I was alone for a while post-divorce. I find that I easily get into a rut which leads to depression (not the clinical kind just the blues). I also get very cranky if I don’t get laid regularly. I would much rather be alone than settle for the wrong person. But I’m much better off with someone suitable. Like I have now.
My husband moved 8? 000 miles away about 3 weeks ago. We"re following him as soon as the house is sold. I’m really really not enjoying it. We met at work and apart from my two periods of maternity leave we’ve pretty much spent 24 hours a day in the same location for the last 10 years. I can’t imagine being able to do this with anyone else, but I’m just happier with him than without him.
So to the OP, definitely not.
I have told my wife that I love her, but if she dies first I am getting married again if I can. After 31 years, I would pop my cork being alone all the time. I think I am like Loach - too easy to slip into a rut and get depressed.
I work from home, so I don’t get a lot of social contact from my job, apart from phone conversations and tele-meetings and so forth. It’s not the same.
I can remember times when my wife went away for a week, and took the kids with her (visiting relatives). The house was so deathly quiet. And I left my coffee cup on the kitchen table, and it was still there when I got home (I worked in an office then). For some reason it bummed me out completely - no one had been in my house all day.
I used up all my ideas for stuff to do while they were gone by evening of the second day, and just went stir-crazy the rest of the week.
Regards,
Shodan
Any folks prefer living alone vs. being married?
I do now!
I’ve seen maybe two or three marriages in my entire life that have made me think “I want to be a part of something like that one day”.
Most married people, however, are leading a woefully unhappy existence.
You’re damned right I’m happy being single.
I had a long-term live-in relationship from 1990-97, and I had no issues with, but I’m now in my late 50s and I prefer living by myself. I’d be surprised if I ever went back to a live-in arrangement, unless maybe someone takes pity on me in my future decrepitude.
Here’s a recent thread which is somewhat related:
Do you regret getting divorced from your passionless, roommate-like marriage?
It asks the question from the other side. If you are in a so-so marriage, should you get out?
Not sure that’s the thread you wanted to point to. Although it did give me a moment of “really?” before wandering back.
See, when my husband went away for a week, I left the kitchen table clean when I went to work, and it was still clean when I got home! That made me really, really happy.
Of course, given the choice between having him around and having to clean up after him or not having to clean up after him but not having him around, I’d choose having him. I just don’t know anyone else I like enough to make that deal for.
THIS! I have a neighbor and he has a live-in girlfriend. was not aware they were fighting until I last year I saw a vase of flowers broken into pieces across their driveway. Neighbor says it was a long story but didn’t want to say much detail. Nothing of note until recently when their fighting spilled outside into the front yard. It was terrifying! And yet she was still hanging around as I still saw her car outside their home. I’m like, if so unhappy why.not.just.leave? What is it going to cost each other by separating? There’s just simply no consequence to their actions so they just keep at it! (and ugh don’t want to picture make-up sex, he does have his kids at home, (but not hers))
BTW, not sure if anyone heard of this book called The Myths of Happiness there was a study done between levels of happiness between married and the single, and it was basically equal. The difference occurred (obviuously) between married vs. divorced/married vs. separated and married vs. widowed
If anyone has read Thoreau’s Walden, it’s pretty idyllic. And not because he was just living alone. He didn’t reveal this in the book, but here was his reality and not too shabby a life: He was living alone, but he had visitors and friends who visited him nearly everyday. He sometimes walked down a mile to his mum’s and sister’s home to raid the cookie jar. If he was bored with nature he would walk to the local pub and say hi to the locals. Guess the point is, living alone is not necessarily lonely.
I do definitely, I spend/ have spent a lot of my life crowded into communal living, I enjoy my space .
Every so often I get people asking me why aren’t you married now, why don’t you go on a dating site etc.etc.
Makes me want to scream !
I realise that some, many people even, can’t face the world without someone by their side all of the time .
I get more then enough company all day, every day, it doesn’t make me afraid of the dark enjoying peace at home.
Well it depends on who you ask. 20-something single msmith537 might have a different opinion from late 30-something married msmith537.
