It’s not that I can’t. The problem is that when I’m with someone, I deeply yearn to be alone. I’d love to have my life for myself, with no responsibility with no one else - just me.
But then, when I’m alone, I feel like a failure, like I need a relationship to feel complete, and I fucking hate that. So I end up in another relationship, and after two years I can’t stand it anymore, and the cycle repeats.
What the hell. Has anyone suffered from something like that? How can you be alone and not feel lonely? How to kill this need to be with someone?
EDIT: Thanks for all the answers, I’m taking every single one into consideration. Please, keep them coming.
Lots of people have relationships where they never live together, and see each other a few times a week. They go along like this for years, decades even. I knew one pair that didn’t even live in the same country. What I think you want is a relationship but not a live-in partner. Just make sure you are dating people who want the same kind of relationship as you do, basically a permanent long distance relationship.
I knew a couple who were married and together for 20 years and didn’t live together. My manager as well, she’s married and they don’t technically live together but he stays at her house 4 days a week. I also knew a couple who were just friends with benefits and lived together and coparented their 2 kids, they had separate rooms.
Just find the type of relationship that works for you.
Edit: some extra context for anyone interested. The first couple were young professionals and they enjoyed their privacy and alone time. For my manager it was her second marriage and they were both in their 50th, they both had their lives and this way was just easier for them, iirc they’ve been together for like 7ish years. As for the last couple my ex used to watch them on tiktok, seemed like it worked out for them, they were a Mexican couple.
That’s really interesting, and for some reason something I never thought it was possible. Thank you.
This… I never thought about that, it makes sense. It’s definitely something I’ll look into too, thank you.
You might want to see a therapist, this sounds too complicated to ask a message board.
Have you tried dating yourself? Straight up… when you’re in a relationship and you do all these things for other people and your emotionally available and youre whatever blah blah blah… when you’re single do you do those things for yourself? You take yourself out? Do you buy yourself nice things? Do you treat yourself well? Are you interested in things and pursue things as a hobby? Like is there anything you do for yourself?
I try… I do play guitar and I like to draw, and ride my motorcycle, but then… I don’t know, I feel empty. I look at these things and enjoy doing them a lot, but when I stop I start asking, what’s the point? Nobody will see this or hear this or whatever. Why even bother? When I’m alone and go to a show or watch a movie I always enjoy the moment but get that dread after the deed, the “you’re doing this alone and this is wrong” feeling.
Okay well that’s the part that should change… when you play guitar… you play guitar good! Do you ever let yourself know that you love the way you play guitar? You like to draw… do you ever tell yourself that you love your drawings? Do you ever draw for yourself? Do you ever tell yourself that you’re going to draw something for you? When you ride your motorcycle do you think about yourself? Or do you just wish that you had somebody on the back of your motorcycle? Do you ever look at what you’re driving past? Nobody will see this or hear this… except you… why do you bother? Because you love you… what about you? When you’re alone and you go to a show or watch a movie… do you ever thank yourself for taking yourself out to a movie? You should love yourself… I feel like you’re screaming for yourself to love you and you don’t hear yourself
Sounds like you do want to be with someone; you just have a habit of getting with people who aren’t a good match for you.
I’ve had partners that made me feel like how you describe being with someone. My current partner does not make me feel like that.
Sounds like what the op is trying to say is they just want to examine their own feelings a bit. Maybe it’s not about ‘fit’ but about personal growth.
Gotta find someone with whom you can be alone with.
Meaning you can be alone with this person. And that you can be alone with yourself in their presence as well. Someone who can respect your alone time, basically.
Otherwise, when single, you gotta learn to take care of yourself as if yourself was someone else. That’s how I coped when I was single. Treating myself all the time to little gifts, taking care of myself, even going out with myself by myself like a date night.
“6:30, dinner with myself. I can’t cancel that again!” -The Grinch
I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll rather be in a relationship yearning more more me-time and solitude than be a single feeling alone and lonely. Both come with its pros and cons but to me the the scale tips towards a relationship though in my case the relationship I’m in is quite low maintenance so it’s easy to manage.
It sounds to me that you need to learn to love yourself first, so you feel comfortable being single until you find the right person.
They say you have to be able to love yourself before you can love someone else
This is definitely an issue, I do have low self-esteem and getting older is not helping my case. Everything physical is getting harder to do and taking a toll both physical and mentally, which is a tough pill to swallow because I was always very active. Getting old sucks.
Getting old is amazing!!! Hurting sucks…
It sounds like you are a sociable introvert who other-thinks things. I know because I am one.
I’ve thought about it quite a bit (obviously) and I think the issue arises from the tension between enjoying company but also needing your own space to unwind. That’s all compounded by the over-thinking as you chew over what people might think or what is expected of you.
For the last few years I’ve been free of responsibilities and realised that if I wasn’t entertaining myself, no-one else would. For example, I’d avoided going to the cinema on my own (I thought people would judge me for not having company) but all that meant was I wasn’t getting to see the films I wanted to watch.
The solution is a form of mindfulness (or running out of fucks to give - however you want to pitch it to yourself to make it work). You worry less about what people think, because, largely, they don’t care (the exception might be going to animated children’s films on your own - you definitely get some odd looks then). I now have a few WhatsApp groups were I let friends know what I am doing and if they want to tag along that’s great. This has the bonus of events getting bogged down in negotiations and actually seems to result in note group events - for my birthday I just booked a bunch of tickets to a stand-up comedy tour and let everyone know. I had takers for them all within a day.
Relationships are trickier but if you can find someone who also likes company and their own space that would be ideal. It is a tricky balance to strike.
