So what do you folks do to combat loneliness? I've tried meetup.com but the groups I joined haven't quite worked out for me. Outside of work acquaintances and classmates, I don't socialize.
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The Lethality of Loneliness
101–110 of 166 posts
Re: The Lethality of Loneliness
#102Re: The Lethality of Loneliness
#103> At one point, the psychologists thought of designing a mobile app, a sort of electronic nagging mother, to help people break bad social habits. (You’d check an item off the list, say, if you remembered to talk to anyone that day—a store clerk or a librarian.) But they didn’t get funding for the software, so now they’re focusing on a simpler and more low-tech fix. This mobile app sounds like something that would be…
There are a lot of apps that could be used this way. I think http://lift.do might work well for this. And I know of people using our own http://beeminder.com for things like this.
This is helpful.
Re: The Lethality of Loneliness
#104So what do you folks do to combat loneliness? I've tried meetup.com but the groups I joined haven't quite worked out for me. Outside of work acquaintances and classmates, I don't socialize.
Sometimes, with Omegle and clones, you get a good, intimate, one to one connection with a basically-anonymous complete stranger. And it's great, a real mood lifter. It just doesn't happen at all often. Perhaps there's a way to adjust that kind of site design to make them more successful at that kind of connection?
Do you meet good people on Omegle?
Re: The Lethality of Loneliness
#105I'm probably entering the most lonely stage of my life at the moment, having my 3rd alcohol related arrest has really pushed me further down the hole. Despite all of my legal problems, I'm still holding down the same job, but I feel at my age I've really done myself in. Obviously booze is a problem of which I've completely eradicated from my life over the past 2 months. The really sad part is I'm well adjusted otherw…
> I feel I'm trapped now by my past and I'm really out of options to socialize on any meaningful level.
What's stopping you from socializing?
Re: The Lethality of Loneliness
#106As a recent college-grad who'd moved to suburbia, I think the automobile-centric culture in America is what is killing intimacy. If you were not able to make close friends in college/early-life, than once you live on your own in the suburbs, it often feels impossible to get any sense of intimacy. Intimacy is built up with small moments, and when every interaction has to be a commute-laden ordeal, you lose the opportunity for spontaneous and random social interactions, making the process of building of relationships orders of magnitude slower.
Re: The Lethality of Loneliness
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how romantic relationships fit in. I don't have that many friends, but I have someone to talk to every day and I can be around my family. But not having been in a relationship for many years, or rather, not ever having been in one that could be called serious has started to occupy a lot of my thinking time. It's something I'm reminded of everyday, like it was a disease. It is often said that one has to be ha…
> Why does it feel so worthless if I'm not able to share it with someone I love? Oh man, the answer to that is mysterious and beautiful. Let's separate two things: romance and love. We think we want romance but we really want love. We think we need another person to love, but the truth is, Love Is. It's present wherever you are, whatever moment. It's just, we usually have our heads stuck up our asses and so we don't…
Something that touched me was: "Love is the evidence of the oneness of all things" ... how to say it, there really is only one thing, the universe, and the ego notions that we have of our separateness are an illusion.
When you and your couple "become one" you're just like drops of water running together. Love is the good feeling of like rejoining with like.
When you are in a couple, you still can be "couple lonely" -- you seek out other "couple friends" ... maybe have kids? You want more love, you want to continue joining together with other pieces of the universe.
Re: The Lethality of Loneliness
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
The loneliest period of my life was during my clubbing days in my 20s. I was out doing something almost every night, had a few dozen people I called friends. Sometimes it was alot of fun, but it was ultimately draining... the connections were superficial at best. Moved away shortly after turning 26, stopped answering almost all calls and had little social interaction for about 6 mos. Then I got a dog and started meet…
I know what you mean. A friend of mine was saying he was heavily into the party scene in the years before he met his now fiancée. He said meeting her earlier would have saved him years of going out to clubs for the sake of not feeling lonely. And of course a lot of use feel like it is easier to meet someone when we don't have our walls up. But most connections made at a club are superficial at best like you said.
Just to be clear - these weren't people I randomly met going out. Most of them started as friends from college, friends from work, friends of those friends, etc. This was a big social circle that was fairly consistant/intact for a period of about 5 years. We did most things together and from an outsider's perspective we were close knit. But really the glue was we partied well and we did it often, perhaps a vibe of mutually ensured self-destruction.
While it produced some of the most exciting moments in my life and most of us acted like we really cared about each other, it just felt forced. Personal bounds were loose. Rumors/talking smack was common. It was caustic and emotionally draining. I didn't realize it much while it was happening because it felt awesome to have this big group of cool friends, but after some time you just realize you feel like total crap - basically you're surrounded by all these people yet you have no one to talk to because whatever you say can be used against you.
Re: The Lethality of Loneliness
#109I'm probably entering the most lonely stage of my life at the moment, having my 3rd alcohol related arrest has really pushed me further down the hole. Despite all of my legal problems, I'm still holding down the same job, but I feel at my age I've really done myself in. Obviously booze is a problem of which I've completely eradicated from my life over the past 2 months. The really sad part is I'm well adjusted otherw…
1. Your subjective view of your own situation is very negative - "done myself in", "a life of doom" etc.
2. At the same time your situation is objectively good - you have a good profession and a good job, you're not complaining about health problems other than alcohol dependency, and you kicked the alcohol for two months now. Even if you went to jail you're out free now. The whole life is in front of you.
Given the obvious contradiction here, I suggest that you should not trust your own judgement, and instead defer to someone else until your judgement is repaired. This sort of discrepancy is indicative of anxiety-type disorder, the kind that impairs your ability to evaluate your situation and makes everything looks worse than it is. The best you can do is seek help from a professional psychotherapist, and do exactly as they instruct you. Do not deviate, do not "optimize", do not skip steps. Suspend all judgement and do exactly as you're told. Use your logical side to overrule your emotional side and just follow the program, because it's the right thing to do.
Re: The Lethality of Loneliness
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I joined a weekly hiking group.
I'm considering this myself. Did you find you needed prior experience before partaking?
I'd been biking around 10 miles daily prior to it, but was still hit hard by my first hike. It was about 8 miles with a 2,000 foot climb, and I could barely walk for three days after. A few more hikes, however, and I was reasonably well conditioned. Well worth it, but could even be avoided somewhat with a more reasonable few starting hikes.