Every now and then I find myself with a day or two by myself, having no expectations, nobody to have to coordinate with, nowhere to be at a particular time. It’s incredibly resetting.
I know it’s valuable because when I can pull it off, I feel like I’m stealing something.
Can't speak for anyone else of course, but before kids a day with no obligations was mostly just a nice day. With kids it is so much more significant.
My colleagues that don't have kids, they waste their time. Not by doing nothing - that would be awesome - but by creating problems for themselves that end up taking their spare time. It is like they believe they will always have empty days to spare.
You know your perspective also works in reverse. When I was young I wanted time away from my parents. Now that they're gone, I would love to spend even 5 minutes with them.
Au contraire, I get Columbus day off work. None of my kids are off school :) I’ve been looking forward to this coming Monday for months. Those brief periods of solitude must be taken advantage of with kids.
For some reason, after being own my own for a few days, I start to feel sorry for myself, feel nostalgic and don't take very well care of self anymore. So I'm super lucky, privileged for not being alone.
Interesting theory. The notion that some expressions of personality are obstructed by social 'noise' and thus benefit from solitude makes a lot of sense. By their reckoning, solitude is positive, voluntary and purposeful, the means to a desired end. In contrast, loneliness is negative, involuntary, a response to the loss of several sources of social support.
The OP (and others) suggest solitude's desiderata to be: 1) pursuit of a personal passion, and 2) disinterest in affirmation (or criticism) from others, 3) the belief that this journey will be preferable when taken alone.
Do the terms introvert and extrovert capture such personality quirks usefully? And are solitude and loneliness synonymous? I've long thought not.
As I understand the terms (informally), introverts are drained of energy when in a group while extroverts gain energy. But by that definition, loneliness should arise only when extroverts go it alone. Introverts should be immune. But not so, so there must be more to the story.
The best work I've read on the complexities of introversion and the merits of solitude is Susan Cain's marvelous book, "Quiet". As I recall, it confirms the OP's thesis.
The line between solitude and loniness is time and choice.
In all their examples, those people choose to be alone for a period of time. But could easily choose not to. Also the time alone is limited.
Though, loniness can happen with other people, not having anyone at all is a very lonely feeling. I remember seeing videos of people saying they have no friends and start breaking down in tears.
As I age and past friendships fade away, without any new ones due to my personality, habits, I wonder how long until that'd be me.
Solitude is a big mind reset for me. So many of my most creative ideas come from my extremely long walks across Tokyo. I try to do these 10 - 20 hour walks a few times a year. My next one is next week. From west Tokyo to Chiba. It's becoming a kind of creative pilgrimage for me. No phone. Just a compass and my feet. Every hour I also do a creative exercise to help me connect with myself.
Brilliant idea, thanks. I thought my 2 hour walks were long (and beneficial). I need to try doubling that, then doubling that, then doubling that again.
What exactly is it meant by Solitude choosing you? To me that sounds like involuntary time spent alone, solitude chasing you, which could also be understood as loneliness.
Weird that this good curiosity got downvoted... for some reason when you say "I wonder" on HN it tends to be taken as if you're being sarcastic or something the like.
> But you can be alone and not feel lonely, or you can be with others and feel lonely. “Loneliness really refers to perceived social inadequacy of relationships
> “One of the clearest findings on solitude is if it’s chosen for the value that it has, it’s going to be a more positive experience,” says Netta Weinstein, a professor of psychology at the University of Reading in England and a co-author of “Solitude: The Science and Power of Being Alone.” “If it’s forced on you, it’s going to be a less positive experience.”
In fact you are right but the text is a bit hard to interpret for me. The only thing I can get out of it “If it’s forced on you, it’s going to be a less positive experience.”
So if it is non-chosen solitude, it will be less positive than chosen solitude.
Now what is the answer to the downvoted question, i still don't know the answer and in fact i wonder as well.
Some of us saw what our fathers went through and thought 'that's not for me'
For me it's more 'been there done that, got the postcard'. In the past I have had little influence on my partners decisions but when they make bad decisions I'm expected to bail them out the consequences. Perhaps there is some selection criteria bias - women who date me are more likely to make bad decisions. Being old enough to have seen what has happened to the women I've dated and the women I've not dated makes me think I've dodged enough bullets for one lifetime.
The probability that when meet someone new that I like that person more than the people I have already met decreases as I meet more people. Since I've previously gotten to know a large number of people that probability is now too low for me to bother with it.
I covet intelligence and only find intelligent people interesting, instead of searching the globe for these people I prefer reading old books written by smart people.
I sometimes wonder about the negative effects of media (particularly literature) on my personal relationships. Minds in real life rarely measure up to what I find on the page. And yet I know that those words were the product of an embodied human and I wonder where they are.
They exist but are rare - with books you're generally looking at the best of all time that have undergone a very strong selection criteria bias. I think the shift from an intellectual elite culture to a more egalitarian culture has reduced the extent that such elites could be found in the same place and thus the likelihood of a very smart person meeting another very smart person is similarly greatly reduced.
> Well, forecasts says 45% of women 20-44 will be single 2030
From my (cis white mid-30s) male perspective, if this winds up being true then it will be because they choose to be single
They will lament that they cannot find any good men, but they will be overlooking "good enough" men in thier lives, I guarantee
I see this with all of my wife's friends all the time. They are all single and they have insane expectations for what they want out of a man
It's a mix of funny and sad because they often will tell her how she's lucky to have found such a great guy, but I wouldn't check even half of their dating requirements
And of course men have high standards too. But despite how gender norms have changed, it remains the case that men pursue women and women choose who they date. So it's on men to meet women's standards but also on women to have realistic, reasonable standards. I see women with unreasonable standards all the time.
