the eerieness of Sunday afternoons, the sense of exclusion during the holidays… We know

the agonies of being on our own very well. What is far less well understood,

is the enormously high price exacted on the other

side of the equation. The fear of being alone is perhaps

responsible for more unhappy relationships, more throttling of psychological development

and more pent up misery than almost any other: it is – by any reckoning

– one of the single greatest contributors to human misery and the driver of some of

our weightiest and most unfortunate decisions. If only we were able to get the costs of what

is for the most part a simple misapprehension clear in our minds, we might save ourselves

a substantial portion of our lives.

We can pick out at least seven unnecessary penalties:

– For a start, and most obviously, people who are afraid of being alone make some very

wrong choices around the company they keep. They have no option but to privilege any one

over the appropriate one.

They don't have the

strength to be able to hold out – as one must – for the 20th or 200th candidate.

The only souls with any realistic chance of ending up with the partner they deserve are

those who have properly reconciled themselves to the prospect of never being with anyone

at all. – Being with not quite the right person

sounds almost bearable but extended over time, like a proverbial pebble in a shoe, 'slightly

wrong' ends up indistinguishable from 'entirely horrific'. No nagging doubt one has ever

entertained on a wedding day will fail, with the addition of several years, to become a

cause for mind-shattering despair. Every beautiful location we travel to together will be ruined,

every promising moment will be trampled upon, every success will be compromised. What may

begin as slight fractiousness or tedium winds up as cataclysmic irritation, self-disgust,

sexual misery, broken finances and the kind of excruciating loneliness that – ironically

– merely and innocently being 'on our own' would never have the power to generate.

– Furthermore, when terrified of loneliness, we have no strength to argue for our needs

within any relationship. One is always at the mercy of the one who fears loneliness

less. Partners develop an advanced sense of the person who has nowhere else to go. It's

no use stamping our feet after an argument and saying 'we've had enough' when,

in reality, everyone knows that we will never have had enough – so scared are we of having

dinner on our own. – What's worse, after time in the wrong

sort of company, we tend to develop learned helplessness: every reluctance we once had

to be alone grows worse, even as we acquire more experience of what bad company actually

means. In our comfortable but deadening captivity, the wild appears more terrifying still: we

can't now imagine ever knowing how to change the dishwasher fluid alone, walking into a

party by ourselves or taking the initiative to send our nephews birthday presents, so

used have we become to using the other to compensate for our weaknesses. We experience

none of the bracing, but also educative pressures visited upon the single, who have no choice

but to overcome their inhibitions: those brave souls who

have to learn how to garden, go on holidays in the

mountains, endure empty weekends, call up their mother or cook a chicken – and thereby

achieve the resilient competence upon which true social discrimination and liberty rest.

– For those who have too lightly signed away their freedoms, there are sure to be

constant, and searing, reminders of what they have foregone. Every party and every walk

down a busy street will provide evidence of what might have been, all those potentially

fascinating or charming members of humanity they have now forever been disbarred from

getting to know – because they were so unnaturally scared of having a bed to themselves for a

few more years. – It isn't just other people we won't

get to know, it's also ourselves. The constant presence of companions stops us from making

friends with our own minds, and exploring our feelings and ideas in a way that only

extended stretches of solitude allow. We fail to develop our identities, we grow more like

everyone else. The chatter outside prevents us from being able to follow the feint but

vital dialogue we might otherwise have been able to have with ourselves. We use another

person to distract us whenever any slightly painful or challenging internal matter comes

into view. There ends up being so much we won't ever really feel or understand about

ourselves, so many big questions about our careers and our ultimate purpose that we will

ignore, because there was always someone else on hand to chat to about what to order in

for dinner. – Worst of all, we might not even be actively

miserable after a while. We'll grow used to cosy mediocrity. We won't be curious

or restless. We won't dare – as the single must – to go up to strangers and risk our

pride. We'll stop learning. We'll believe that we've answered our needs completely,

but only on the basis of suppressing our knowledge of what our needs really are. We'll have

ended up in a conspiracy against uncertainty, novelty and the flux of life.

To start to correct everything that stems from this ridiculous fear of being alone,

we should from a young age learn that that being alone never means there is something

wrong with us, just that we are being appropriately patient, until what truly satisfies us shows

up (if it ever does); we have a choice; we have not been punished.

We will never

learn the true promise of community, discover our own interests or hold out for the connections

we deserve until we make genuine peace with the prospect of a life by ourselves.

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