their inner life," she says.
  Her practical tips for conquering solitude are to get creative
("creativity is the cure of loneliness"), push yourself to "do
something you have never done before" (like taking yourself out
to dinner), admit your loneliness to others ("you might be
surprised that they feel lonely too"), "get cozy with the gaps,"
those empty spaces in between plans, and remind yourself,
"Loneliness is not going to kill me." These aren't easy fixes --
and may induce eye-rolls from self-help haters -- but they're
crucial to happiness, she argues: "To experience wholeness, first
we experience the void."
  Speaking of happiness, Gretchen Rubin wrote the book on it --
she's the author of the New York Times bestseller "The Happiness
Project" -- and has a slightly different take.  "Ancient
philosophers and contemporary scientists agree that probably the
key to happiness is strong relationships with other people," she
says.  "You need to feel like you have intimate long-lasting
relationships, you need to feel like you belong, you need to feel
like you can get support and give support." Her emphasis isn't on
learning to be happy alone, but rather recognizing what level of
social interaction makes you happiest -- and it's different for
everyone: "Maybe you don't have a sweetheart, but being around a
lot of other people might make you feel happier even if you wish
you had that," she tells me.
  "I think people sometimes aren't very aware of how much they
need to be around other people." As for making the most of
whatever degree of aloneness that you have -- whether it's being
a bachelor or living in a new town with no friends -- she says,
"You don't wait for circumstances to change in order to have the
life that you want.
  If you want to go to France, don't think, `Oh, as soon as I
have a boyfriend I'll go to France` or `As soon as I get married
I'll fix up my apartment.` Have the life that you want as much as
you can now." That's instead of putting your life on hold, or
living in ignorance of what you do have: `It's things like
electricity, the minute your electricity goes out you're like,
`Oh my gosh, if only I had electricity I'd be so happy!" But it's
not like we walk around in an ecstasy every day over
electricity."
  As for simple, radical acts of public solitude -- like taking
yourself out to dinner -- Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist and
author of "Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising
Appeal of Living Alone," says a large part of people's discomfort
is the result of social expectation.  "There are some
[activities] that are socially approved to do alone, like you
wouldn't think twice about going to a coffee shop by yourself,
but going to a fancy restaurant or a play feels strange." That
strangeness is typically the result of our knee-jerk assumption
that doing things alone equals desperation.
  Two years ago, the video "How to Be Alone" starring writer
Tanya Davis and her poem about the "freedom" of being by yourself
-- eating, dancing, reading, hiking -- went viral.  The video got
more than 4.5 million hits: Clearly, her sweet and simple advice
(for example, "We could start with the acceptable places, the
bathroom, the coffee shop, the library") resonated with people.
As she says in the four-minute clip, "Society is afraid of
alonedom, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like
people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating
them.  But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless
and lonely is healing if you make it."
  It's odd that being alone requires any instruction.  As Ford so
exquisitely and painfully put it: We're born alone, we die alone
and "deep within our souls we live alone" -- but it's one of
life's many poetic ironies that we couldn't be more together in
our aloneness.