Price is set at the margin with fewer females dating the remaining set the price. I think the core part of the problem is that women do not seem to know the actual distribution of men and what should be the expected likelihood of desired attributes. This is most obvious when they sincerely pick attributes which they believe to be the median range but are in fact only in the >90% of men. I think this is the predominant reason why fewer women are at the price setting margin.
There is little attention paid to the negative consequences of this overestimation - possibly because few people pay attention to older women who have paid those consequences and older women have no incentive to inform younger women as quite often they are still in competition with them. Trying to educate young women that they really should realistic about their prospects is not going to be popular. In general men appear to already have an accurate estimate of the distribution of attributes. I think the proportion of the difference is demonstrated by the attributes that men and women covet and the difficulty in achieving those attributes. For example losing weight is far easier than growing taler.
Women have no obligation to date or pair up. Why is it a problem if a lot of women's standards are too high for the majority of men and they decide to not date? It's well within their right to be single.
It’s not about obligation, it’s about loneliness. That was the start of this whole thread. Women with unrealistic expectations creating the conditions for their own loneliness.
I don’t think it’s entirely their fault though, as others in the thread seem to imply. The rise in expectations seems to closely match the rise of mass (and later social) media. Simply put, women and girls are exposed to all kinds of images and stories about attractive and high status men. Along with that we have dating apps that seem to reinforce this illusion of abundance. So then we should not be surprised at all that it’s so common for women to have an unrealistic picture of their prospects.
> Women with unrealistic expectations creating the conditions for their own loneliness.
Replace that with 'solitude' and the article pretty much explains why that is a non-issue. Women deciding they are better off alone is not a problem. Accusing them of being unhappy and then purporting to explain why is pretty weird.
If there are psychological issues with people being lonely, coming to the conclusion that they should date more and if they can't it's "women's fault" is kinda flabbergasting. The social fabric isn't made of romantic pairs, and that's definitely not women's collective responsibility.
> it’s so common for women to have an unrealistic picture of their prospects
You kinda did.
> I am believing people when they say they are unhappy.
Who are these unhappy women that need to lower their standards to be happy? I see two different problems: people seem to be lonely because the social fabric is being corroded away; and some people seem to think that the issue is somehow related with too many single women.
Please don’t quote me out of context. The full quote is:
So then we should not be surprised at all that it’s so common for women to have an unrealistic picture of their prospects.
I was talking about the mechanisms for why women would have an unrealistic picture of their prospects. Much has been written about the unrealistic expectations of men which have been driven by mass media. It’s only fair to talk about the other side of the issue which has been largely ignored, by comparison.
But it’s not only the issue of expectations for dating. Young girls especially have been taught to have unrealistic expectations for their own appearance which has been driven by a ruthless set of social media algorithms that foster unhealthy comparisons (with celebrity influencers) across the entire internet.
Anyway, if you want to see what should be more realistic expectations, look at pictures of families from a hundred years ago or more. What will you see? Plain and ordinary people living simple lives. Nowadays people are taught to look at such lifestyles with revulsion. Instead, they live their lonely consumerist lifestyles in their tiny apartments.
You asked who all these lonely women are? They’re the friends of that guy’s wife from earlier in the thread. There are countless more women in the same situation.
There's so much strawmen here I don't want to take it apart because it feels so pointless. A lot of people being single has zero to do with anything else. People don't need to be in romantic relationships to be happy and certainly no one is wrong to have the standards they have for partners. It's their prerogative to decide whom to date and the whole narrative that there's a societal problem related to women not wanting to date the average guy is just disgusting.
> Women with unrealistic expectations creating the conditions for their own loneliness.
I find this similar to blaming fat people for obesity and diabetes. We evolved with food being scarce. We're not at all equipped to deal with junk food that's engineered to be addictive and the adverts for McDonald's and other junk everywhere on our lives.
Do you know how many animals are monogamous? Basically no mammals. This is something seen mostly in birds. And even out of monogamous birds only a fraction of them mate for life (which is what people typically mean when they say monogamous). Go and read about bonobos, chimpanzees and gorillas to learn about primate mating behaviour without any of the human bullshit.
What we see now is a kind of confused state. Societies have been mostly set up around families, although that's changed more recently with government welfare etc. Harems are still very much taboo in the West, but increasing inequality and centralisation of wealth can only mean one thing. Media (not just social media but that too) creates vastly unrealistic expectations for everyone, basically putting everyone together on the "world stage". Like junk food, our primate mating instincts aren't equipped to deal with any of this.
One thing I find funny when men blame women specifically for this is they never admit that they also want to mate with as many women as possible, preferably a different one every day. It's always implied that women are ruining monogamy but men would just be happy with one partner. Bull fucking shit. Truth is if any man had the opportunity to form a harem it would be taken in as heartbeat. It's really fucking lame to try to analyse other people before even analysing one's self.
> Do you know how many animals are monogamous? Basically no mammals
How many mammals have babies that require basically continuous care for years before they can be remotely self sufficient? Basically no mammals. This is something seen only in humans. So let's show a bit of care before drawing conclusions based on that.
> How many mammals have babies that require basically continuous care for years before they can be remotely self sufficient?
All great apes. I'm not drawing conclusion based on other animals, anyway. I'm looking at humans. It's just interesting to note we're not alone amongst mammals when it comes to polygamy.
We have to blame fat people for their actions. Pretending they are not responsible for their own choice is a really bad road to go down. These are adults, and we need to treat them as such. The victim mentality really has to stop, its nonesense beyond repair!
I wouldn't convince a recovering alcoholic to drink, because I am neither the food industry nor an a-hole. However, I insist on blaming them if they do, because thats their body and their decision. We can talk about legislation, like, finally, treating alcohol like the drug it is, and stop pretending it is some sort of exception. But I insist on people being responsible for their own choices. I don't want to life in a world where adults are treated like children.
