What is loneliness and why is it scary? Loneliness: when it’s scary to leave your “shell.” It turns out that loneliness is good as a temporary state

Loneliness. Is that really that bad? Until recently, I thought yes. Moreover, I was convinced that loneliness for a person is a humiliating fate that he must endure because of his shortcomings. However, looking for shortcomings in yourself, and not finding in them anything worse than uncertainty, suspiciousness, or weak will, you think. Do they really influence the fact that you haven’t dated anyone for a couple of years? And it’s not about your appearance, because you are considered a very attractive person. It's something else.

You look with envy at kissing couples, and at home you cry over a romantic film. You look at men who previously would not have evoked absolutely any emotion in you. And you decide to act. You spend your evenings in the company of friends, you try to occupy yourself with something interesting, you try to attract the attention of others with your gaze. You try to fight loneliness, but you get the effect of a quagmire. The more you do something, the more you see the futility of actions, the more you are sucked into oppressive loneliness.

You are torn into a thousand pieces from indignation and misunderstanding. You want to scream, scream, kill someone and eat something sweet. But after outbursts of indignation and sobs in the shower, there remains a feeling of complete devastation, which aggravates loneliness. Then you start to get used to it. You are no longer afraid that you no longer feel what you felt before. You stop rushing about and your whole body, to the last cell, is filled with blissful calm. The process is complete. You don’t strive to make new acquaintances, you’re not interested in them. Are you tired of looking for HIS glance in the crowd, or going to parties in the hope that you will meet your destiny there. You already calmly walk along the streets, and only occasionally look up at passers-by. You walk along the evening street alone and don’t think that that guy over there might come up to you. You begin to feel like a full-fledged person, being alone with yourself. This feeling is strange, intriguing and unfamiliar. After all, before, to feel important, you needed people. But not now. And you begin to think differently, and understand the world in a completely different way. Friends say that you have changed. And you just mentally smile.

Loneliness, is it as scary as they make it out to be? You don't owe anyone anything. You don't have to come home from work and go on the second shift, because serious relationship- hard work. You can do anything. Isn't it wonderful to spend the whole evening under a warm blanket with your favorite book? Or hang out with friends until late, without listening to any reproaches. You have a lot of time to spend on yourself, your beloved. You can everything! Learn English, do yoga, learn how to cook your favorite dishes, do something with your own hands. Everything! And you don't need anyone to achieve this goal. Well, isn't that great? What married lady, and even with children, can boast of such power and capabilities? Very rare. But then why do you get embarrassed when they ask you: “How is your personal life?” and you start stuttering, sweating, twitching your eyes and bleating indistinctly: “I don’t have time for this,” or “I’m concentrating on my career now”( although your highest possible career leap is to become a cashier in a store), or, even worse, you start lying about non-existent boyfriends. And why, exactly, are you doing this if you’ve decided that loneliness is cool?

Yes, because for most people loneliness remains a disease akin to the plague. People fear loneliness like fire until it touches them. And then they begin to understand and perceive life from a different perspective. We, single people, understand this very well, so we carry our idea in ringing silence.

Or maybe it's something completely different? Perhaps it’s just convenient for us to pretend that loneliness is the shortest path to self-realization. In fact, we wait with all our hearts for someone to come into our lives, turn it upside down and make us laugh. And then, holding your hands tightly, you will never, ever let go. And we will study asanas, speak the language of Shakespeare, travel, sleep 3 hours a day. But we will do this together.

I think loneliness is the most best time in order to understand exactly what you want, what you are striving for, and understand what kind of person you want to see next to you for the rest of your life. The main thing is that the time for thinking does not drag on.

They are lonely!

Does this happen in marriage? - you ask. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen in marriage.

Single married women come home from work late; there is always a lot to do at work. Especially after six. Among single married women there are a lot of forced workaholics.

