It is natural to feel extreme loneliness when your love relationship ends. But healing can come from the pain, if you listen to it. You can learn how to grow through loneliness to the stage of aloneness—where you are comfortable being by yourself.
That grows slowly and
Undetected. Its symptoms
Are terrifying.
Loneliness is a dark,
Unseeing veil that covers
You with sadness, and a
Desperate race to conquer the
Complete spiritual and
Emotional emptiness…
In an unmerciful world.
I am experiencing this
Disease, and wish I could
Find a cure—
But even a ray of sunlight
Is a blessed thing.
For loneliness demands; it takes
Everything from you and
In return gives you nothing
But solitude; as if you
Were the only person.
—Elaine
As we observe others climbing this mountain of rebuilding blocks, we see a lot of lonely people. There are those who have withdrawn into their “caves,” just peering out once in a while, looking very sad and dejected. And there are the lonely people who insist on being with somebody else, so they’re always holding hands or following somebody around. And then there are the busy ones—always busy doing this and that so they never have to face their loneliness. Some express their loneliness like a vacuum—“sucking up” everyone around in order to fill the void. For others, it’s like an iceberg—trying to gain warmth by staying as close as possible to whomever they can.
Loneliness is pain. But it is a pain that tells us we have something important to learn.
The formerly married do not have a corner on the loneliness market. Untold numbers suffer from the affliction. For many, it began in childhood and persisted through the marriage and into the divorce. (Another cause of divorce, for those of you who are keeping track.) This may be a crucial part of the climb for you if loneliness has been a stumbling block for years.
The loneliness that comes when that special person is gone is often more intense than any you have ever felt. Suddenly, you have no one with whom to share meals, your bed, or the special moments in your children’s growth. Used to having the sounds, smells, and touch of that other person in the home, you now know nothing but silence. There is a strange emptiness in the house—even a house full of children—as though a gong were struck and produced no sound. You can find no one in the whole world to see, hear, or feel as you do. Friends who do try to reach out seem distant, even as you most need them to be close and real.
A voice within you may warn, “Withdraw, withdraw, and you won’t be hurt again!” You want seclusion, like a wounded dog that retires to parts unknown until its wound is healed. At the same time, you crave emotional warmth, to be a child, to have someone care for you.
Some who have been lonely in marriage are actually relieved to end the relationship. But there is now a different kind of loneliness. They were never really emotionally close to the loved one; life with that person may have been painful, anger-filled, frustrating, distant—and lonely. (Another cause of divorce—are you keeping track?) So ending the relationship comes as a relief…but a new loneliness is there nonetheless.
Many of the rebuilding blocks have a three-stage pattern. For loneliness, the first stage is withdrawal—you may withdraw or at least fantasize about it.
Some people hide at home and brood so that others will not suspect their loneliness. Another approach is to play the “poor-little-me game,” hoping that someone will come along and feel sorry for them. The goal is to keep others from seeing how much one hurts, while at the same time letting the former partner know.
The quiet is a constant reminder during this stage that your partner is gone—really gone. The silence can be crushing. An inability to concentrate makes reading difficult. Watching TV or surfing the web seems boring. Nothing feels exciting. There is a nagging, restless desire to do something—but what?
Withdrawal may be appropriate for some during this period because—let’s face it—the lonely are not very good company. Their need for emotional warmth is insatiable. The need often stifles friends, engulfs them, and denies them space to be themselves, to be friends. There is an old nursery story about millions and billions and trillions of cats that began to eat one another up until there were no cats left. Close friends can “eat each other up” during this first stage of withdrawal until there is nothing left of either!
Life is often like a pendulum, swinging from one extreme to the other. Seeking ways to escape extreme loneliness, many people leave behind their withdrawal to enter the second stage of loneliness: becoming “busyholics,” with an activity planned for each night of the week and two on Saturdays and Sundays. They work long hours and find all kinds of excuses to keep working rather than coming home to emptiness. (They also may have been workaholics while married, perhaps to keep from coming home to a lonely marriage. Add that one to your list of why relationships end.) They go out with people they really do not enjoy just to avoid being alone. A party for singles may last all night—no one wants to go home to be alone!