Sure, but women have the "biological clock", and many of them realize they have set their expectations too high when the clock is actually running out, which then turns into a disaster/depression for them. Men don't care when they start a family. If women miss the window, and thats also why the statistic was looking at women between 20-44, they are basically done with the dream of having a child. And yeah, I am fully on your side, voluntary singles should just be left alone and allowed to be happy. However, the "I am happy as a single" is more like a coping mechanism then a real stance, at least several stories confirm that...
My point was the skewed perception can lead to suboptimal decision making for women who don’t want to be single. It’s a non issue for women who do want to be single.
Physical attributes are easy to recognize, so if these weigh heavily in your expectations, you can more rapidly estimate the distribution. Being able to do this quickly also means you can break out populations to make more accurate estimates of your current environment; i.e. while the media bombards us with beautiful celebrities, you can maintain an independent estimation of your actual dating pool.
Social attributes take more time. You need to spend time with someone to understand where they are, and you would need to spend time with a lot of people to understand the distribution. You can try to use heuristics, like being in a relationship with someone you believe has similar expectations, but as noted those aren't actually very accurate.
I might take another track here as well and add a bit of blame on the overuse of perfumes and deodorant. I think they block actual pheromone sensing intrinsic to us which make said standards have more of a bearing than they should.
Is “solitude” distinguished as a voluntary activity as opposed to involuntary aloneness (we could call it invalone)? Check. Does the article make clear that you should do this because you want to and not be alone if you feel lonely? Check. Does the article explain that being “lonely” is really a feeling of inadequacy, thus a first-person felt experience and not something that someone can just say that someone is? Check. Does the article make clear that you should be conscious about how you spend your time alone (don’t be mindless about it)? Check.[1] Does the article remember to remind us that so-called extroverts are a superior breed compared to those so-called introverts? Check.[2] Does the article mention the “loneliness epidemic”??? CHECK.
Is the article just a promotional piece for a book? Unclear (semi-check).
Your inane response makes as much sense as someone protesting on an article about people practicing Japanese tea rituals. “But we already consume too much coffeine!”
[1] We must use our noggin’ here: “solitude” here is not about doomscrolling Twitter. It’s about quality solitude, like going for a quiet walk or maybe meditating, not mindless social media consumption or something like that. Can you even call social media consumption solitude-time? I wouldn’t. You are too likely to get caught up reading annoying opinions from other people (Hell is other people’s opinions).
[2] > She adds that this may be because extroverts are often happier and better adjusted overall, and it’s likely their happiness and well-being — rather than their extroversion itself — that drives their enjoyment of solitude.
As a male near 60, all my relationships and a marriage have ended in heartbreak. I've been solo by choice since my mid 40s, and have never even thought about getting into another relationship. Just not worth it.
Thanks for proofing my point. Also, congrats for actually following through with your decision. Thats not a given for many, because natural urges typically are so strong, they sometimes resemble addicition. In any case, full power to you.
This article is about time spent alone, which isn't intrinsically tied to the kinds of relationships one has (i.e. can be a thing you do more than a long-term state you're in), and which certainly is not the same as not being married or in a romantic relationship:
- those not in a romantic relationship can have friends, family or community that they spend a lot of time with, or not
- those in a romantic relationship can have time alone (chosen or incidental, as in distanced relationships), or not
In fact there's some evidence on single people having more friends. Perhaps describing unmarried people as "single" is fundamentally misleading, and says more about society privileging certain relationships than it does about the person being described.
Just because you’re single doesn’t mean you’re alone. Anecdotally, a lot of people are married or in relationships and are completely alone, miserable and struggling. Meanwhile despite being single, a lot of people are finding meaning beyond marriage. From a personal experience, being with the wrong partner can be worse than being single.
> I am a bit surprised, because I always thought the inherent attraction towards your prefered sex would always overrule bad experiences in the past, but apparently, I am wrong.
Sexuality is complicated. It isn’t binary. It exists on a spectrum and it would not be surprising for many people that the need for sex is less than the need for safety.
And people like me have no attraction even though we may be interested in relationships. I see so many bad relationships around me that I am just not willing to take the risk.
No one taught me how this was supposed to work. How can I mention I’m interested in someone without being fake or creepy?
I am not sure what safety-vs-sex has to do with sexuality supposedly not being a binary thing? I deliberately wrote "preferred sex" to be as inclusive as I could, but I find everything else pretty much uncalled for. For me, for instance, sexuality is pretty much the most binary thing I can think of. Its OK that you see it differently. But hiding advocacy in every statement is really tiring...
It really is a bummer when someone just straight out projects all their trauma into a conversation, even when it is totally uncalled.
An anecdote:
I am learning French, I want to find places where I can listen/speak French all the time. I am also a Catholic and go to church every Sunday. My two neurons connected one day and I decided it is a great idea to join and hang out at a French parish.
I have acquaintances who come from France, they send their kids to French speaking schools here, they go to bars where French people hang out, etc... So, naturally, I decided to just ask them if they happen to know about French catholic communities.
Their replies were nothing like "no, I have no idea", or "yes, you can try at ..."; but, instead, they immediately derailed the conversation into how they don't believe in God and started rationalizing their decision to me as if I was going to be interested on all that ...
Which leads me to a tangential issue, we have become absurdly narcissistic. We think of us as the absolute center of our (minuscule) worlds to a pathological level. This is a major cause behind the rising problems regarding loneliness and relationships in general, I think.
And it was very condescending as well, like explaining to you that the sky is blue while you were debatting of the weather implications of the cloud shapes.
Oh! I am blind, and due to my disability, am treated in a condescending way on a regular basis, so I didn't even notice. But now that you point it out... I can see what you mean. However, being used to being treated like a small child by random (supposedly well-meaning) strangers is so normal to me, I failed to recognize the pattern...
"Can your personal experiences with other people be so bad that it is actually beneficial for you in the long run to stay in solitude? If so, thats an indicator that some people are really horrible."