There are many reasons: either the boss is a goat, or the subordinates are fools. They are afraid to admit to themselves what really scares them. Noisy home emptiness. Tasteless dinner. The duty “how are you” and the husband, buried in the monitor screen. Some husbands don’t even think about “how things are not ripe”, but only “let’s eat.” This also happens. Single married people are terribly afraid of the weekend.

How does it happen that what was once dear and desired turns into someone else’s and distant? Does this happen gradually or in one day? Can this be avoided? It doesn't matter at all.

People change and that's all you need to know about them. Rivers flow, films always end, food spoils, and people change, sometimes irreparably, under the pressure of life's circumstances. They change in such a way that we are not on the same path.

Favorite cups break, and sometimes there is no reason to glue them together. Out of order electric kettles. Wiring burns out. The autumn coat is torn. Old cosmetics become unusable. It happens. When this happens, we simply throw the trash in the trash.

Nobody tells us: we should have chosen better cosmetics, then they would not have spoiled. You should have been more careful with the cup, then it wouldn’t break... Then why do they often say this about marriage? Why are they condemned? Threatened with loneliness?

We understand that things have their expiration date and their end. We don't make a tragedy out of this. We don’t want to know that about relationships. We try to convince ourselves that they are eternal. We sit on the dried up mummy of the relationship and convince everyone that she is alive.

Can you imagine the horror of the situation when you are rushing home, and there is some strange guy there. Cuts your bread with your knife. It dirty your toilet. Leaves wet marks coming out of your shower. Switches the channels of your TV, revealing the silence only to him the right sounds. And it doesn’t go anywhere!

Moreover, this man also has the right to demand an account of where you have been! This man can demand to be served sexually, he has the right to his slobbery hugs. This man has the right to limit your life, scare away your gentlemen, and not let you go on vacation or on a dating site. This man is preventing you from living and having fun.

Single married women, if possible, taxi with friends to go shopping, to a cafe, or stealthily rush to see their lover. Stealthily, furtively inhaling the fresh air of adultery on crumpled hotel sheets. They constantly look at the phone screen because they are in a hurry to get home. And they themselves cannot explain why they exchanged hot hugs for cold borscht, and the 1349th episode of the series “Trace”. They can't explain why they do it, but I can. They are afraid. They are afraid to be alone.

They paint their lips with lipstick, wear black thongs, run tiredly along the wet sidewalks and don’t understand one thing - they are ALREADY alone. Their worst nightmare has long since become a reality.

Loneliness is about everyone. For some it strikes in the circle of a loving family, for others in childhood, when mother was late at work, and for others when no one came to help. We are all afraid of a lonely old age, we are afraid of not finding a partner with whom we can meet it. Each of us comes into this world alone, and leaves alone; we will never achieve maximum intimacy with anyone. Why are we afraid of loneliness, why do we run away from it? Why can't we accept the inevitable?

What is loneliness?

The famous American psychiatrist Irwin Yalom considered the fear of isolation (loneliness) to be one of the main existential fears. He divided isolation into three types: interpersonal, intrapersonal and existential.

Interpersonal isolation is isolation from other individuals. That is, contact with another person may be hampered by geolocation, inability to build social contacts, and conflicting feelings regarding intimacy.

Intrapersonal isolation is one of the most difficult for an individual to understand and accept. It occurs when a person suppresses his own desires and feelings. This usually occurs in childhood; parents often impose their own desires and attitudes on their children. This can be observed in such little things as choosing clothes, which sections to go to, who to be friends with, and in other much more serious things - entering a university, choosing a partner, looking for a job. When a child grows up, he no longer understands what he really wants and what his parents want.

Existential isolation is associated with the very fact of existence. This is the separation of man from the world; this gap cannot be overcome in any way. The awareness of death makes a person fully feel his loneliness.

Why does loneliness cause fear?

Surely no one would agree to the fate " last person on the ground". Although in this case there are no restrictions that usually exist in a civilized society. In theory, by being alone with oneself, a person receives complete freedom, but for some reason, having received this freedom, he still strives to become a member of the group. And often it doesn’t matter what role is assigned in this society, all the same, the main thing remains belonging to someone.

