Do you feel some people are meant to be alone?

I think that there is a certain amount of adaptiveness that is necessary to make relationships work, and I don’t think that’s intuitive for everyone.

I think there is a big difference between people who want to be alone by choice and people who are alone simply because they can’t find someone.

Treat everyone equal and you will have no enemies.

Be comfortable with yourself and people will flock to you.

Be kind in everything that you do you will never be alone. The world is always looking for someone who they know that they can trust. Be this man and doors will open from the bottom to the top.

No one is meant to be anything. Anyone could have a partner.

However, I do think there are a lot of people who are unwilling to make the compromises necessary to have a fulfilling relationship.

My mother is someone who I call a “career single” because she has decided not to get married and doesn’t particularly want to have a long-term romantic relationship. This is not for lack for options or offers. She actually has been engaged and even gets asked out on dates sometimes. She has chosen to be “alone.” This does not mean she is lonely nor does it mean she is on the lookout for a boyfriend or husband. In fact, she once told me that she believes that in this life, she is not meant to have that great romance, and she is completely fine with it. I’m just happy that I don’t have to share my mommy. :)

I agree no one has to do anything, they choose what they want in life. We all make choices big or small everyday. I think certian people choose based on their inner happiness to outwardly express it by dating someone and being happy.

i dont remember where but somewhere in the bible it says anyone who desires a partner, he has created one for them. so i suppose some people are meant to but they would be cool with that

And then there’s the people who want relationships, want to be surrounded by friends and family but alienate everyone around them due to their selfish ways and constant lies. Surrounded by self-made drama all in an attempt to be the victim/center of attention.

Those folks, IMHO, are destined to be alone.

I’m the half glass full person. I want to believe that there is someone for everyone – people that are looking, wanting, needing someone special. No one is meant to be alone.

I work in healthcare and often see people who are cognitively normal, but have other disabilities which must make it especially difficult to find romance, or even friendships.

I recall once when my son was young and we were on the one vacation I splurged on, we went out to brekfast and were waiting behind a couple of whom the husband was regular size, and the wife was a Little Person. I doubt that many average people give those with differences a chance, and I reluctantly admit that I don’t know whether I could.

@daloon unable to make the compromises, or uncomfortable making the compromises. I think most people are aware that having friends, and lovers would make them more happy. Just as we are all aware that 30 minutes of exercise every day would make us more healthy. It’s just that for some people socializing is more uncomfortable than for others. Some people have panic attacks in crowds, some people get stage fright, and some of us just get nervous when we meet new people in a party.

So what do you do when the thing that will make you happy will first make you very unhappy? I suppose you weigh the cost and the benefit, and you either go to the party or you don’t. But recent studies have shown that people who identify as extroverts report a greater sense of life fullfillment, make more moeny, and even live longer. It’s hard to tell if the introversion is causal to unhappiness, or vice versa, but I think it’s fair to say that if someone put a gun to each and every person’s head and made them spend time with more people, most of us would be better off for it.

Yeah, I’m afraid I might be one of them.

Katawa has it exactly right. People are different not only regarding social needs but also in changes in needs over time. I came from a very large family and when I left home everybody said I would miss it-in fact I LOVED living alone. However biology tends to prevail at 19 so I embarked on a long term relationship that lasted 2 decades. For many women and I suppose some men, the problem is you give up so much of yourself over the long term.

In more casual relationships you may be able to hold something back. I have had to break off relationships when the other party would not accept there was going to be no marriage even though that was stated going in.

These days I seldom even entertain in my home because when I want the evening to be over, it will be. It is so nice when you can control the parameters of your relationships and after a busy week when you haven’t had a moment to think that you can go home, close the door and do exactly what you want.

@jesse: I was thinking more of intimate relationships than friends and parties and such. To stay in such relationship requires a lot of negotiation and compromise.

Galileogirl’s answer is a good example. She wants to be able to have a lot of control over her environment. She knows she can’t do that and live with someone else. So, she controls the parameters of her relationships so she can go home to privacy, and do whatever she wants.

You can’t have that if you are in an intimate relationship. And more and more, these days, younger folk are making the choice that galileogirl has made.

Right now in my life, I can understand why people would want to be alone. It’s easy to get bored of/sick of someone when you see them too much.

Alone time allows me to think. Being around people all the time makes me touchy and then I tend to snap at people.
(Hope I don’t come off as a crabby hermit).

Hammer, I don’t know. I think some people do make that decision, but I have a hard time believing that you are that person. I think it’s harder, as we get older, to find someone. I spend years single…yes, I dated, but I was convinced I would never find someone, again. I had already been married and really started thinking that was my chance. It truly happened when I least expected it and probably at one of the lower parts of my life.

We do get set in our ways, but truly, I don’t think you are (from times we’ve traded PMs) the type that is not ok with compromise. You are a kind and giving person. I think, though, it just gets a bit more difficult.

I think there are the people that truly are ok with being single. They are happier that way. My sister is single, she dates someone, on and off…but she seems to be happier this way. They tried living together, every other day, it was a new war. She likes her space.

