Anyone can be independent even when living as a couple but living alone brings with it authentic independence and self-discipline like nothing else. These elements go some way to helping find your authentic self. Discovering the version of you that you are most happy and comfortable with is a journey like no other.
Regardless of how you choose to live your life, coming out the other side will bring with it a greater level of contentment and independence. Living alone not only gives you an unparalleled level of freedom, but it also gives you the time to focus on what you really want to do. It starts small — hanging your first picture without help or getting through a month with a few pounds left in the bank but knowing you covered everything you needed.
Then, it begins to grow. You become braver. What it does mean, though, is you feel more confident about taking the first step, braving the uncertainty and being okay with some vulnerability.
Many solos report having a better social life and a great network to draw upon because of living solo, not despite living alone. As well and thoroughly enjoying a social life, exploring your passions or taking on new hobbies opens up new possibilities to your social life. Being in charge of your own time and how you spend it means you can sign up for classes or groups that allow you to spend time doing something you love and meet like-minded people at the same time.
View all posts by Sarah Myers Can we send you our newsletter? Really needed it. Reading this in lightens on a few facts which I did not really consider. On the whole. The advantages is come and go when you like and only answer to your self. If you live in a shared space with roommates, you are not living alone. Roommates will run and sometimes administer your life whether you like it or not. Have your own key kitchen, bathroom and room.
Personal lifestyle. Living with a friend is not like living with a significant other or a complete stranger. Sometimes I feel like owning a pet that needs my attention but without the option of petting it… So keep in mind: If you have the choice of living alone, do it! Probably cause my social battery is not used up at home already.
Our pre-planning could involve a bad day plan. It could include things like a step-by-step list of our morning and evening routines these can be tricky to remember when our brain is foggy.
A list of things that help, such as changing into clothes or clean pyjamas, dragging ourselves out for a walk around the block, or doing some morning yoga can also help. We have to rely on past-us to do so. So having self-care prompts, reminders of the self-soothe strategies that help us, and reminders of those we can call are often really helpful. Loneliness can be a biggy when we live alone. Though there is a problem with older people experiencing loneliness, statistically , the number of young people experiencing loneliness has overtaken the number of older people who are lonely.
Radios can create background noise, helping us to feel less isolated. Podcasts and TV shows are good, too. But the benefit of radio is that we can leave it on throughout our living space, removing the deafening silence that sometimes occurs. We can pop one radio in our bedroom and one in our kitchen, for example, and provided they all connect in the same way eg.
DAB , they should be in sync. Incidental interactions can help us to connect with our local area. Volunteering or joining local interest groups can get us out of our living space. They can also increase our sense of community. Some of us really value our own quiet! We might feel we have enough interactions and connections already. Some of us have busy jobs, and like quiet evenings.
But if we are feeling lonely, then there are options out there of things we can do to try and reduce that loneliness. One of the issues with living alone is that bad habits can sneak in. Waking up to a day of no plans can feel like our worst nightmare. It can leave us feeling untethered, anxious, lost, and lonely. Our goals could include doing a load of washing and mowing the lawn. There's ample support for this conclusion outside the laboratory. As divorced or separated people often say, there's nothing lonelier than living with the wrong person.
There is also good evidence that people who never marry are no less content than those who do. According to research, they are significantly happier and less lonely than people who are widowed or divorced. In theory, the rise of living alone could lead to any number of outcomes, from the decline of community to a more socially active citizenry, from rampant isolation to a more robust public life.
I began my exploration of singleton societies with an eye for their most dangerous and disturbing features, including selfishness, loneliness and the horrors of getting sick or dying alone.
I found some measure of all of these things. On balance, however, I came away convinced that the problems related to living alone should not define the condition, because the great majority of those who go solo have a more rich and varied experience. Sometimes they feel lonely, anxious and uncertain about whether they would be happier in another arrangement.
But so do those who are married or live with others. The rise of living alone has produced significant social benefits, too.
Young and middle-aged solos have helped to revitalise cities, because they are more likely to spend money, socialise and participate in public life. Despite fears that living alone may be environmentally unsustainable, solos tend to live in apartments rather than in big houses, and in relatively green cities rather than in car-dependent suburbs.
There's good reason to believe that people who live alone in cities consume less energy than if they coupled up and decamped to pursue a single-family home. Ultimately, it's too early to say how any particular society will respond to either the problems or the opportunities generated by this extraordinary social transformation.
