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| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/13/2008 9:52:31 AM | OK OPie, I'll call your bluff. (I would call it a silly bluff if you were not expressing the textbook rationales of chronic depression.)
Let's say we have proof positive: You CANNOT enjoy being alone under the terms you have described and accepted. It will never happen. Living in these terms, you can only be miserable.
Now: What will you do? You will never be content in the life you are living. What will you do?
Specifically and in detail, please. I'll be back later to see how you dodge the question.
I probably sound unsympathetic, and that's OK. Sympathy is like poison to someone who gets stuck like you. So, never mind how mean I am and answer the fracking question.
Cheers!
Vulf  | |
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| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/13/2008 10:01:01 AM | [I'm not going to suddenly stop posting replies to people because I don't feel interested in women anymore.]
Hey brill, you just answered your own question there! You said in the beginning that you wish you werent interested in women then you wouldnt feel alone.......................Well now you arent interested, so now you are sorted!
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| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/13/2008 10:10:27 AM | It really isn't something you learn. It just sort of happens. I have been single now for almost 8 months and I'd say it's only in the last month or two that I have become really comfortable being on my own. Depending on the type of relationship you come from depends on how easy it is. I came from an abusive marriage and it took me a while to be comfortable being on my own and in particular making mistakes. I like to cook and I would catch so much grief if I screwed up dinner. I am now perfectly happy if i do something wrong and can whip up something else to replace it. The worse thing I could have done would have been to jump into another relationship and I almost did. I've been single now for a while and am very happy.
It's especially hard if you stay in the same house. I was married 7 years and believe me and kept the house, I had a lot of ghosts to purge. It was really hard, but now the house is my own and I am very happy living there. The big thing is not to just be on your own, but being on your own in a quiet house. That is really tough.
I wish you luck. We all heal differently mate. | |
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| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/13/2008 8:24:41 PM | I'd advise getting a living thing in your presence, a dog preferably, if you can't do that, two cats.
Then, find places, like coffee shops, where humans congregate. Bring a book or a laptop there, and let the sound resonate within you. This is good.
Then, find something that really scares you, or really excites you. NOT an interest.
This is too cerebral, something visceral, something to do with the body, and indulge
in that, that will pull your mind away from itself.
Then, get a massage once a week, if you can afford it. It's really good for you, and
it's human touch. | |
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| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/13/2008 10:18:30 PM | | Actually you can be your own best friend! Do things for yourself, discover the things you really like to do! Visit places that make you feel good! You know giving to someone else will keep you from thinking about being alone as well. Try visiting a local Senior Care Home and give of yourself to make them a little happier. I bet soon, you won't be dwelling on how lonely you are!!! You don't have to "learn" to enjoy being alone, learn to enjoy being with others! | |
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| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/13/2008 10:33:24 PM | I couldn't tell you if my life depended on it.
I like being in a relationship so that is what I do. The thought of just being alone is alien to me.
Do you want to be alone?
If you don't then why are you asking for advice on how to be?  | |
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| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/14/2008 11:23:35 AM | First of all, I am so sorry that you have been so neglected by the opposite sex.
From what I can gather, what you are wanting is salt-peter!
Certain anti-depressants can have what they call "sexual side-effects" which really means that you have a reduced sex drive. (It isn't permanent.) You might want to discuss trying an anti-depressant with your doctor. I guess they are the modern version of salt-peter. (I wouldn't be surprised if they are made from it.) Salt peter doesn't really work, however. The herbal remedy for this is: Vitex agnus-castus (VAC) — commonly called just Vitex, but also called Chaste Tree, Chasteberry, or Monk's Pepper. The herbal version of an anti-depressant is St. John's Wort. Take Valerian for social anxiety.
Living alone is a skill. It requires you to learn to take good care of yourself in a way that is sustainable over the long run.
This skill can help in a relationship should you enter into one, because all relationships have their ups and downs, and during the down times, you will then know that you will be OK, and will survive, and can even thrive. This gives you your power back in a relationship (even a potential one.) To know that you can be OK on your own, means that the other person can't emotionally blackmail you. i.e., :frustrated: "You could never make it on your own!" or, "You can't live without me!" you know, all those things people who are angry but wanting to keep a person around say to each other.
