joyd, I’m sorry about your problems. I hope you will recover. I felt like I loved people but they never felt the same, and I know even from such a one sided affection how painful having intense feelings for someone can be when relationships fall apart. Still regarding loneliness there are several things I think need to be separated. Firstly of the intensity of the subjective experience. Second the fact that the feeling of loneliness is separate from circumstances. Thirdly not ever being in love, and fourthly the duration of loneliness.

so one and two are connected – being alone / feeling lonely affects people differently. As you said you can be in a relationship and feel lonely. As Robert Pirsig said “Even in the presence of others he was completely alone”. This I think is true but my problem is not just that I’m alone, but that I have intense emotions, I have a high sex drive, and deep need for intimacy and closeness that is being completely unsatisfied for prolonged periods of time with no signs of any future resolution. These two issues of being alone and feeling alone are the crux of it, and there are many causes.

The third and fourth issues intensify the first two. They make it more painful, distressing, and tortuous. My loneliness is magnified by the weight of many thousands of days alone, a burden and misery that innumerable hours of exposition could barely scratch the surface of. And of never experiencing love: of having the illusion, dream and possibility that a relationship would resolve these emotions.

Maybe you will disagree, especially given your current situation, but I think that it’s better if you experienced requited love in the past than having never experienced it. At least you have some magical memories of moving moments of intimacy and connection to appreciate when things get dark. You got to experience love, and I know it can hurt, but what hurts more is never knowing, never even being wanted. Being so utterly undesirable despite your best efforts, of working so hard, and trying, of struggling and suffering and trying to repair your shattered mind into some vaguely socially acceptable non-damaged state. And constantly wondering whether finding the right person or people would be the cure for this sickness. I think it would, and that belief, really is the source of my sadness. but – “When you’ve never been moved it’s really hard to move on”, and well more than anything I want to feel for myself this central human experience, before I potentially dismiss it.

Anyway I have a troubled past and I’m trying to create something from the ruins of my mind. I know there are things to be grateful for but it all pales in significance to the feelings of love. For the quixotic optimist and lover inside me that never gets to express any affection or deeper sense of appreciation for another person, it is a fate worse than death to endure a life without love – yet that is precisely what circumstance, bad decisions, emotional problems, and depression have lead me to.

meditation is something I agree helps, and I think a quote by Victor E. Frankl is highly relevant here:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In
that space is our power to choose our response. In our
response lies our growth and our freedom.” – Victor E. Frankl

mindfulness meditation gives you an awareness of the space, of your choice in responding to stimuli. It liberates you from the tyranny of default, and from the unthinking response to the situation, and is of much help in taking control of your mind.

this I think is related to being lonely, and how you are not in control of your own mind and thoughts. Yet even here it is difficult, pain is necessary as it catalyses change if it’s intense enough it is a body’s response to a problematic situation. The problem is that often it causes too much pain and you can’t function or grow. So being lonely isn’t even intrinsically a bad thing, but the problem is how intense, prolonged, and unresolvable it can be.

Making peace with it is mostly what I have to resign myself to right now, accepting that nobody wants to be with me, and moving on with my life. I think connecting to social movements is a good idea, and culture is deeply connected in these feelings. The norms of monogamy, consumerism, individualism, capitalism, it’s all a toxic influence in the collective mind.

To conclude I would say that unless someone saves you, you have to come to terms with being lonely before you can function again.

Sorry I wrote so much, I still have much more to say, but think I wrote enough for now. Anyway thanks for your reply, even talking online makes me feel a little better, and gives me some suggestions for helping to cope.

DXM

Hi Smruthi

Thanks for your comment. You have a good point about feeling the world owes me happiness. I think it is a childish way of thinking, and something I know is unhelpful to my own development. It’s true that despite knowing it to be unhelpful I still in some way persist in this delusion. It’s difficult because it’s not totally nonsense. A few examples: Someone who works hard today is often rewarded tomorrow. If you have a job and work all day you expect to get paid – there is some correlation between effort and reward. Of course there are counter examples of CEO’s and rich people getting vastly disproportionate rewards for little work, and those on minimum wage working hard all week for no reward. I think love is the same way, to extend the analogy I’m working with very little reward, whilst others do ten times less and get ten times more. That’s the part of me that says: “this is wrong, this is totally unfair, and the world is unjust”. I work hard but it doesn’t translate into anything when it comes to relationships, and I feel like hard work should be rewarded.

To elaborate a little because I think the feeling of deserving is important in how I feel about loneliness: An idea I used to believe completely irrationally is related to my thoughts about this: Everyone has an equal life (not equal in terms of say 5 lovers each, 3 stable jobs, 13000 days of happiness – imagine it more like everyone gets 100000 tokens and each thing has a cost – requited love might be 10000 tokens, being attractive might be 7000, being intelligent 8000 and so on). Some get more love, others get security, others get creative talents, others get happiness. In the end all is weighed up and it would work out roughly fair. That’s what I thought. But there is no cosmic weighing scale that balances out good and bad events for every person, indeed one persons heaven is another persons hell. And the evidence of life in the past clearly contradicts this hypothesis. Someone is living the life your dreams as you are suffering, unwell, and unloved for potentially your entire existence. No cosmic forces are keeping track. There is nothing written down, just blank pages called the future waiting for you to write down the events of the novel of which you are the protagonist. In this sense there is no balance. It’s similar I think to the popular notion of Karma as “if you do bad then bad things will happen to you, and if you do good then good things will happen”. It doesn’t always work like that, but there is some correlation. liars will more likely get caught, people who steal are more likely to be punished, unloving people will find themselves unloved, and so on. Not always but often enough for there to be some truth in the idea. Same with this cosmic notion of fairness: it is sometimes present, but not always. Well, that’s part of the story.