After all, our experiment with living alone is still in its earliest stages, and we are just beginning to understand how it affects our own lives, as well as those of our families, communities and cities. No one told me when I was small that I could live like this. No one told me that by the age of 56 I would know all of the gay bars in New York city, most of the Irish ones and a good number of other bars, such as they are, in between.
And that I would be content on a Friday and Saturday night at around 10 o'clock merely to feel that those bars were all still there, still full of people calling for more, while all I wanted was to be alone in bed with a book.
No one ever told me that I would be most happy in my life when I modelled myself on a nun who runs her own cloister and is alone in it, not bothered by the chatter of other nuns, or by the demands of reverend mother. On Saturday I wake at six and relishing the day ahead.
I teach on Mondays and Tuesdays; I have to reread a novel for each class and take notes on it. Nothing makes me happier than the thought of this. I often lie there until the seven o'clock news comes on, grinning at the thought of the day ahead. All day I will read and take notes. The worst-case scenario is that I might need another book, and this involves lot of decision-making and self-consultation. It might end in a five-minute walk to the university library. But normally I go nowhere except to the fridge if I am hungry to see what's there, or to the sofa to lie down if my back is tired, or to the rocking chair if I feel a need to rock.
Normally there's not much in the fridge. In the kitchen there is an oven I have never opened. And there are pots and pans whose purpose may be decorative for all I know. But I know where all my notebooks are. They are all over the apartment. That is the best part. I can leave them where I like and no one touches them or wants to put them away anywhere. No one sighs about books and notebooks piled up. All of the notebooks have stories half-written in them, or stray sentences in search of a home, or musings that are none of anyone's business.
If I like, I can go to one of them and add some paragraphs. I don't have to excuse myself, explain myself, or put on a distracted writer's look in order to get down to work. Or worry that someone has, in my absence, opened one of my notebooks and found that they don't like the tone of what is written there. No one told me when I was small that there would come a time in my life where people would be judged by the quantity and quality of take-out menus for local restaurants.
And that I could, without consulting anyone, at any time, make a phone call, order some food, and it would soon arrive at my door. And then there is music when night falls.
I can put on whatever I like, follow dark obsessions without worrying about depressing anyone else, or cheering them up for that matter. There is no one to question my sanity, my taste in music, or say: "That again?
Not that again. Did we not hear that yesterday? And then there is the small question of alcohol. No one told me when I was a teenager that there would come a time when I would not bother drinking. No one told me that when Saturday night came, I would long to talk to no one and wish to go to bed early, and that my only moment of pure and capricious pleasure would be taking a book to bed that was not for class the next week.
Otherwise, my life as a nun is a lesson to others, a pure example of good example. It has its rewards in the morning when I wake in silence with a clear head, ready for more. I have never given much thought to living alone, because it wasn't something I decided upon, it happened to me naturally. What with a childhood amid a vast family, then the convent, I was rarely alone.
I shared a bedroom with my sister, life with my brothers and mother. One set of grandparents lived next door, the others across the road. Many aunts, uncles and cousins were only a yell away. The convent was black with nuns, its dormitories and classrooms packed with other girls. I left home when I was Almost immediately, I fell in love with a man who was, vaguely, married. An open marriage, it would be called today. For a decade or so, I wanted to be available for him, so I moved into a bedsit above a salt beef bar in St John's Wood.
That was I was 26, and I have lived alone since. I very much liked being in love and repeated it all too frequently. But I also hated it. I have a photograph of myself aged two, in a pram outside Melbourne zoo. My chubby legs are battling to get out: the look of struggle on my baby face is tremendous. That is how I felt each time I fell in love and spent extended periods with the beloved object. Often it was boredom: hours spent doing what the beloved object wanted, rather than pursuing the thousand things juggling in my own head.
When I was in love and thought of marriage, I always came to feel like that child in the pram. The number of people who are inconvenienced by that fact grows every year. Those who live alone, to be clear, are not lonely and miserable. Research indicates that, young or old, single people are more social than their partnered peers.
The difficulties of living alone tend to lie more on a societal level, outside the realm of personal decision making. One recent study estimated that, for a couple, living separately is about 28 percent more expensive than living together.
Read: If the nuclear family has failed, what comes next?
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