There is a lot of good advice in this little paperback:
>>>>"Living Alone and Liking It "<<<<<
by Lynn Shahan (Author)
Its available at Amazon for less than $1.00
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0446302376/ref=dp_olp_2
There are already many strong, viable lifestyles that value--and have value-- that don't focus on an intimate relationship with the opposite sex. The Benedictine's, for example. You might visit with a monk or a nun, or consider going on a retreat. This can be a way to find a fullfilling life without the difficulty of facing rejection from wishing/wanting something that seems unavailable to you now. You say you are non-religious, but a love for God, and trying to feel God's love for you can be an inspiring way to connect.
I have always done some volunteer work and have found it to return to me as much energy and resources (in sometimes unusual and surprising ways) as I put in, usually more! Grassroots advocacy, visiting the elderly, holding their hands, volunteering in the local hospital or shelter can have the suprising "side-effect" of reducing loneliness. The other volunteers are some of the best people I have ever met in my lifetime.
I would like to remind you that you are already in a relationship of a kind, with everyone you are ever in contact with. You are in a relationship with us, here, on the POF forums right now. You are in relationship to your community, your work, your family, and anyone you glance at. You are 50% of every contact.
And all aspects of relationships of any kind are learnable, teachable skills. They are part of emotional intelligence, and a set of skills called social skills. As part of teaching a young person with Asperger's syndrome, I have learned what specific skills can help the most with social interaction through reading and research. Perhaps you can research these same skills by looking at resources that are now available to Asperger's therapists. I highly recommend RDI (Relationship Development Intervention.)
If you have access to funding for higher education, you could study acting, voice, public speaking, communication, psychology, sociology. These classes are taught by people who are not just average at these skills, they are often better than average, and could teach you to refine your skills in these areas. Being up to date on the latest information in these areas can give you confidence.
Try out a "Toastmasters Club." Speaking in public is the extreme sport of the social world. Like bungee jumping.  Think of it as a challenge. If you can speak in public--which is commonly known as most people's worst fear--then you can do anything!
Take a Dale Carnegie course. Dale Carnegie's book is a classic, and still applies to today's social world: "How to Win Friends and Influence People." Two of the most beloved and influential people I have ever known, a doctor, and an admired and loved factory supervisor, read this book and applied it.
These skills are useful, even if you are not interested in pursuing a relationship with a woman anymore. Aquiring new skills can be an interesting hobby, and all of these skills have lucrative benefits in the workplace. It has been shown that people skills are the most valued in workplaces, and are more valued the higher-up you go on the ladder. They can help you in selling anything--not just yourself to a potential mate. You might consider reading or taking workshops in sales skills just to enhance your life in general. (Not to mention the aphrodasiac qualities of money.)
Take back your power! Don't teach yourself to dislike what you want. Use your desire to motivate you.
Women who do that become anorexic. They want to be attractive to men, then want to eat less. Then they teach themselves to hate food,  and in the process become even less attractive to men!
If you are sour on relationships by having been rejected, or not pursued, then you might be looking for revenge of some sort. Revenge tends to backfire.
The best revenge is a life well-lived.
Here's a virtual hug for you, to get you by until you have figured out how not to want one.  | |
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| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/16/2008 9:06:39 AM | You don't learn to enjoy being alone. Particularly if you're someone who needs socialization time.
I had several options. Continue to be depressed about being alone, become both desperate and bitter about it and have that bitterness and desperation sabotage any attempt at getting involved with someone.
OR
Accept that the hand that life is dealing me isn't getting me anywhere in the game, but if I just let the game play out, I might just end up getting dealt a Royal Flush.
I only really entered the happy world of being alone in the past month or two. Once I got past the previous relationship and having been emotionally drained felt I couldn't offer emotionally what the women out there are looking for. It was easier to accept that I could be happy on my own and really felt that until recently when a wonderful woman entered my life, and I'm contemplating all the things I said I'd never be involved with.
Unfortunately life dealt me with someone long distance, so while I didn't get the coveted Royal Flush, I'm looking at a Full house, aces high  | |
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| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/16/2008 9:31:54 AM | | I hope it takes a much shorter time for you, but for me, it took about six years after the divorce. It's been eight years now, and I love my time alone. If I want to be with someone I can, but if not, I answer to no one and do what I want to, all the time. Sounds selfish because it is, when you're not worried about someone elses moods, likes or dislikes, and can focus on you, things get easier. I would not recommend jumping into a relationship so you don't 'have' to be alone...learn to dig the solitude, it pays off. Good luck. | |
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ebre1
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Joined: 5/13/2008
Msg: 113 | |
| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/16/2008 2:37:12 PM | | I would say... don't give up. Don't go the way you're thinking of, it isn't the answer. I think the problem is, and it has been for me and some of my friends, is that you live in the UK... go to mainland Europe and women will be more interested, while in the UK they'll barely look at you. At least try it before you give in totally. | |
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| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/25/2008 11:04:37 AM |
a relationship doesn't complete life, it complements it.