I think when you are either young (like your 20s) or well established in a community, and are an otherwise social person, living alone can be like that (if that’s what you want). As you get older though, people get married, they get tied up with work, they move away, so you can easily find yourself “lonely” alone if you aren’t careful.
And to expand on Loach and Shodan’s comments, I think being alone too much can make you start becoming depressed and weird.
“When your married, you want to kill your spouse. When you’re single, you want to kill yourself. Better HER than me!”
-Chris Rock
I have been living alone for about 13 years now and I really love it. I had never had the opportunity until after my second divorce. I went from living with my family to living with my first wife. I almost immediately met my second wife and spent a couple of decades plus with her and our kids. I now realize that I should never have really been married. I’m not cut out for it but had never had the chance to see what solo living was like.
For instance I have monogamous relationship with a woman who lives some distance from me. We see each other at varying intervals, often to go out to cultural events together. She stays at my place. Sometimes just overnight, sometimes for a few days. Occasionally we holiday together. But after a few days, no matter how much fun we are having, I start to miss my peace and quiet. She has the TV or radio on a lot. I sometimes don’t watch TV for weeks or months at a time and if I have anything on I am watching or listening to it. I don’t require background noise in my life. You may as well have some homeless guy talking to himself in the corner.
I’m a gregarious person, I like people and go out a fair bit. I went out to watch the football with some guys on Wednesday, went out with two different groups for dinner and later for drinks on Friday and went out with my son to a movie yesterday. Today I am happily sitting at home writing this on Sunday morning and the only sound I can hear, apart from the birds, is the washing machine as I do a load of clothes. Later I may walk to the shops and grab a coffee and some lunch, sit around alone and read for a while. Or maybe I won’t.
Always alone, never lonely. I love it!
That is the thing about Thoreau and his lifestyle. He was right but I don’t live all that far from Walden Pond and have been there many times. It isn’t isolated in the least and never was. Concord, MA was where the Revolutionary War started was prosperous and rather large town when he built his personal clubhouse just outside of it. It was just an early version of a man-cave. He made the walk back and forth as the mood struck. In short, he did the same thing I do every weekend except he got famous for it I get interrogated as to why I don’t want to be sucked into marriage again.
Marriage was never a Life Goal to me the way it was for many of my classmates: most had it in their To Do list like I had “graduate from college”, some were completely obsessed and saw themselves as worthless whenever they were boyfriend-less.
Living with other people (with or without romantic involvement, with or without papers, with or without children) has advantages and disadvantages depending on the people involved. I’d rather be alone (or even lonely) than in bad company.
Most monks live in a community. Even hermits often do/did: both nowadays when the word is most likely to mean “someone who takes care of a church in the middle of nowhere” and way back when hermits living close to each other eventually gave rise to monasteries.
Very compatible marriage that you might never find > being alone (introverts) > sorta-compatible marriage > being alone (extroverts) > biological-clock marriage.
I was in a very happy marriage for 23 years when it suddenly went all wrong and the wife left.
I have five kids and three were still at home, two teens and a preteen.
That was 17 years ago. I missed her terribly for a couple of years then grew resigned to it.
She wanted to come back after four years but by then I had become accustomed to being without her. We never actually got round to a divorce, just a formality anyway.
The kids were great - two left here by then, the two eldest only lived a short distance away (one across the street) and were always around.
Eventually all the kids were gone, two of them, the eldest girl and youngest boy are still living close by and the youngest girl is only a few miles away. She is here every day as my grandson comes to mine after school until she finishes work.
My second daughter and eldest son both live a distance away but both call in regularly.
I’m perfectly happy living alone, I don’t have any great need for company and companionship but see a lot of my children and grandchildren. I am out at work weekdays and it is often a relief to be alone after that.
My wife and I are still married and got on quite well despite her living with a former neighbour but after a bit of a spat with the youngest daughter hasn’t spoken to me much in the past year.
Which is fine.
I certainly wouldn’t want to go back to sharing my home with a partner again. I guess I’m just a grumpy old curmudgeon.
Retirement looms, perhaps that may alter my perspective but I doubt it.