Alone and Loving It!

One of my fears when I joined my husband in retirement is that we would be together way too much. Don’t get me wrong, togetherness in a married couple is a good thing, but too much time together can be disastrous.

I’ve been married longer by far than I was single. Time alone has been in short supply most of my life. Even during the few short years after leaving home and prior to marrying and bearing children, alone time was at a premium. I lived in a dorm, took classes with hundreds of others and tried very hard not to be alone on the weekends!

What alone time means to me.

Alone time to me is time when I can do whatever I want to do, whenever I want. It is time I can spend on myself without needing to worry about what someone else thinks I should do, what someone else expects of me and without trying to compromise conflicting desires. It is time to rest, reflect and re-charge.

Recently I was fortunate enough to arrange a week of alone time for myself. The lake condo in winter is pretty deserted. Watching the wind riff the water and the geese calmly picking through the shore vegetation calms my soul. The ability to fart, burb, snore, slurp, twirl, scream and cry frees me. Quiet when I want it allows me to reflect and pursue projects I’ve been postponing – such as working on my autobiography.

Alone is not lonely.

Western civilization has in the past century equated being alone with being lonely. Recent research is revealing the fallacy of that concept. It is showing that being alone is necessary and reaffirms its usefulness.

In The Call of Solitude in Psychology Today the author notes:

“In the past century, the way we have handled aloneness has changed dramatically. “Alone” did not always mean an absence of others. The word was coined in medieval times, and originally signified a completeness in one’s singular being. In religious terminology, “solitude” typically meant the experience of oneness with God. Yet all current meanings of “alone” imply a lack of something. Invariably, solitude meets with social questioning, if not censure.”

Alone time is revelational.

In the Boston Globe’s story The Power of lonely we read of some of the benefits of solitude:

“Solitude has long been linked with creativity, spirituality, and intellectual might. The leaders of the world’s great religions — Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Moses — all had crucial revelations during periods of solitude.”

Greg Feist, an associate professor of psychology at the San Jose State University believes that meta-cognition (process of thinking critically and reflectively about our own thoughts) happens when we shift our focus from the people and things around us.

We need alone time to let our subconscious help sort through all of the information and influence to come up with our opinion, our creative self and indeed our individual self.

Alone time helps us figure out who we are.

If our mate or other people in our lives are always there, feeding us their interpretation of the situation, then how do we ever come up with our own view on the matter? Human beings are incredibly influenced by those around them, even imitating motions of others nearby.

How can I know that this is what I think, instead of what he said?  Especially when he remembers an event as ‘his’ when I know for sure ‘I’ was the one who made it successful!

How do I know who and what I am as an individual when I have been making adjustments and compromises for 40 years for him?

Alone time helps you re-discover self.

After 40 years of marriage, hubby and I sometimes wonder who we are as individuals. We are at that stage in life where we are reviewing life’s events to see what meaning our lives held and where we should go next. But how do you tell, in a 40 year marriage, which successes were yours and which were his and which you wouldn’t have accomplished without being a couple?

We know our life journey is getting shorter and shorter and feel an urgency to accomplish those great things we once set out to do – to make a meaningful individual life. Yet our life long partner may not want those same things and in fact may be very uncomfortable if you pursue them!

Sometimes, I picture a past version of myself, say at aged 19. I ask my current self if I have fulfilled the dreams of that 19 year old girl or have I become distracted and derailed by conforming to other peoples expectations. Have I fulfilled my individual self’s promise?

My week of alone time was partially to re-discover what that promise was and review my individual accomplishments.

My week of alone time.

When I retired, I knew that some couples experience difficulty with suddenly being constantly around each other. We took steps to avoid those troubles by purposely separating for hours during the day. When he is outside, I am in. When he is inside, I take a walk. If he wants to watch TV and chooses a show I don’t like, I go in the other room and do something else and vice versa.

In the two years since I joined him in retirement, we have discovered that it also helps us if one or the other actually vacates the premises for short periods occasionally! It gives us both a break and a solid chunk of time to consider our own. This week was one of those periods. We needed it.

During the week, I drove by myself for a couple hundred miles to and from the lake. I attended a Christmas show I had long desired to see – by myself. I ate what I wanted (and didn’t cook a bit!), left my bed unmade, took baths in the middle of the day and walked where ever the mood struck me.

While some could think the above would make them lonely, I chose to do this, so for me, it was a great luxury.

The Boston Globe article above reports this as normal saying:

“to get anything positive out of spending time alone, solitude should be a choice: People must feel like they’ve actively decided to take time apart from people, rather than being forced into it against their will. “

Remember when the kids were toddlers and you were home with them full time. Didn’t you long for some time to yourself? Would you have felt lonely then if you got some? No way (I bet)!

How do you get alone time now? What benefits do you see in spending time in solitude?