It might not be dependent only on your own experiences or even on specific people. If you have a significant number of friends going through rough relationships or divorces, what's the upside? Why bother getting married if the perceived risks outweigh the perceived benefits? As a society, we overestimate the benefits and heavily underestimate the risks. You can even see this baked into our laws in the asymmetric requirements/counseling to get married vs get divorced.
I am fully on your side. The asymmetry, or shall we call it sexism, in how divorces are handled, is definitely a contributing factor for younger men to no longer aim for marriage. If you look at it rationally, its simply too high a risk that you will get treated unfairly down the road in a few years.
I agree, but my original asymmetric comment was about how it's so easy to get married but is painful to get divorced. Making a massive legal decision of getting married doesn't require counseling, but most divorces require counseling sessions. Most people get lawyers for a divorce, but very few people get lawyers (or counseling, or financial consults) before marriage. So it seems all the focus is on the aftermath with new laws, regulations, or rulings on how to handle divorce with no focus on preventative education.
Oh yeah, young men have figured out the game and are done with marriage. There's only one statistic you need to know which is that 8 out of 10 divorces are initiated by the woman.
Why the fuck would any man marry ever again once he knows that? The odds are against you. Marriage and reproduction are such a fundamental thing that this took a couple generations to kick in after divorce laws were liberalized, but the jig is up now.
In what proportion of those marriages did the partner not initiating the divorce want the marriage to continue? Because without knowing that, this just tells is who more likely to act first.
I’m upvoting this comment because it’s a good bit of juicy flamebait and I wouldn’t like it to go to waste. Not on HN anyway. It has all the hallmarks of the genre trope. The undertone is that of the cliche: it’s women who are suffering, and the underlying blame is on men because people in general don’t care about the percentage of men who are lonely between the ages of X1 and X2. My feelings disagree with reality, so those high IQ incels have hijacked the narrative and are pushing their agenda. I’m chuckling at someone seriously suggesting that incels have the pop culture pull to execute on this. But I can play along - there are no wrong answers here.
I think there are a handful of reasons, some obvious, some too disturbing to discuss on a polite forum - but I’m sure folks here will jump to conjecture all the same that align with their educated opinions, as to the reasons why this narrative/reality is unfolding. This has been dragging on for decades and is only now really picking up steam.
In all seriousness, I would look towards in a kind of a squinting eyes way towards what Haidt is talking about. Social Media is toxic cancer and it has replaced a notion of positive communal relationships. I would then follow up with life priorities, and somewhere, very far down the line, interview a handful of those incels to get a raw (though tunnel-visioned) perspective on why they are the way they are. I would bridge topics like peoples needs and wants and desires and obsessions with wealth and being seen and heard and all these things as a kind of maelstrom for the unhappy and sad/solitudal landscape we have in front of us. Lives bereft of deeper joys and harmony in living.
People of course, both men and women, (and sometimes children too!) want it easy. They grow up with celeb magazines of the old or the Disney+ of the new and they have it in their mind that somewhere down the line, the cosmic balance will right itself and they will come out alright. But we all know, seeing the wealthy and prosperous on Instagram and TikTok and god knows what they’ll invent tomorrow, that we couldn’t be further from that. That the world is wholly, in human terms anyway, unfair unjust cruel et cetera. So naturally people gravitate towards complete detachment and, I suppose in a good bit of cases, resentment that manifests itself in all sorts of ways. Some inward, some outward.
But, nevermind that. I’m here for the flamebait, and OP delivered.
Thanks for upvoting, however, it didnt really help. However, I was fully aware this thread would cost me some karma. Besides:
> The undertone is that of the cliche: It's women who are suffering, and the underlying blame is on men
Nice you noticed. However, that "undertone" was deliberately "faked", because, you already know... Without that, I would have been flagged within a few minutes. IOW, I am well aware that whatever you write on the Internet, it better be positive towards women, because otherwise, you're surely going to be cancelled, no matter what what the topic is really about. Its thought police at its best.
Porn is visual only. Sex employs all the senses: sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing. There's also the excitement because of the unpredictability of dealing
with another human being.
I've had enough heartbreak and I'll take some more. It's ok.
https://archive.ph/Hx4mj
Alone time I find quite valuable.
Every now and then I find myself with a day or two by myself, having no expectations, nobody to have to coordinate with, nowhere to be at a particular time. It’s incredibly resetting.
I know it’s valuable because when I can pull it off, I feel like I’m stealing something.
Joys of being a non parent. I miss those 'open days' :(
Can't speak for anyone else of course, but before kids a day with no obligations was mostly just a nice day. With kids it is so much more significant.
My colleagues that don't have kids, they waste their time. Not by doing nothing - that would be awesome - but by creating problems for themselves that end up taking their spare time. It is like they believe they will always have empty days to spare.
> My colleagues that don't have kids, they waste their time
If I told you, “Having kids is a waste of your time” you’d be 100% sure that I’m wrong. And I might be. I might not be. All depends on perspective.
But there you sit confidently making a judgement about someone else’s time just like I did with you.
Sounds like "youth is wasted on the young" :)
You know your perspective also works in reverse. When I was young I wanted time away from my parents. Now that they're gone, I would love to spend even 5 minutes with them.
balance is a never ending struggle.
Au contraire, I get Columbus day off work. None of my kids are off school :) I’ve been looking forward to this coming Monday for months. Those brief periods of solitude must be taken advantage of with kids.
Being a parent is why I value them
You're right though -- all the parents I know desperately want alone time.
> Joys of being a non parent. I miss those 'open days' :(
and decade later you will miss 'occupied' days.
That’s what grandparents are for. Or at least were, in the past.
For some reason, after being own my own for a few days, I start to feel sorry for myself, feel nostalgic and don't take very well care of self anymore. So I'm super lucky, privileged for not being alone.
You need to overcommit for a while, then try doing it again for a few days.