These people are running from themselves—as though a frightening ghost lurks inside them, the ghost of loneliness. For those who have been truly lonely, the ghost may even seem real. They never take time to stop and look at what they are doing or where they are going because they are so busy running. Instead of climbing up the mountain, they are running around it in circles. (Sound familiar?)
This “busy-ness” stage of loneliness varies in length and intensity from person to person. Some may only want to be busy, while others actually keep themselves so busy that they have to walk on tiptoes to keep their posteriors from dragging. Eventually, all get tired and begin to realize that there must be more to life than running from the ghost of loneliness. That’s when the slowdown period begins into the aloneness stage.
Aloneness—what one friend calls the “all-oneness” stage—is finally achieved at the point of being comfortable by yourself. You may choose to be at home alone by the fire with a book rather than going out to be with people you really do not like. Development of your inner resources leads to interests, activities, thoughts, and attitudes that make it comfortable to be alone with yourself.
How do you get there from here? Start by facing the ghost of loneliness and realizing that it is a ghost. You have run from it, feared it, avoided it. But when you turn to that ghost of loneliness and say, “Boo!” often the ghost loses its power and control. You have accepted loneliness as part of being human, and you thereby become more comfortable being alone.
Accept also that loneliness has healing qualities. A period of time alone with yourself allows introspection, reflection, growth, and development of the inner self. Hollowness and emptiness are replaced by inner fullness and strength. You have made a giant step toward independence when you become comfortable by yourself, no longer dependent on the company of others.
We encourage you to go slowly in seeking new relationships at this point on the trail. You really need to learn to be alone with yourself. What’s more, choosing to be with another person to escape loneliness is a very unhealthy reason to begin another love relationship. There is tremendous therapeutic value in being by yourself, even lonely for a time, before you start another love relationship.
Time really is the best healer. A period of loneliness—and selfdiscovery—is part of the remedy you need. This is an important growth stage in your life. Later, when the time is right, you can choose to enter into your next relationship because you want to, not because you need the next relationship to overcome loneliness.
A mentally healthy person maintains a balance between being with others and being alone. You need to find the proper balance for you.
Children suffer loneliness too after their parents divorce. They have the same kind of empty feelings inside them that their parents have. They have the same need to be with others to fill up that loneliness, but they also fear being close to others.
How they feel around their peers can vary greatly. In one community we heard about, divorce was so prevalent that when one boy told his school friends that his parents were getting a divorce, another kid said, “Your parents are finally getting with it, aren’t they?” In another community, though, divorce can still be so uncommon that your son or daughter could be the only child of divorce in the grade.
Children’s daily living habits are altered by divorce just like those of their parents. At home, there is only one parent at a time now to spend time with, to play with, to put them to bed. And the kids feel the loneliness of the house, too—whether it’s a new house altogether or the same one after one parent moves out. In one parental home, there may not be familiar books or toys to play with. Often one parent’s new home is not set up for children or may be located in a new neighborhood, away from friends.
Kids need to work through this loneliness—just as parents do—in order to develop their own healthy feelings of aloneness. Kids need to learn that they have the resources within themselves to spend time alone without having to have another person around.
Many kids may have been lonely before the divorce because the interaction within the family did not help them to feel that they belonged. Divorce tends to increase this feeling of not belonging or not being okay. However, perhaps the crisis itself can be used to help deal directly with the problem.
This is a special time for parents to help their children feel that they belong, that they are loved, and that they are an important part of a new (restructured) family. They need help in learning to live with a single parent, two parents living apart, new stepparent(s) and maybe even stepsiblings. (Again, we caution you not to develop serious new relationships too soon!)
As with all of the rebuilding blocks, when you’re dealing with your own loneliness, it is very difficult to have enough emotional time and energy left to devote to the kids’ needs. Like putting your own oxygen mask on first in an airplane emergency, it may be necessary for you to work through your own rebuilding blocks first; then you’ll be better able to help your children.
Do some work now on your own capacity for being alone. If you can honestly answer “yes” to most of the items listed below, you have developed a healthy aloneness and you are ready to move on up the mountain. If more than three or four of these areas need work, spend some time going over this chapter so you can become more comfortable being by yourself.