For you personally, only you can answer the question – in general, I think there is a mix of people – but, I guess I believe that some have just thrown in the towel.

It’s interesting. My first interpretation of your question, hammer, was that by “alone” you meant alone in a living space. However, I just realized that I know couples, even married couples, who don’t live together. They both need space, sometimes for artistic reasons, sometimes because when they get depressed they can’t stand anyone else around. I’m sure there are other reasons.

So now I’m wondering whether you mean physically alone, or unpartnered.

I think some people are destined to be physically alone. I’m not sure if I think there’s anyone who is meant to be unpartnered.

This is one of the things that bothers me about the Catholic requirement for priests to be unmarried. So much of life has to do with marital relationships. How can someone who has never experienced an intimate relationship provide any meaningful advice to a married couple?

I think there is something important to humans that is learned by living in a close relationship with someone else. I worry about people who don’t do that. Perhaps I shouldn’t. Maybe I’m just being prejudiced again. But I think humans are social animals, and have evolved to relate to each other.

I’m sure some people get fewer of those “relatioship” genes. There are people who take solitude to an extreme—living out in the wilderness for years. I always get this niggling feeling that something must be missing for them. It makes me sad. But I know there’s nothing I can do about it, nor is there anything I should do about it.

thanks everyone for your thoughts I loved reading all of the feelings on this.

@daloon, interestingly, it’s only Roman Catholic priests that can’t marry. I has to do with priests leaving church property to their offspring in the middle ages. Greek Orthodox priests can marry.

I think some people prefer to be alone or are better suited to it. To me, “meant to be” is loaded language.

thank for your answer @Jeruba but can you tell me why you think it is a loaded language?

Sure. Because “meant to be” (= intended to be) presumes that there is a someone or a something that has the intent, whether a deity, “fate,” or what have you. That implies a cosmology that includes the idea of purpose or intentionality coming from some force or power all the way down to trivial matters such as who should pair with whom.

I don’t believe in any such thing, and I am put off by any notion that says we should all be subscribers to that idea, as if it were a given. It isn’t “just an expression,” shrugging off its literal meaning, which can’t be taken for granted any more than we can assume that we all have common ground in any other implicit religious or spiritual belief. So I won’t use that phrase to express the idea of compatibility between people or any other effect of human interaction.

@Jeruba thanks again for your answers.

I don’t think anyone is meant to be alone, or with a partner. Some people function better alone, like me. But then I am told it is because I haven’t found the right person. I don’t believe it has anything to do with being introverted I am highly sociable when I feel like it. In fact managing people, winning over people is part of my job. I have no idea why I chose to be alone. I think it’s just easier. Maybe I suspect all relationships would be draining as I have come from many co-dependant ones. Which is wrong, I am sure some are not. Hmm good question. No idea!

I don’t think it’s necessarily that you haven’t found the right person. It could be that you don’t want to compromise enough to be partnered, @Just_Justine. I think there are probably other psychological reasons why you remain alone. You said it’s just easier, and that is true. You can have things exactly as you want them when you are self-sufficient on your own.

It sounds like you have been burned in many relationships, and that’s another reason why many people prefer to remain single. Sometimes people don’t trust their own judgment any more. Women, in particular, seem to have trouble staying away from jerks. I sometimes wonder if a guy becomes a “jerk” the minute he hurts you.

@wundayatta: For the most part, you are correct. However, in defense of ladies who have dated jerks, (like myself :P) the manner in which they hurt you can make you realize they are jerks. However, there are a lot of women who declare a guy to be a jerk just because they break up.

@wundayatta the biggest jerk I dated was 8 years and female.

I don’t hang out with guys who are jerks, so I’m not sure exactly how they behave. What interests me is the motives for being a jerk. The underlying motives not the knee-jerk accusations people make. What is the psychology that causes someone to be a jerk. I know this sounds anathema, but a sympathetic explanation of what motivates them to behave as they do.

@wundayatta: I can tell you about my own big jerk experience luckily for me there haven’t been a lot.

What made this guy a jerk was that he was only interested in one kind of girl. He wanted the needy damsel in distress. I am most certainly not one of those and that’s something that’s apparent almost from the minute you’ve met me. This guy strung me along for six months. I did break things off a few times with him but we kept getting into the same situation. He was a jerk because he wanted me to be meek and helpless and because I wasn’t, he didn’t want to date me. He just wanted to hook up with me. In the end, he went after my best friend while still fucking me. Oh yeah, and he was delusional about the whole situation too. He edited some things in his mind to the point of remembering things completely differently from what happened. Wouldn’t you know it, these new memories always seemed to make me look bad.

Anyway, I don’t know the psychology behind his particular reason for being a complete jerk but I can tell you that I was too dazzled to see anything wrong until it was too late.

Also, women don’t only like jerks like a lot of guys seem to think. However, that is a whole can of worms unto itself and I will refrain from expounding for the time being. :)

Life sucks as it is, and growing old all alone without a love life makes it even much worse.