The Call of Solitude

A friend of mine wishes he could be lost in the woods with a cellular phone: that way, there could be utter silence with the opportunity to connect if he so desired. Yet the explorer of the Internet is never completely freed from the world. Tuned in to electronic information, he is inundated with knowledge. More and more, people are getting annoyed by the accessibility of modem hookups and the prevalence of telephones (on airplanes and in hotel rooms) because it makes them feel like they must work. At no other time in history have people's minds and bodies been so accessible. Today, being online seems the Western way to meet our needs for solitude and together time, but at what cost? Keeping silent about the pleasures of aloneness leaves us blind to the real allure of computer marvels. When an experience is altering our consciousness and we do not discriminate either how or why, then the experience is regulating us.

Alone in a Trance

Altered states of consciousness exploded into Western awareness in the 1960s, as fallout from the drug revolution and meditative practices. Such cultural adoption of altered states is commonly interpreted as anything from ritualized pathology to institutionalized religion. Yet certain altered states seem a direct link to that early sensory state of aloneness that we experience in the womb, and allow us to drift into a private world despite what is happening all around us.

Trance dancing, for instance, offers a unique kind of aloneness. Once I strolled on a boardwalk at Baltimore's Inner Harbor. The pavement was alive with boom boxes playing loud music, and a man began to gyrate to the sounds. Every part of his body moved in synchrony. Before long he was in his own world. If we look at trance as a way to be both engaged and disengaged from social connections, then we can understand it as a clever way to regulate alonetime and attachment.

Together and Alone: Negotiating Relationships

"It's hell with them or without them" is the phrase often used to describe life with another—male or female. Are long-term relationships possible? I believe so, but my blueprint has to do with reconstruction of alonetime needs.

Romantic love and a stable relationship were once seen as antithetical to each other. Now, according to one study on couples, "The two are supposed to exist in harmony. Partners are supposed to be able to switch from lawn-mowing and diapers to torrid sex at the drop of a hat; from long hours at work to sweet moments in the sun." The strain on couples to be all things to each other is no less than the general strain on people in all areas of society. Can all this be accomplished without one of the partners calling for time out? Obviously not, for it seems that as the push grows for greater and greater intimacy between people, so has the number of couples seeking separations and divorce.

After the first phase of ecstatic inseparableness, lovers feel a need to find themselves. The decline in synchrony between partners is rarely understood as part of the process of carrying love past the initial stage. When we look at the dynamics of relationships through an alonetime lens, our understanding changes. For instance, fighting has many causes. Many times anger, if not carried too far, is simply the alone need asserting itself the only way it can. It may be just what's needed to clear the air and gain breathing space and distance from your mate. Many of us remember, as young children, playing happily with friends but getting into a fight moments before parting, which made it easier to say good-bye.

When patients, male or female, speak of a desire to break away from their loved ones, I hear an enormous longing to be alone coupled with anguish about separating. Because of our confused beliefs about solitude, we are much more likely to complain to a therapist or friend that "I have problems with intimacy" than to say, "I need to be alone more often." We wonder if, by having fun alone, we are unfaithful to our spouse. I suggest learning to view solitude as part of ordinary experience rather than an artificial barrier against involvement with the world.

So how do we negotiate alonetime? Expressions such as "I need space" sting because they are so often disguised rejections. I can picture one significant change. People meet. They probe each other's likes and dislikes. The questions get serious. "Where do you want to live? Do you want children?" Add a few more: "Do you like to be alone? How frequently? Let me tell you what alonetime means to me." This kind of dialogue may enable us to freshly air our needs without threatening others.