Maybe do it more mindfully the next time? Like do something you have wanted to do alone for a long time, exactly the way you want to.
Or instead of eating poorly and staying in, get outside and hike?
> get outside and hike
God I would love to, but it’s always 85F+ and either raining or >80% humidity. Its miserable outside.
Do it anyway. Yes it sucks, but push through the suck.
Once in a while I can and do, but the suck makes it hard to do it consistently.
I have a treadmill and a big fan in my garage and it’s usable until summertime and that’s the best I got.
Interesting theory. The notion that some expressions of personality are obstructed by social 'noise' and thus benefit from solitude makes a lot of sense. By their reckoning, solitude is positive, voluntary and purposeful, the means to a desired end. In contrast, loneliness is negative, involuntary, a response to the loss of several sources of social support.
The OP (and others) suggest solitude's desiderata to be: 1) pursuit of a personal passion, and 2) disinterest in affirmation (or criticism) from others, 3) the belief that this journey will be preferable when taken alone.
Do the terms introvert and extrovert capture such personality quirks usefully? And are solitude and loneliness synonymous? I've long thought not.
As I understand the terms (informally), introverts are drained of energy when in a group while extroverts gain energy. But by that definition, loneliness should arise only when extroverts go it alone. Introverts should be immune. But not so, so there must be more to the story.
The best work I've read on the complexities of introversion and the merits of solitude is Susan Cain's marvelous book, "Quiet". As I recall, it confirms the OP's thesis.
The line between solitude and loniness is time and choice.
In all their examples, those people choose to be alone for a period of time. But could easily choose not to. Also the time alone is limited.
Though, loniness can happen with other people, not having anyone at all is a very lonely feeling. I remember seeing videos of people saying they have no friends and start breaking down in tears.
As I age and past friendships fade away, without any new ones due to my personality, habits, I wonder how long until that'd be me.
https://archive.ph/Hx4mj
Solitude is a big mind reset for me. So many of my most creative ideas come from my extremely long walks across Tokyo. I try to do these 10 - 20 hour walks a few times a year. My next one is next week. From west Tokyo to Chiba. It's becoming a kind of creative pilgrimage for me. No phone. Just a compass and my feet. Every hour I also do a creative exercise to help me connect with myself.
Brilliant idea, thanks. I thought my 2 hour walks were long (and beneficial). I need to try doubling that, then doubling that, then doubling that again.
2 hours is a good amount. I feel like after the hour mark it begins to to feel like a special journey.
I'm wondering if it works the same way if the solitude is choosing you.
The first line under the article headline says solitude isn't the same as loneliness.
And I assume you understand that ... ?
Why are you replying to GP's comment that is not talking about loneliness but solitude?
What exactly is it meant by Solitude choosing you? To me that sounds like involuntary time spent alone, solitude chasing you, which could also be understood as loneliness.
You are sent to Antarctica for 3 months.
You don't feel lonely but the contrary, you are quite excited.
You come back and write a blog post titled "I found my true self during an unexpected trip in solitude" or something.
Weird that this good curiosity got downvoted... for some reason when you say "I wonder" on HN it tends to be taken as if you're being sarcastic or something the like.
Because that wonder can be cleared up by simply reading a few sentences of the linked article.
I downvote anyone who says “I wonder…” and then asks a question the article answers.
Frankly I read the article and found no references to non-chosen aloneness other than 'When we don’t choose it, it’s isolation, Bowker says.'
The article continues beyond that sentence!
> But you can be alone and not feel lonely, or you can be with others and feel lonely. “Loneliness really refers to perceived social inadequacy of relationships
> “One of the clearest findings on solitude is if it’s chosen for the value that it has, it’s going to be a more positive experience,” says Netta Weinstein, a professor of psychology at the University of Reading in England and a co-author of “Solitude: The Science and Power of Being Alone.” “If it’s forced on you, it’s going to be a less positive experience.”
In fact you are right but the text is a bit hard to interpret for me. The only thing I can get out of it “If it’s forced on you, it’s going to be a less positive experience.”
So if it is non-chosen solitude, it will be less positive than chosen solitude.
Now what is the answer to the downvoted question, i still don't know the answer and in fact i wonder as well.
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Some of us saw what our fathers went through and thought 'that's not for me'
For me it's more 'been there done that, got the postcard'. In the past I have had little influence on my partners decisions but when they make bad decisions I'm expected to bail them out the consequences. Perhaps there is some selection criteria bias - women who date me are more likely to make bad decisions. Being old enough to have seen what has happened to the women I've dated and the women I've not dated makes me think I've dodged enough bullets for one lifetime.
The probability that when meet someone new that I like that person more than the people I have already met decreases as I meet more people. Since I've previously gotten to know a large number of people that probability is now too low for me to bother with it.
I covet intelligence and only find intelligent people interesting, instead of searching the globe for these people I prefer reading old books written by smart people.
I sometimes wonder about the negative effects of media (particularly literature) on my personal relationships. Minds in real life rarely measure up to what I find on the page. And yet I know that those words were the product of an embodied human and I wonder where they are.
They exist but are rare - with books you're generally looking at the best of all time that have undergone a very strong selection criteria bias. I think the shift from an intellectual elite culture to a more egalitarian culture has reduced the extent that such elites could be found in the same place and thus the likelihood of a very smart person meeting another very smart person is similarly greatly reduced.
> Well, forecasts says 45% of women 20-44 will be single 2030
From my (cis white mid-30s) male perspective, if this winds up being true then it will be because they choose to be single
They will lament that they cannot find any good men, but they will be overlooking "good enough" men in thier lives, I guarantee
I see this with all of my wife's friends all the time. They are all single and they have insane expectations for what they want out of a man
It's a mix of funny and sad because they often will tell her how she's lucky to have found such a great guy, but I wouldn't check even half of their dating requirements
And of course men have high standards too. But despite how gender norms have changed, it remains the case that men pursue women and women choose who they date. So it's on men to meet women's standards but also on women to have realistic, reasonable standards. I see women with unreasonable standards all the time.
