[acb-hsp] The Trials of Being Alone

[Karen Rose]

I often give clients the assignment of taking themselves out on a date, 
including going to dinner alone.  Many people feel that they must stay one 
on Friday or Saturday night if they don't have a date, and they therefore 
miss out on things they would like to be doing.  Others feel that no one 
wants to go out with them, particularly those having difficulty dating.  So 
having them take themselves on a dinner and movie date can be an important 
exercise, both in building self-esteem and in dealing with the fear of being 
alone.

I'm single, and I know I would miss out on doing many of the things I enjoy 
if I waited around for someone to go with.

Karen
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Baracco, Andrew W" <Andrew.Baracco at va.gov>
To: "Discussion list for ACB human service professionals" <acb-hsp at acb.org>
Sent: Monday, August 13, 2012 11:45 AM
Subject: Re: [acb-hsp] The Trials of Being Alone


>I hate going to a restaurant alone.  I hear all these conversations
> going on, and wish there was someone to converse with.  To me, going to
> a restaurant means a lot more than consuming a good meal.  There is also
> the experience of sharing that meal with someone that you have some kind
> of connection with.  Recently, I was alone for a few days because my
> wife went east to attend her mom's funeral.  I either cooked something
> or had something delivered, but could not bring myself to go to a
> restaurant alone.
>
> Andy
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: acb-hsp-bounces at acb.org [mailto:acb-hsp-bounces at acb.org] On Behalf
> Of peter altschul
> Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2012 7:09 AM
> To: Acbhsp
> Subject: [acb-hsp] The Trials of Being Alone
>
> 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.
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