Nobody wants to be lonely, but there’s a difference between being lonely and simply being alone. In fact, find a way to be comfortable with yourself and enjoy your own company is a great way to actively avoid feeling lonely – although it’s not completely unavoidable, in some cases.
Having partners and friends is great and it can be really important to have people around you for love and support. However, it’s important to remember that there will be times in your life when you won’t be surrounded by love and company. Sometimes, you will be alone – and that’s just part of life – and you need to be able to be okay with that.
Here are a few tips to learning to enjoy spending time alone.
The best way to get used to something is to practice doing it, whether it’s perfecting a skill or becoming accustomed to a social environment or norm.
So if you’re finding yourself uncomfortable with hanging out alone, you should try to do it a bit more often. Most importantly, do it intentionally. Don’t only spend time on your own when your plans fall through or none of your friends are around. If you do this, spending time will always have negative associations.
Furthermore, it will be something you do as a last resort rather than as an act of empowerment and confidence. That way, you’ll be able to get to a point where you may actually choose to spend an evening or day at home alone rather than going out and socialising, simply because you’d like to enjoy your own company and do nothing else.
This may sound silly, but it’s really important. Often, the main reason why people don’t want to spend time alone is because they simply don’t enjoy their own company and don’t want to be alone with their thoughts. Whether it’s for a seriously troubling reason – like if there’s something bothering you that you don’t want to think about – or just because you find it boring, this isn’t a great thing.
It may even indicate that you don’t really know yourself very well. Whatever the reason, it’s important to take the time to spend time alone, deal with your thoughts and troubles and tackle them head on. You’re never going to fully escape what’s going on in your mind, so rather tackle it head on rather than avoiding it.
There’s nothing wrong with saying no to plans with friends, family or your partner to just spend time on your own doing things you love. Whether this means sleeping, relaxing, exercising or playing real money roulette online. It doesn’t make you weird or unsociable, it may just mean you need to recharge your batteries.
Some people need this more than others, and that’s totally fine. As long as you make sure your loved ones know what works for you, they should be able to respect that and leave you to do your thing. Set your own boundaries, expect other people to respect them and respect their boundaries too.