I think Sentinel83 said it perfectly with this statement. If only there was a lot more of this sentiment being promoted these days. There's a lot of pressure to find our soulmate -- both external (societal) and internal pressure. People who are single for long periods of time are regarded as oddities - why? Would you rather settle with someone you don't really love, just for the sake of company? We all know how that ends.
No matter how much I'd love to find the right one for me, and arrive at happily ever after, I've had to take on the mindset that these two possible scenarios - life with someone, or life as a single - are simply different, but one is not better than the other. Yes, I will do certain things and have certain experiences as life in a couple, but life as a single has its own experiences as well. It may lack in some areas, but picks up in others. You have more freedom being single, and while all of us are on here because we'd prefer otherwise -- through personal experience I've learned that the healthiest approach to "being alone" is accepting the situation as it currently is, doing things that make you genuinely happy, and remembering to have lots of patience.
So I rather liked your quote -- it points out that there isn't anything "missing" from our lives, but if we do find that extra company someday -- our lives will sparkle with a new, and different, brilliance. | |
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| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/25/2008 12:07:24 PM | Hi Ross.
Looking over your profile, I noticed a few similarities between you and I. Same age, almost - enjoy weightlifting. People think we're younger than we are. English background (though I'm in Canada now). A few other things. For some reason this suggests to me I know where you are coming from, maybe more than others might.
Anyway, this is my advice. Others have touched on it. It's called "habituation." You hear a loud noise, and you jump. You hear it again, and you don't jump. A third time, and you're thinking, "when will that noise stop?" Humans, animals, we're hardwired to get used to anything.
You just get used to being alone. None of this, "get a dog, explore your hobbies," etc. It's just something that happens as you get on with things.
I grew up mostly alone, in an isolated countryside setting. I had no neighbouring friends, so I got used to being by myself the vast majority of the time. As a consequence, I actually prefer being alone now, for the most part. In a crowd of people, I'm always thinking ahead to when I can have some peace and quiet again. My favourite moments are things like me sitting in a shaft of sunlight, by myself, strumming my guitar, or walking through a wood and imagining the setting was put there just for me.
I know this can be a bad thing, when the ultimate goal is a relationship. I was lucky that in a couple serious relationships I had, I wanted those women with me at all times. Taken into the circle somehow, if you know what I mean. But with anyone else - I was always thinking about when I could finally stop talking. Because after being alone so long, it becomes draining for me. Ironically, I'm on the other side of things than you are - if I wish to have a successful relationship, it's necessary to stop wanting to be alone. It's just too easy to sink into what I do to pass my time, and it flies. And the longer I go alone, the harder it becomes to be with people again.
You'll experience it too, and you won't even realize it's happening. You'll come home after a night out or a busy day and feel relief at the solitude, and that's when you'll know you are getting used to being alone. | |
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| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/25/2008 12:31:01 PM | "I would rather be alone and miserable, than be in a marriage and wish I were dead." I've lived that kind of marriage for 25 years, and wouldn't trade aloneness for anything. You get up in the morning and eat whatever your brain tells you would be delicious--I had tacoes for 2 weeks 3 times daily, because they're crispy, their vegetably, meaty, and just the way I like stuff.
Sunday night is my favorite night because I'm old and enjoy 60 Minutes and Extreme Home Makeover while eating popcorn--just having control of the remote control is a blessing from not being married.
Just the freedom of going where you want, doing what you want and being with who you want is the highest freedom one can attain--living a life just the way you want it, and spoiling onesself to the max is, to me, life at its utmost. I think that stigma about being all alone was initiated by some Priest in the 14th Century that wanted to spend time with some kid possibly.  | |
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| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/25/2008 12:54:10 PM | You're thinking of Martin Luther, MagLady, the priest who challenged the Church's gatekeeping role and declared all of life to be an opportunity to commune with the divine. (Why is it that we worship-free are always the ones to explain doctrine to the faithful?) He married as a particular act of defiance, and ushered in the idea of the nuclear family as the ideal context for faith and works. (It ain't exactly in the Bibble.)
For what it's worth, he loved playing with the kids and puttering around the house. So, that was early in the 16th century, for those keeping score.