Price is set at the margin with fewer females dating the remaining set the price. I think the core part of the problem is that women do not seem to know the actual distribution of men and what should be the expected likelihood of desired attributes. This is most obvious when they sincerely pick attributes which they believe to be the median range but are in fact only in the >90% of men. I think this is the predominant reason why fewer women are at the price setting margin.
There is little attention paid to the negative consequences of this overestimation - possibly because few people pay attention to older women who have paid those consequences and older women have no incentive to inform younger women as quite often they are still in competition with them. Trying to educate young women that they really should realistic about their prospects is not going to be popular. In general men appear to already have an accurate estimate of the distribution of attributes. I think the proportion of the difference is demonstrated by the attributes that men and women covet and the difficulty in achieving those attributes. For example losing weight is far easier than growing taler.
Women have no obligation to date or pair up. Why is it a problem if a lot of women's standards are too high for the majority of men and they decide to not date? It's well within their right to be single.
It’s not about obligation, it’s about loneliness. That was the start of this whole thread. Women with unrealistic expectations creating the conditions for their own loneliness.
I don’t think it’s entirely their fault though, as others in the thread seem to imply. The rise in expectations seems to closely match the rise of mass (and later social) media. Simply put, women and girls are exposed to all kinds of images and stories about attractive and high status men. Along with that we have dating apps that seem to reinforce this illusion of abundance. So then we should not be surprised at all that it’s so common for women to have an unrealistic picture of their prospects.
> Women with unrealistic expectations creating the conditions for their own loneliness.
Replace that with 'solitude' and the article pretty much explains why that is a non-issue. Women deciding they are better off alone is not a problem. Accusing them of being unhappy and then purporting to explain why is pretty weird.
If there are psychological issues with people being lonely, coming to the conclusion that they should date more and if they can't it's "women's fault" is kinda flabbergasting. The social fabric isn't made of romantic pairs, and that's definitely not women's collective responsibility.
I’m not accusing anyone of being unhappy. I am believing people when they say they are unhappy.
Furthermore I said specifically that it’s not women’s fault.
> it’s so common for women to have an unrealistic picture of their prospects
You kinda did.
> I am believing people when they say they are unhappy.
Who are these unhappy women that need to lower their standards to be happy? I see two different problems: people seem to be lonely because the social fabric is being corroded away; and some people seem to think that the issue is somehow related with too many single women.
Please don’t quote me out of context. The full quote is:
So then we should not be surprised at all that it’s so common for women to have an unrealistic picture of their prospects.
I was talking about the mechanisms for why women would have an unrealistic picture of their prospects. Much has been written about the unrealistic expectations of men which have been driven by mass media. It’s only fair to talk about the other side of the issue which has been largely ignored, by comparison.
But it’s not only the issue of expectations for dating. Young girls especially have been taught to have unrealistic expectations for their own appearance which has been driven by a ruthless set of social media algorithms that foster unhealthy comparisons (with celebrity influencers) across the entire internet.
Anyway, if you want to see what should be more realistic expectations, look at pictures of families from a hundred years ago or more. What will you see? Plain and ordinary people living simple lives. Nowadays people are taught to look at such lifestyles with revulsion. Instead, they live their lonely consumerist lifestyles in their tiny apartments.
You asked who all these lonely women are? They’re the friends of that guy’s wife from earlier in the thread. There are countless more women in the same situation.
There's so much strawmen here I don't want to take it apart because it feels so pointless. A lot of people being single has zero to do with anything else. People don't need to be in romantic relationships to be happy and certainly no one is wrong to have the standards they have for partners. It's their prerogative to decide whom to date and the whole narrative that there's a societal problem related to women not wanting to date the average guy is just disgusting.
> Women with unrealistic expectations creating the conditions for their own loneliness.
I find this similar to blaming fat people for obesity and diabetes. We evolved with food being scarce. We're not at all equipped to deal with junk food that's engineered to be addictive and the adverts for McDonald's and other junk everywhere on our lives.
Do you know how many animals are monogamous? Basically no mammals. This is something seen mostly in birds. And even out of monogamous birds only a fraction of them mate for life (which is what people typically mean when they say monogamous). Go and read about bonobos, chimpanzees and gorillas to learn about primate mating behaviour without any of the human bullshit.
What we see now is a kind of confused state. Societies have been mostly set up around families, although that's changed more recently with government welfare etc. Harems are still very much taboo in the West, but increasing inequality and centralisation of wealth can only mean one thing. Media (not just social media but that too) creates vastly unrealistic expectations for everyone, basically putting everyone together on the "world stage". Like junk food, our primate mating instincts aren't equipped to deal with any of this.
One thing I find funny when men blame women specifically for this is they never admit that they also want to mate with as many women as possible, preferably a different one every day. It's always implied that women are ruining monogamy but men would just be happy with one partner. Bull fucking shit. Truth is if any man had the opportunity to form a harem it would be taken in as heartbeat. It's really fucking lame to try to analyse other people before even analysing one's self.
> Do you know how many animals are monogamous? Basically no mammals
How many mammals have babies that require basically continuous care for years before they can be remotely self sufficient? Basically no mammals. This is something seen only in humans. So let's show a bit of care before drawing conclusions based on that.
> How many mammals have babies that require basically continuous care for years before they can be remotely self sufficient?
All great apes. I'm not drawing conclusion based on other animals, anyway. I'm looking at humans. It's just interesting to note we're not alone amongst mammals when it comes to polygamy.
We have to blame fat people for their actions. Pretending they are not responsible for their own choice is a really bad road to go down. These are adults, and we need to treat them as such. The victim mentality really has to stop, its nonesense beyond repair!
So would you convince a recovering alcoholic to drink then blame them when they do it?
