to love being alone

[LovelyBath77]

I keep seeing stuff about loneliness and how bad it is for us but I love to be alone. Even more so since having children. To be able to have time to do as you want, read a book, to not have to be constantly 'on' and responding to people feels so nice. Am I alone in this perhaps. Is it doing me harm?

Maybe it is the difference in how we see it, solitude versus loneliness?

Yabu there’s a big difference between say enjoying the quiet when everyone goes back to school or work after the holidays, something many relish in, and feeling really alone

Enjoying the firmer is not unusual at all

Former

This is very much like if someone tells you they suffer from depression replying to them that you know exactly how they feel because you lost your favourite dress and haven't seen it since you last wore it in the summer of 2007

I have been lonely. It was during a time of my life when I was living several hundred miles away from everyone I knew, was estranged with my family and living in a bedsit with no money. I went to work each day, so I'm luckier than some people, as I got to interact with some humans. However, I made no friends and as all of my colleagues were either very young or my age but with partners and children, I was massively out of step with them and they treated me like a freak. From Friday to Monday morning I spoke to no one. If I had a week off I spoke to no one. My mobile only ever rang if it was a nuisance call. None of my old friends even sent me a text to see if I was still alive, let alone rung or visited me.

I could have died in that bedsit and the only people who would have noticed would have been my work colleagues when I didn't turn up on the Monday, but then, none of them would have cared.

That's loneliness.

That's ironic as I do suffer with depression (since 1999). Still like being alone though

In fact think is partly due to depression the need to be alone, sometimes. We're all different I guess.

I love my own company and loved living alone when I was single even though I was in a grotty flat and had no money. However it had been a long term thing I'm not sure how long it would have been before it got too much. It's easy to look at it with rose tinted glasses from the perspective of having a partner and a three year old now (and lots of friends to socialise with) and wishing for some time to myself occasionally. But if there was a realistic prospect of living on my own forever and not having children or they've moved away, that's a bit different. I suppose it might still happen! I would get a dog though. And read all day probably.

In fact think is partly due to depression the need to be alone, sometimes.

I suffer from it too, and this definitely applies to me.