I’m a person who needs a lot of alone time. It took me a while to learn how to set boundaries with partners. That balance wasn’t easy for me to find. Do you feel like it would benefit you if you got more alone time in your existing relationships?
I think so, yes, but then my girlfriend likes to be around and is really upset when I ask to be alone. She’s not wrong thought, because if left by myself I can disappear for a long time…
What does upset mean? Its a bit different if she’s concerned for you vs if she can’t be alone. My wife was concerned for me when I was playing Minecraft until 4am every night during a stressful time in my life. She can’t be alone when she’s in my office during the middle of the workday telling me ten different YouTuber’s life stories. :D
I hope you find the balance that you’re looking for. If your girlfriend feels more social than you, its not necessarily bad to have her call her friends or something. I regularly tell my wife to “call Susan” or something like that when she wants to talk about something that I don’t have any bandwidth for or interest in. As long as you make an effort to connect when you can and don’t neglect her, I think it’s a fair ask.
This is something I have to take into consideration, thank you very much for your reply.
I was with someone who was upset when I left her alone. She finally divorced me.
How can you be alone and not feel lonely?
This seems like the key question. Relationships or not might not actually matter here.
What does it mean to you to feel lonely? What kind of lonely is that?
To me, it’s a mix of feeling like a failure and feeling that nothing quite matters. I mean, I do get to do things I enjoy, and I enjoy it a lot, but I never feel satisfied - I just feel empty. It’s kinda like having a feeling of obligation to be with someone, and that’s there’s something wrong with me for being alone. Like a nagging voice in the back of my head saying “this is not ok”. I don’t know if this makes sense.
I can understand it all and relate to some of it, but nothing in that description sounds like “lonely” to me.
When you feel like a failure, do you picture someone who is judging you to have failed? What expectation of theirs are you not meeting?
When you feel empty, what’s missing for you?
When you feel obliged to be with someone, obliged to whom? What did they do for you that leads you to now feel that you owe them something?
When you feel like something is wrong with you, who is judging you as being wrong? What expectations of theirs are you not meeting?
Whose voice do you hear saying “This is not OK”?
Maybe these answers will reveal something to you to help you make more sense of your feelings.
Peace.
like I need a relationship to feel complete,
That is normal.
I repeat: that is the normal thing.
Humans are like that. Humans need other humans.and I fucking hate that.
Please don’t hate it. And please don’t hate yourself.
I feel like a failure,
Same: Please don’t. Don’thate yourself. You are a perfectly normal human being.
So I end up in another relationship, and after two years I can’t stand it anymore, and the cycle repeats.
I suspect some mistakes somewhere in that cycle. Humans make mistakes. All humans do. Maybe forgiving helps.
You need someone who is low maintenance like yourself. Someone who doesn’t need constant validation from you to feel complete. Or a friend with benefits. Both exist but can be tricky to find.
I don’t see any claim by OP that the relationship issue is from maintenance. Sounds like they want to examine themselves and their feelings a bit deeper.
Sounds like you could benefit from therapy
You’re right, I’m doing therapy for a year now but things works really slow. I’m talking a lot about this with my therapist, and thought that asking here could bring me some insights to discuss with her. Thank you for your reply, I really appreciate it.
Look into “avoidant attachment styles”. (And, really, attachment styles in general.)
Perhaps even look into avoidant personality disorder and/or schizoid personality disorder. (I’m not diagnosing you or anything, but what you’re talking about is something I’ve heard frequently in relation to schizoid personality disorder. I’m not quite as familiar with avoidant personality disorder, but it’s sometimes described as “a lesser kind of schizoid personality disorder.” Also, don’t confuse “schizoid” and “schizophrenia.” They’re very different things.)
This isn’t the answer you asked for, but perhaps a relationship with someone who likes their personal space as much as you do would work out. It might not be the most “traditional” sort of relationship you could find, but it might work out well.
But more to your question, the best answer that I can come up with is therapy.
That’s really interesting, I’ll look into it. I’m doing therapy for a year now and decided to ask here to see if you people could give me insights to talk to my therapist. I’ll take these to her too, thank you very much.
I read about those you pointed out and the avoidant attachment style ticks some boxes… It’s definitely something I’ll bring up on the next session, thanks!
Hopefully it ends up helping! Best of luck. :)
I know several people like this, it’s normal IMO to need social connection, I don’t think you are broken or anything, modern life is hard in a way and if you are a man, it can be even harder because in general men don’t have as many other ways to connect with people so rely more on their romantic partners to provide it. It’s not natural , historically speaking, to be alone as much as we can today. But yes kind of shitty to use people because you can’t be alone so I understand wanting to change it.
If I was being snarky, I’d say have kids because oh my God does that teach you to value solitude. We moved to a new house once and I was alone in the house one day and realized I’d not been alone in that house before, ever, and it had been over a year. The only time alone I’d had for a year was in the car or on a walk.
Therapy is probably the best answer but mindfulness, meditation might help. Sit with your thoughts until you figure out what is happening. When it gets uncomfortable and boring, abide. Listen to the world, focus on your breath, let the thoughts come.
And don’t discount the value of weak social connections, talking to people at work, going to the same place to get coffee or a drink every day, go physically to the library for books, go shopping at little places with real cashiers. All that casual interaction is really good for you, not just deep friendships and lovers but regular shallow contacts too. Oh, and you’ll never have no responsibility, I think you know that, but people do vary in how high maintenance they are, a good match should make you feel you have less responsibility because there are two of you to handle it.
ETA: the “two years” thing made me laugh. That was my husband after he divorced and before we met - he had a string of two years relationships. I think that’s when infatuation fades and you see what is underneath it. So I told him no to living together until we’d been together two years, then he wanted to get married I told him two years before he could ask me that too.