I wouldn't convince a recovering alcoholic to drink, because I am neither the food industry nor an a-hole. However, I insist on blaming them if they do, because thats their body and their decision. We can talk about legislation, like, finally, treating alcohol like the drug it is, and stop pretending it is some sort of exception. But I insist on people being responsible for their own choices. I don't want to life in a world where adults are treated like children.
It's well within their right to be single, but don't complain if you want to be in a relationship and "can't find a good man"
Men aren't obligated to meet some unreasonable set of standards either
For this stuff to work, people need to meet each other in the middle somewhere
Sure, but women have the "biological clock", and many of them realize they have set their expectations too high when the clock is actually running out, which then turns into a disaster/depression for them. Men don't care when they start a family. If women miss the window, and thats also why the statistic was looking at women between 20-44, they are basically done with the dream of having a child. And yeah, I am fully on your side, voluntary singles should just be left alone and allowed to be happy. However, the "I am happy as a single" is more like a coping mechanism then a real stance, at least several stories confirm that...
My point was the skewed perception can lead to suboptimal decision making for women who don’t want to be single. It’s a non issue for women who do want to be single.
Physical attributes are easy to recognize, so if these weigh heavily in your expectations, you can more rapidly estimate the distribution. Being able to do this quickly also means you can break out populations to make more accurate estimates of your current environment; i.e. while the media bombards us with beautiful celebrities, you can maintain an independent estimation of your actual dating pool.
Social attributes take more time. You need to spend time with someone to understand where they are, and you would need to spend time with a lot of people to understand the distribution. You can try to use heuristics, like being in a relationship with someone you believe has similar expectations, but as noted those aren't actually very accurate.
I might take another track here as well and add a bit of blame on the overuse of perfumes and deodorant. I think they block actual pheromone sensing intrinsic to us which make said standards have more of a bearing than they should.
> but I wouldn't check even half of their dating requirements
I’ll bite. What do you think is on that list of dating requirements?
First step is to read the article.
Is “solitude” distinguished as a voluntary activity as opposed to involuntary aloneness (we could call it invalone)? Check. Does the article make clear that you should do this because you want to and not be alone if you feel lonely? Check. Does the article explain that being “lonely” is really a feeling of inadequacy, thus a first-person felt experience and not something that someone can just say that someone is? Check. Does the article make clear that you should be conscious about how you spend your time alone (don’t be mindless about it)? Check.[1] Does the article remember to remind us that so-called extroverts are a superior breed compared to those so-called introverts? Check.[2] Does the article mention the “loneliness epidemic”??? CHECK.
Is the article just a promotional piece for a book? Unclear (semi-check).
Your inane response makes as much sense as someone protesting on an article about people practicing Japanese tea rituals. “But we already consume too much coffeine!”
[1] We must use our noggin’ here: “solitude” here is not about doomscrolling Twitter. It’s about quality solitude, like going for a quiet walk or maybe meditating, not mindless social media consumption or something like that. Can you even call social media consumption solitude-time? I wouldn’t. You are too likely to get caught up reading annoying opinions from other people (Hell is other people’s opinions).
[2] > She adds that this may be because extroverts are often happier and better adjusted overall, and it’s likely their happiness and well-being — rather than their extroversion itself — that drives their enjoyment of solitude.
As a male near 60, all my relationships and a marriage have ended in heartbreak. I've been solo by choice since my mid 40s, and have never even thought about getting into another relationship. Just not worth it.
Thanks for proofing my point. Also, congrats for actually following through with your decision. Thats not a given for many, because natural urges typically are so strong, they sometimes resemble addicition. In any case, full power to you.
A single anecdote proved your point?
This article is about time spent alone, which isn't intrinsically tied to the kinds of relationships one has (i.e. can be a thing you do more than a long-term state you're in), and which certainly is not the same as not being married or in a romantic relationship:
- those not in a romantic relationship can have friends, family or community that they spend a lot of time with, or not
- those in a romantic relationship can have time alone (chosen or incidental, as in distanced relationships), or not
In fact there's some evidence on single people having more friends. Perhaps describing unmarried people as "single" is fundamentally misleading, and says more about society privileging certain relationships than it does about the person being described.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-single/201905...
Just because you’re single doesn’t mean you’re alone. Anecdotally, a lot of people are married or in relationships and are completely alone, miserable and struggling. Meanwhile despite being single, a lot of people are finding meaning beyond marriage. From a personal experience, being with the wrong partner can be worse than being single.
> I am a bit surprised, because I always thought the inherent attraction towards your prefered sex would always overrule bad experiences in the past, but apparently, I am wrong.
Sexuality is complicated. It isn’t binary. It exists on a spectrum and it would not be surprising for many people that the need for sex is less than the need for safety.
And people like me have no attraction even though we may be interested in relationships. I see so many bad relationships around me that I am just not willing to take the risk.
No one taught me how this was supposed to work. How can I mention I’m interested in someone without being fake or creepy?
> No one taught me how this was supposed to work.
That's not a good justification to check out. Life doesn't come with an instruction manual.
> How can I mention I’m interested in someone without being fake or creepy?
By being honest and earnest.
I am not sure what safety-vs-sex has to do with sexuality supposedly not being a binary thing? I deliberately wrote "preferred sex" to be as inclusive as I could, but I find everything else pretty much uncalled for. For me, for instance, sexuality is pretty much the most binary thing I can think of. Its OK that you see it differently. But hiding advocacy in every statement is really tiring...
It really is a bummer when someone just straight out projects all their trauma into a conversation, even when it is totally uncalled.
An anecdote:
I am learning French, I want to find places where I can listen/speak French all the time. I am also a Catholic and go to church every Sunday. My two neurons connected one day and I decided it is a great idea to join and hang out at a French parish.
I have acquaintances who come from France, they send their kids to French speaking schools here, they go to bars where French people hang out, etc... So, naturally, I decided to just ask them if they happen to know about French catholic communities.
