One of the funny things about being a therapist and also writer is that my clients (not all, some) read about my life in my blog and some of them ask about me (which a tiny bit is against the rules of therapy, but not like you’re going to jail or anything). Mostly two things are of concern. They either want to know how my dog is (I wrote about the cancer in her skull a couple months back. She’s doing well. Still running!) Or, they want to know if I’m dating anyone. The clients who ask about dating tend to be women who are my age or older and I think they ask from a genuinely caring place. Like I do for them, they want good and happy things for me. I think they don’t want me to be lonely. If they themselves are lonely, they may also look to me for hope or comfort.
I asked a friend recently what I should write about next in my blog and one suggestion he gave was, “the lies of loneliness.” Aside from being somewhat poetic, I liked thinking about that idea — does loneliness tell us lies? Is loneliness itself a lie? What exactly is the feeling of loneliness? What are the types and textures? What are the cures?
I want to start by saying there is one type of loneliness that is different from all the others, and it may relate back to the last thing I’m going to write about, but I want to mention it first because its characteristics are so different. That is the loneliness of chemical depression. I have not ever had a depression like that, but I work with a few people who live a great deal of their lives in deep and nearly intractable depression. One of the hallmarks, to me, of that type is a pervasive sense of alone-ness. No matter who is there in the room, who calls or texts, what person sits next to you at dinner, you feel disconnected, flat, and so alone. The main problem here is chemical depression and that’s not what I want to write mostly about today, but I want to acknowledge that the persistence and heaviness of that loneliness exists and hurts.
Most people have other forms and sorts of loneliness and often, I’ve found, that what their loneliness drives them to do, or the cure they think they find leads to more loneliness and here is where it’s worth investigating.
Here are some things I have observed about loneliness, which might be what my friend called the lies of loneliness:
1. When people feel lonely, it’s not always romantic loneliness. Though it often is. Or they often think it is. Even when partnered or married — even when you look on the outside “in love” — people often experience loneliness.
2. Loneliness is very close to emptiness. It might be worth asking yourself if you feel lonely or you feel empty.
3. When you feel empty or lonely, it hurts a lot and your brain and heart are going to urge you to fill up that space with a bunch of junk. It’s up to you what you want the quality of that junk to be — some common choices I’ve seen are: more relationships. More sex, but not in relationships. Social Media. Food. Alcohol. Drugs. Binging on Netflix. Sleep. Workaholism. Working out-aholism. ‘Helping’ others.
While I think some of these things are good for a weekend, I hate to see people get stuck here for months or years. Some are more destructive than others, but none will alleviate the loneliness in a deep or lasting way. (And often lead to more feelings of loneliness and emptiness).
It’s been a long time since I read Walden by Henry David Thoreau and it’s possible that I never read it sophomore year in high school, but just skimmed it (it blends in with Moby Dick in the ‘classics, but kind of boring’ category). But what I remember and what stays with me is that this man chose to live alone by a pond and be close to nature. He tried to be self-reliant. It was somewhere around 1854. He did not have TV, cell phones or computers. He had a pond, some plants, the weather. It probably sounds like a lonely, empty living hell to a lot of people, but I think he was on to something. When we feel lonely or empty, we often need less not more. Whatever it is in us that says we need more, more, more is probably the biggest lie of loneliness that I see.
Here’s a real life example. I tried Match.com last summer in large part because some of my friends encouraged me to ‘get out there’. In fact, one of my good friends said, “You are single. You should embrace this time in your life.” And I thought, “That’s probably true! Why not?!” (This is what my mom calls the Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh part of me — “Tiggers love to bounce into tall trees!” And once I’m up in the metaphorical tall tree, I’m like “Tiggers do NOT like to bounce into tall trees.)
