Living alone means living with yourself.
By: Todd Ward
Tags: Living Alone, Boundaries, Healthy Relationships, Dating, Personal Growth

Image by tookapic from Pixabay

If you can live alone, then you can live with yourself.

You get to know yourself and your personal boundaries. You come to have a relationship with yourself. Ultimately, you come to have healthier relationships with other people.

When you live alone and really enjoy it, the decision to live with others becomes a very big deal. What may otherwise be a moment of opportunity becomes a moment of potential sacrifice. The optimistic “I get to share a space with someone and split bills,” becomes a precautionary “Do I really want to give up my space for someone else?”

The answer is a resounding “no”, although our arbitrary social norms might object.

Your space becomes sacred. You can do anything you like in your own space. You can chose who to let into your space. Most importantly, you come to rely on yourself rather than other people for your own happiness, which is the golden ticket for relationship success.

Healthy relationships allow space for each person to have their own lives separate from the other person. This is especially true in romantic relationships and marriages. You don’t have to live with your partner if you don’t want to. In fact, it might be better for everyone involved if you lived separately.

I have a few 30- and 40-something friends who are very comfortable living alone. They wouldn’t give up their space easily, even if partnered. Myself included. I’ve made that mistake before.

For most of my life, I have lived with other people. I only really started living alone in my late 30s, after my 11 year marriage ended, and it was a challenge.

The first obstacle to overcome was the fear of being alone. For me, this was especially the case at night and on the weekends. I was a pro at filling my time with distractions, and I didn’t even realize they were distractions at the time. The bar was a block down the street, and dates were a few swipes away.

Eventually, with some hard work, I became content with sitting by myself on my couch on a Friday night completely content and satisfied. I was free. Looking back on it, I felt compelled to go out, almost like a drug. I was distracting myself from getting to know the stranger in my house — myself.

Eventually, I came to know myself, and I’m still getting to know myself. I have much stronger boundaries (something that would frequently collapse before), and I have a much better idea of what I want in life and in relationships.

To illustrate, I met someone online a few months ago who I was considering dating. She was previously married, and her grown kids were living with her full time. She also let me know that she was dating with the intention of moving in together.

This was a red flag. She was avoiding being alone. She was filling the space with her grown kids and wanted to find a romantic partner with whom she could transition the space.

I let her know “I enjoy living alone and have no plans to do otherwise for the foreseeable future.” I put up a boundary and she didn’t like it, but that was fine. She was a reflection of my past self—a people pleaser with collapsed boundaries who was afraid of being alone.

Take it from me, that road ends in disaster.

We never went on a first date.