Their replies were nothing like "no, I have no idea", or "yes, you can try at ..."; but, instead, they immediately derailed the conversation into how they don't believe in God and started rationalizing their decision to me as if I was going to be interested on all that ...
Which leads me to a tangential issue, we have become absurdly narcissistic. We think of us as the absolute center of our (minuscule) worlds to a pathological level. This is a major cause behind the rising problems regarding loneliness and relationships in general, I think.
What city would that be? Fellow francophone catholic here :)
Toronto, Canada.
Are you around? :D
And it was very condescending as well, like explaining to you that the sky is blue while you were debatting of the weather implications of the cloud shapes.
Oh! I am blind, and due to my disability, am treated in a condescending way on a regular basis, so I didn't even notice. But now that you point it out... I can see what you mean. However, being used to being treated like a small child by random (supposedly well-meaning) strangers is so normal to me, I failed to recognize the pattern...
Or, to flip it, what is your reason for being biased against solitude?
Isn't the pressure to be in a relationship just a form of "expectation" and/or "entitlement"?
"Can your personal experiences with other people be so bad that it is actually beneficial for you in the long run to stay in solitude? If so, thats an indicator that some people are really horrible."
It might not be dependent only on your own experiences or even on specific people. If you have a significant number of friends going through rough relationships or divorces, what's the upside? Why bother getting married if the perceived risks outweigh the perceived benefits? As a society, we overestimate the benefits and heavily underestimate the risks. You can even see this baked into our laws in the asymmetric requirements/counseling to get married vs get divorced.
I am fully on your side. The asymmetry, or shall we call it sexism, in how divorces are handled, is definitely a contributing factor for younger men to no longer aim for marriage. If you look at it rationally, its simply too high a risk that you will get treated unfairly down the road in a few years.
I agree, but my original asymmetric comment was about how it's so easy to get married but is painful to get divorced. Making a massive legal decision of getting married doesn't require counseling, but most divorces require counseling sessions. Most people get lawyers for a divorce, but very few people get lawyers (or counseling, or financial consults) before marriage. So it seems all the focus is on the aftermath with new laws, regulations, or rulings on how to handle divorce with no focus on preventative education.
Oh yeah, young men have figured out the game and are done with marriage. There's only one statistic you need to know which is that 8 out of 10 divorces are initiated by the woman.
Why the fuck would any man marry ever again once he knows that? The odds are against you. Marriage and reproduction are such a fundamental thing that this took a couple generations to kick in after divorce laws were liberalized, but the jig is up now.
In what proportion of those marriages did the partner not initiating the divorce want the marriage to continue? Because without knowing that, this just tells is who more likely to act first.
>this just tells is who more likely to act first
Which is irrelevant as that doesn't seem to be biased towards any specific sex.
It's all a matter of degree also
I’m upvoting this comment because it’s a good bit of juicy flamebait and I wouldn’t like it to go to waste. Not on HN anyway. It has all the hallmarks of the genre trope. The undertone is that of the cliche: it’s women who are suffering, and the underlying blame is on men because people in general don’t care about the percentage of men who are lonely between the ages of X1 and X2. My feelings disagree with reality, so those high IQ incels have hijacked the narrative and are pushing their agenda. I’m chuckling at someone seriously suggesting that incels have the pop culture pull to execute on this. But I can play along - there are no wrong answers here.
I think there are a handful of reasons, some obvious, some too disturbing to discuss on a polite forum - but I’m sure folks here will jump to conjecture all the same that align with their educated opinions, as to the reasons why this narrative/reality is unfolding. This has been dragging on for decades and is only now really picking up steam.
In all seriousness, I would look towards in a kind of a squinting eyes way towards what Haidt is talking about. Social Media is toxic cancer and it has replaced a notion of positive communal relationships. I would then follow up with life priorities, and somewhere, very far down the line, interview a handful of those incels to get a raw (though tunnel-visioned) perspective on why they are the way they are. I would bridge topics like peoples needs and wants and desires and obsessions with wealth and being seen and heard and all these things as a kind of maelstrom for the unhappy and sad/solitudal landscape we have in front of us. Lives bereft of deeper joys and harmony in living.
People of course, both men and women, (and sometimes children too!) want it easy. They grow up with celeb magazines of the old or the Disney+ of the new and they have it in their mind that somewhere down the line, the cosmic balance will right itself and they will come out alright. But we all know, seeing the wealthy and prosperous on Instagram and TikTok and god knows what they’ll invent tomorrow, that we couldn’t be further from that. That the world is wholly, in human terms anyway, unfair unjust cruel et cetera. So naturally people gravitate towards complete detachment and, I suppose in a good bit of cases, resentment that manifests itself in all sorts of ways. Some inward, some outward.
But, nevermind that. I’m here for the flamebait, and OP delivered.
Thanks for upvoting, however, it didnt really help. However, I was fully aware this thread would cost me some karma. Besides:
> The undertone is that of the cliche: It's women who are suffering, and the underlying blame is on men
Nice you noticed. However, that "undertone" was deliberately "faked", because, you already know... Without that, I would have been flagged within a few minutes. IOW, I am well aware that whatever you write on the Internet, it better be positive towards women, because otherwise, you're surely going to be cancelled, no matter what what the topic is really about. Its thought police at its best.
Do you have any sources?
For what, exactly? The 45%-single forecast is easy to Google. And the word "male loneliness epidemic" is also easy to drop into a YouTube search.
> I am a bit surprised, because I always thought the inherent attraction towards your prefered sex would always overrule bad experiences in the past
Porn exists. If you've had enough with the heartbreak etc then this is just an itch that's easy to scratch.
Porn is visual only. Sex employs all the senses: sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing. There's also the excitement because of the unpredictability of dealing with another human being.
I've had enough heartbreak and I'll take some more. It's ok.