Loneliness

Last edit: 2007-10-13

About Loneliness

Loneliness is an emotional state in which a person experiences a powerful feeling of emptiness and isolation. This loneliness is more than just the feeling of wanting company or wanting to do something with another person. Loneliness is a feeling of being cut off, disconnected from, and alienated towards, other people. The lonely person may find it difficult or even impossible to have any form of meaningful human contact. Lonely people often experience a subjective sense of inner emptiness or hollowness, with feelings of separation or isolation from the world.

Some existentialist philosophy views loneliness as the essence of being human. Each human being comes into the world alone, travels through life as a separate person, and ultimately dies alone. Coping with this, accepting it, and learning how to direct our own lives with some degree of grace and satisfaction is the human condition. However, other existentialist thinkers argue the opposite. Human beings might be said to actively "engage" each other and the universe as they communicate and create, and loneliness is merely the feeling of being cut off from this process.

Buddhist philosophy argues that loneliness may be completely overcome by making authentic connections to other human beings, on an emotional level. According to this viewpoint, loneliness is the opposite of the natural human condition; it then becomes the lack of action against a human system as constant as hunger or thirst.

The feelings associated with loneliness feed on themselves - the more lonely you feel, the harder it is to take steps to break out of loneliness. However, feeling lonely is a phase and does not have to be a constant way of being. As with changing any patterns of behaviour, it may take effort and commitment to begin to move out of feeling lonely.

Breaking the cycle of loneliness requires finding its cause, then identifying any existing dysfunctional ways of dealing with it (hiding away, drinking alcohol, sleeping). The next recommended steps usually include identifying the settings and conditions under which one feels willing to communicate with others, and finally encouragement to take the 'risk' of contacting new people or former acquaintances.

It should be remembered that feeling lonely is a common human emotion experienced by everyone at times (and therefore is not a defect). Intimate friendships take time to develop, and sometimes it is useful to help deal with the loneliness by sharing your experiences with someone else.

Often, people mitigate loneliness by interacting with others via the phone or the Internet. However, it is widely believed that purely remote relationships are no substitute for in-person relationships - an opinion based at least partially on the fact that a person's true identity is difficult to determine on the Internet, and also that such relationships are less stable. Commitment to a friend or acquaintance is less strong, partly because the remote situation makes it easier to ignore the demands friends place upon each other, and because it is harder to share emotions in such a way.

Most importantly however, human beings react much more strongly to direct face-to-face interaction (even without physical contact of any sort) than to the abstracted type of communication present in remote relationships. Human beings are naturally gregarious creatures, and social interaction - including subconscious forms like reading another person's body language - has been proven in various studies to be a key element to improve / retain memory and other brain functions.

Solution : Dating

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Dating is the activity of looking for a suitable partner for an intimate, sexual relationship. The word refers to two daters agreeing on a time and date when they can meet and engage in some activity, thereby assessing their suitability for one another. Typically a person may date many different partners during the same time period in order to have the best chance of finding their most suitable available mate. As in the marketplace, liquidity is essential for all participants to achieve the best outcome available to them.

In many cultural traditions, dates are arranged by a third party.
Traditional dating activities include sharing entertainment or a meal. When the activity costs money, it has traditionally been the man's role to pay, although in recent times the practice of "going Dutch" (splitting the expenses) has emerged.

Types of date:

Standard date: a single couple together
Double date: two couples date together
Group date: a group of people with equal number of both genders date
Blind date: a date where neither of the participants knows about the other before the date

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