Perhaps the point here is that we all have socialization, each of us grew up surrounded by people. Others satisfy not only the function of communication, but also the function of cognition, that is, by contacting different personalities, we better understand and recognize ourselves.

Loneliness in relationships

Often, after a breakup, after some short time, a person finds a new partner. Many people are chasing just to avoid being “alone.” Because of this, selectivity in partners decreases, and relationships are not always pleasant. This race for relationships can arise precisely because it is difficult for a person to be alone with himself. He is not just afraid of loneliness, he is afraid of meeting himself. No matter how paradoxical it may sound, many have never been alone with themselves. A person, this is especially typical for Russia, immediately moves from his parental family to his own, which he created, or there is a constant rushing from one relationship to another. And there is absolutely no time to be alone, to think about your experiences, to reflect. Some people are simply afraid to see the inside of themselves, and relationships seem to highlight what is hiding inside. The game of hide and seek can go on for a long time, but sooner or later it will have to stop.

There are also many stereotypes associated with single women. A 30-year-old woman “should” be ashamed of being alone; condemnation may come from relatives and colleagues. Success and women's “happiness” is considered to be the creation of a family and the birth of children. This stereotype is due to the fact that there is a distribution of roles in society, and a woman is assigned the role of “keeper of the hearth”; girls are raised this way in traditional patriarchal families. But the world is changing, women already have the opportunity to choose and be successful in the field in which they wish. And loneliness in your personal life is always fixable.

As Erich Fromm said, to achieve maximum intimacy with another person, you must first know yourself, become a mature person. Therefore, it is absolutely not necessary to enter into dependent relationships with other people in order to feel not lonely, it is enough to become interesting to yourself, then the feeling of loneliness will not creep up.

thoughts

Francoise Sagan. A little sun in cold water

Is there a lonelier creature in the world than a person who has decided to live cheerfully, happily, with complacent cynicism, a person who has come to such a decision in the most natural way - instinctively - and is suddenly left empty-handed?

Angel de Coitiers. Eve's Apple

Sometimes it seems to the soul that it is not at all difficult to jump out of the labyrinth in which “passions” and “good” hold it. You just need to make a decision and it's done. And the soul does not understand, cannot understand that this labyrinth is its fate in our world. That it cannot be renounced, that it cannot be pretended that it does not exist and that it does not matter. He exists, and this is Fate.
Attempts to close your eyes to reality and create an illusory world are one of the thousands of sweet temptations of the soul. She draws herself a fairytale castle, she paints herself a world in which everything is simple, everything is correct, everything is beautiful. The soul draws its castle from memories, from the traces of memories of that world where Beauty reigns. And there is only one problem - this castle she painted is not real.
In fact, the soul remains in the same game played by its “passions” with ideas about the “good.” The solution found is simply a new configuration of the previous forces, nothing more. The life of the soul in the body is imprisonment in solitary confinement. And the way out that she continually “finds” is just a figment of her morbid imagination, her hallucination.
Where there are no interlocutors, the soul talks to its own phantoms. And he experiences horror when, suddenly, he realizes his own loneliness.

Maksim Gorky. Mallow

Sometimes I think about life - it even becomes scary. Especially at night... when you can’t sleep... You look: in front of you is the sea, above you is the sky, it’s so dark all around, it’s eerie... and you’re here alone! And then you will become so small to yourself, small... The earth shakes beneath you, and there is no one on it except you.

Frederick Beigbeder. Romantic egoist

Our economic selfishness has become a way of life. How to shine in a live conversation, face to face with your interlocutor, if you are used to spending fifteen minutes on a written answer? Virtuality is our salvation from the truth.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez. One Hundred Years of Solitude

When everything had been said, Colonel Gerineldo Marquez looked around the deserted streets, saw drops of water hanging on the branches of almond trees, and felt that he was dying from loneliness.