What I learned was that online dating is not for me. Here’s why: it’s a lot. It’s more, more, more. Men. Messages. Trying to suss through whether the men are nice or sleazeballs. More messages or winking (ugh). I shut it down after a few weeks and it’s hard for me to imagine that I would ever do it again. This sort of filling up my time and brainspace did not feel fun or even adventurous — it felt like too much…but that could just be part of my wiring. I did ask myself if I felt lonely. The answer to that was, “not really.” I realized that while, I have moments of longing, that is different than loneliness, for me. Longing, for me, is witnessing how beautiful and amazing it is to see two people falling in love. Or to hear a man read a poem to his wife of 40 years that he wrote all about what it’s like to love her for a long time and how their love changes with age. (This happened to me this week.) And there are moments where I hope and wish for those experiences in my life. To me that is longing, but not loneliness or emptiness.
Maybe I’m saying that if you think you might feel lonely, don’t be afraid to feel it and know that feeling in a deeper way. Loneliness may not be how you really feel and when you let yourself feel it, you may realize more accurately what you want or need.
3. There is a difference between general loneliness and being lonely for a particular person. Loneliness for a particular person is more like grief. To me,grief is a helpful way to feel and think about metabolizing that sort of loneliness. If the person you love died and that’s why you are lonely for him/her, it may never fully go away, but it will feel different — perhaps less heavy and perhaps less sharp and perhaps less pervasive as time goes on.
4. If you were recently dumped or you are getting the cues that a romantic relationship is on the downhill slide, you may feel excruciatingly lonely. However, I often think we go through something I call relationship ‘withdrawal.’ I think it takes a few months of not being in contact with someone, not hooking up with that person, etc., to not feel ‘lonely’ for them anymore. If you think it is in your best interest to move on, try to stop yourself from having contact with them. (This would be a good time to fill that space with the least damaging thing possible and I recommend The Walking Dead.)
5. Loneliness tells you that you will always be alone. When parents are anxious about their kids, I often say to them, “What if I could tell you that I have received a message from 2050. That message is: Your kids turn out great. They are well-adjusted, productive, and healthy — how would that change your parenting?” Loneliness makes us super-anxious, Many people have an underlying thought/lie, “This is it for me. I guess I’m dying alone.” If you feel lonely right now while you’re reading this, it is my sincere belief that you will not always feel lonely. Life circumstances change, luck changes, we try out a different grocery store or take piano lessons. If you are truly lonely for romantic love, and not empty from some inner emptiness, the best you can do is try to enjoy where you are and who you’re with and what you’re doing in ways that bring you a sense of well-being and health. One thing I know for sure is that when we are coming from a place of hunger, we often eat crappy foods. And what I mean is, if you are depleted, hungover, secretly hating yourself, the relationship you might find yourself in is not the one that will make you less lonely in the long run.
So this brings me to my final observation and it is this…A deep longing that seems utterly human and perhaps universal is the longing to be seen, deeply known, and loved for the very person we are in our core. To me there is something spiritual about this. I had a friend in college who was really smart (he’s a neurosurgeon now!) and also a conservative Christian (I am not…nor am I a neurosurgeon). We used to write notes and letters and talk about C.S. Lewis and Greek Civilization. He told me to read Mere Christianity, which included (I recall) a passage that each of us has inside, a God-shaped hole that we try to fill with many things that are not God. Yet, the only thing that will ever really satisfy us is God. Just an idea to ponder.
Maybe it’s blasphemy in our Hallmark channel world, maybe it seems on the ‘meh’ end of hopeful, but here is my truth: I’m not sure there is any one person out in the world that will see us, know us, love us fully in all of our parts, in the depth of our selves, over the course of all our lives (though I believe anything is possible.) I do believe that we search for this deep connection in conscious and unconscious ways. In the end, it is Whitney Houston (I Will Always Love You) and Stuart Smalley (I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, etc.) and is something internal rather than external. Often we are lonely for ourselves. The world gets us away from ourselves and sometimes gives us messages that we aren’t worthy or enough or intrinsically good and loveable. We are all of those things and we are good company.
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