The truth is closer to the statement by napoleon hill: ““Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success.”. There is some kind of balance, but it’s not a cosmic law. For example someone who is suffering if they learn the lessons that suffering is showing them, they too will be rewarded in some way that someone who has not suffered would not be. Perhaps through a better awareness of their own psychology, a deeper understanding of the situation they are in, and the increased motivation to change or grow from the suffering and dissatisfaction.

But this is only part of the picture too. For sometimes accumulated advantage is at play. Essentially because you had opportunities in the past more opportunities come to you in the future. Because you were fortunate enough to be loved then you have a more developed understanding of being a couple, you have a better understanding of how to make love, and how to give love, how to care without being desperate, how to deal with compromise, how to be with another person, and how to be happy together. This is true either way: experience builds upon itself. But if you missed out on love then you might have learned something else instead.

My current understanding is that there are rules to follow in getting what you want, and that no amount of suffering in the past will de facto counterbalance itself and give you some future reward. The universe doesn’t care about how much you suffered, but if you know the rules and act on them you will get what you want. Still there might be a compensation for those who have suffered. That of contrast – someone who has lived and suffered for a long time, when they find a way out they will appreciate it much more than someone who never sank to the depths of despair. Those who know the pain of being deeply alone, will experience even more richly the feeling of love and connection. They will appreciate it more than those who have never known such intense loneliness.

I studied the philosophical concept of justice quite extensively in the past, and the idea that fairness is a human construct is something I agree with. I think it has been documented in other animals too. Most human emotions are a throwback to another evolutionary time, and we carry the baggage of what worked for our ancestors. Fairness is deeply embedded in the human psyche. But it is not embedded in the universe. I agree the universe doesn’t owe me love – it doesn’t owe anyone anything. But I still feel like I deserve it considering what I’ve been through. I know this is not a good way to think as it leads mostly to reinforcing the feelings of bitterness and being cheated by life which are so detrimental to change and progress.

You make some good points and I agree with a lot of what you say about me, even if they are something like Barnum statements. But I disagree with the idea I have high expectations. In a sense my attitude is childish almost like saying: “I can’t get something I deeply desire so I’m going to sulk and complain about how unfair life is” but the problem is the negative effects of loneliness are well documented: Increased risk of suicide, increased risk of death / lower life expectancy, more prone to psychological problems, more prone to substance abuse, etc. That’s where the problem is. It’s not just that I really want it, but it’s a fundamental part of living a contented life. We all know it’s not money, it’s not having expensive things, or being a celebrity that will make us happy. It’s about doing something you enjoy, giving something back to the world, being in love, enjoying friendship, and having a genuine connection with other sentient beings. That’s why it’s so hard to accept, not because I have unrealistically high expectations but because my expectations are so low and even they are too high.

And that contrasted with the fact I see the most cruel, uncaring, unempathetic, philistines who are given someone to love. And a part of me feels bad that some misogynistic wife-beating aggressive brute gets a loving relationship whilst I’m alone. Just for way of context: I have lived this life for too long, ten’s of thousands of couples kissing in front of me, holding hands, laughing and in love. When I go out the few people I used to be friends with are with their girlfriends (two couples and me), them kissing each other and saying they love each other – whilst I sit there with tears in my eyes wishing I could feel that way for once. It’s the ubiquity of it, the caustic social influences, having to listen to people who start every other sentence with ‘my girlfriend and I…’ and having to just accept it for thousands of days without a break. Knowing you’re going to be alone night after night with nobody to tell you that you’re important or loved, or appreciated. It’s something you really have to live through to understand the severity of it. And I know that I focus too much on love, on finding someone to save me from myself. wishing to find someone to give me oxytocin, and dopamine, and for little things that are taken for granted by so many: holding hands, hugs, and prolonged eye contact, affectionate words, and the feeling of being valued. I have over-idealized it in the past, and perhaps I still do, but as I said I’m a caring, compassionate person, and I have human needs that are being ignored. My overvaluing then is the same as someone who was living in poverty might fantasize about winning the lottery, or someone in a wheelchair might dream about walking. Also yeah I have way too many interests but some days I just feel so acutely upset about this all that it’s hard to focus on them when I’m so alone.

Anyway I think my problem is surmountable, but it’s going to take a lot more work, effort, education, overcoming inhibitions, and transforming myself unrecognizably.

Also I have a lot of problems from various addictions which make my situation more difficult:
at times addictions to: Psychedelics, masturbation, procrastination, video games, Youtube, negative thinking. Plus I’m suffering from MDD, have little life experience, have underdeveloped social skills, I’m short and unattractive, have low-self esteem, low self-confidence, negative thought processes, lack of energy, don’t have any friends, I’m too susceptible to negative events, lack self-control, and live inside my head. It’s all connected and I am working on changing as much as I can.

To conclude, loneliness is one of the most painful emotions a human can experience. Life is unfair, but a lot of unfairness you have to accept however painful it is, keep working on yourself, and keep trying to change and improve. Things become more fair when you make the most of the opportunities you have.

Sorry for writing so much, I still didn’t get to the root of what I want to express but maybe I explained a little about my understanding and development on the issue, and a little about the idiosyncratic problems I have.

Thanks for your comment though Smruthi, I have lots of things to think about.

DXM