200 sats \ 3 replies \ @BTCLNAT 23 Sep \ on: Dealing with loneliness meta
Loneliness. A tremendous topic. We are social beings, I am not a monkey, I am a human being. But still, we are defined as SOCIAL creatures, so LONELINESS should not be part of our lives. The question then is:
CAN A PERSON BE ALONE EVEN WHEN THEY HAVE OTHER HUMANS WITH THEM, LIVING IN THEIR OWN HOME, AND INTERACTING AT SOME TIME?
ON THE CONTRARY, CAN A PERSON NOT BE ALONE DESPITE NOT LIVING WITH ANOTHER PERSON?
How many are alone while being accompanied and vice versa?
Loneliness and company do not depend on whether or not you live with others. Rather, on whether or not you relate to others and that relationship is reciprocal and equitable.
I am not a sociologist or a psychologist, I am a human who often feels alone despite living with others. And in other stages of my life, despite living alone in a house, I felt very accompanied and mind you, that was before the internet came into my life.
When you live alone you choose with whom, when, how and for how long you relate to others, and you will always have the opportunity to decide the environment. Otherwise you will be forced to relate even with whom you do not want, in the case of large families for example.
What happens if you are married and your spouse decides to bring a family member to the home that you have built together for whatever reason and does so despite knowing that it is not to your liking? I am not talking about a season out of necessity, it is to live permanently. Would it be selfish then for me to decide to leave home?
When I lived alone, it never affected me. I am thinking about going back to living alone.
I remember hearing the author/ philosopher Alain De Botton years ago on one of the first Tim Ferris podcast episodes.
He had some very interesting things to say about marriages and how in the past they were viewed as much more practical and transactional. They served very specific needs.
A man would choose a woman to marry because she would make a good mother, or be a good partner to manage the household. A woman would choose a husband because he could be a good provider and protector for her and her children.
These focused roles seem old fashioned and unattractive to most of us now, and we look for much more in a spouse. Now we expect our partners to stimulate and fulfill us intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, basically everything. We want them to be into the hobbies we are, to be financial/ business partners, to be able to hold court as equals on our favorite topics of discussion... On and on.
It's such a tall order! Seems near impossible to win at that game and it causes a lot of suffering.
These romantic ideals bubbled up in the late middle ages as some sort of hard pendulum swing in the opposite direction from the restrictive transactional marriages, which came with their own unique suffering.
I think in the eras before that transition, you would expect to fulfill most of these needs from specific friendships or groups outside your marriage. You'd have your hunting/ sporting buddies, your business partners, your philosophy groups etc. It would be a ridiculous idea to try and find a single ideal person to fill all those gaps in your life.
Anyways I remembered that podcast because you mentioned feeling alone when you're living with someone, and that's a situation I've found myself in before as well. Also I've found myself cycling between being lonely as hell when I'm not partnered with someone, and then constantly fantasizing about escape and freedom when I am.
Seems like a through line in a lot of this discussion is the potential benefits of getting off our devices and out into the meatspace with groups of like minded people.
It's easier said than done, but I suspect it would heal a lot of dissatisfaction in many marriages and romantic partnerships. We could better appreciate what we liked about our spouses, instead of the ways they fell short in meeting our various psychological needs.
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Now we expect our partners to stimulate and fulfill us intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, basically everything. We want them to be into the hobbies we are, to be financial/ business partners, to be able to hold court as equals on our favorite topics of discussion... On and on.
Fair enough, that's pretty common nowadays. This is probably why marriages with no pre-marriage cohabitation are more likely to last. Which is also how humans used to face marriage up until few decades ago.
I feel that social media completely faked how people perceive strangers and life. Now joung boys and girls think that all their peers are having a good time, when they date someone they always compare that someone to the others. That is an hell of a trouble.
Meatspace always wins, agreed. I'm trying to get to a gist of any comment below this post, then the meatspace will be where I'll apply and test suggestions.
Thanks for your answer
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Thanks for this, It's a point of view I've never considered before. I'm pretty much used to living alone both mentally and phisically. To me relationships are never a matter of dominance but only of convergence. If convergence struggles, then compromises come to help. I've always found compromises with people I loved and I liked, when I had the opportunity to live with them. What you've talked about here is hardly the consequence of compromises, probably is the consequence of dominance. If so, then you're better off separating yourself phisically from that place and find out what to do next.
It may be not as easy as I'm putting it, btw.
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