Cheers!
Vulf
BTW, do y'all see how OPie is neglecting this relationship? He begs for our pity and then can barely type the minimum in reply. He is SOOOOOO narcissistic! Isn't it simply obvious that this is how he drives people away? I mean, show of hands: anybody here want to know this guy? I know I don't, not until he cares about somebody, anybody, more than himself. | |
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| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/25/2008 8:40:22 PM | | Surround yourself with the people who mean the most to you -- friends, family... and join something that you enjoy... have a poker night, join a volleyball team, hit the bike trails, get out into nature. Learn to like yourself... because if you don't, how can you expect someone else to? Love will come... don't force it. You don't NEED to have anyone, you have yourself. If you have confidence, your confidence will draw people to you... and then you won't be single any longer. :) | |
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| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/25/2008 11:01:03 PM | Well for me, it was a bit odd, but did me alot of good.
you need to come with terms with YOU my friend.
After a 15 year old marriage ended, I was destroyed, frightened and angry. I went to a friends farm, and set up a house trailer.........all the way in the back of the property, where only ATV's feared to tread. Off grid, used a generator for power (there was a water well, that my tractor pto ran the pump.
Way back in that meadow gate, I had time to think when I'd come home from work. I lived this way for two years.......first miserable, then as I had time to think, undisturbed, I came face to face with someone I never got gave any effort to know........Tom(me)
I relied on my brain and what I could find, to provide myself the basics living totally off grid. A antique hot-miss engine spun a big rig charging system, to charge batteries, to run a power inverter to keep the fans running at night. for the big power draws, I used a old Kholer generator, I rescued from a junkpile. I could take a shower, and wash clothes, anything I needed, and relied on no one. I could do anything that anyone could do on grid.
Looking back, I cherish that experience, Knowing that not only could I live off my own ingenituy, but also live confortable. the upshot of this, is that I have came to realize that we do NOT "need" anyone to live, and be happy, it's best to "want" someone. when we feel we "need" not is that a big put off to the opposite sex, but we also loose OURSELVES.
When I came face to face with me, I saw some things I did not like at all, and went about changing them. I slowly came to the realization that seperation and divorce, is just a fact of life, and really there is no one to blame. Once I realized that, I quit beating myself up for something that I had absolutely no control over, I started to feel better, liking myself, and more confident. Even though I had isolated myself, I suddenly found myself happy.
Good luck
Tom | |
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| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/26/2008 12:20:34 AM | | I don't know how since I first got married at age 17 I have just been alone since 2 years and I hate it, I started going out a little here and there but I don.t even know how to do this, I am lost and I don"t know what to do with myself my kids are grown and on there on to top it off my aunt pass away and I moved to a different area thinking I could do this but I am even lonelier than ever, I have no friends and no family I live with my dog and have a dead end job for now and they are laying people off with $5.00 in my pocket in change now this is bad,,,, I am not a ulgy woman but the men I have met only want one thing I miss having friends what do people do at this point in life... | |
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| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/26/2008 1:31:42 AM | | i was married one time, for 20 years, she cheated and left... first time now in 28 years ive lived alone... its not easy, find something to occupy your mind, pray to jehovah, and take a second job, if need be, you will survive | |
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| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/26/2008 1:39:41 AM | | You can either stay single and keep telling yourself you like it until it becomes true, or you can look to be in a relationship. Some people just don't like being single and that's just the way they are wired. As long as you like yourself that's cool. | |
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| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/26/2008 4:32:17 AM | Hi Ross
Not to diss everyone that has replied but I think it depends on where you are in your life.
I have been on my own a lot and I have been content with it, however we are programmed to believe we should be with someone and its very hard going on sites like this and seeing so many "lonely hearts" but having to come to terms with being alone.
You look young so I think you have a bit more time and blokes can father children at any age so I dont think you need to come to terms with being alone as such, just bide your time until that special someone comes along.
When you are truly heartbroken nothing helps and getting a positive mental attitude is impossible because you have no self worth. I dont think you are there yet (I could be wrong!) I think it will happen for you in time.
Try and have fun looking and all the luck in the world to you.
Trish xx | |
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| How do I learn to enjoy being alone?
Posted: 5/26/2008 5:16:36 AM | there is times in your life ~that being alone is a good thing
trust me ~ it will pass
but you do need to take advantage of the time and not encourage you to learn to be alone. ~ There is a world of things to focus on and learn ` being alone not one of them. dance | |
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