Intimacy and Solitude by Stephanie Dowrick

Author:Stephanie Dowrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781761061820
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2020-12-09T00:00:00+00:00

At ease with yourself

That image of the crying child at the bottom of the garden disturbs me deeply. It works on my own worst fears of abandonment and despair, fears which are real in all of us, even when we were well-protected infants; fears that are only partially and impermanently contained as we reach adulthood.

This may add to your understanding of why solitude/solitariness/aloneness/loneliness are so frequently lumped together and given extremely bad press, with many people believing that being in the company of almost anyone is preferable to being in no company at all. Yet that bad press takes no account of the potential richness of solitude and also ignores the reality of many people’s lives.

More than a quarter of the population in Western countries lives alone and the numbers are increasing. They would seem to be the people most likely to be hard up against the questions which aloneness can raise, but it is worth repeating: it is neither the presence nor the absence of others which of itself dictates whether you are experiencing solitude or enduring loneliness.

Rafe explains this. ‘In my family of first-generation migrants I never stopped hearing “Italian this” and “Italian that” as though I had to live my life not only by my own large family’s rules but on behalf of every Italian ever born. It was an expression of their grief and ambivalence that they had ever left Italy that they had to recreate their ideal of Italy in our own home. I always felt different to the rest of them and uncomfortable about this and guilty even, with no possible way of expressing it. I almost always felt shut out from the others of them and was often truly lonely.’

When you feel relatively ‘at one’ with yourself you are most likely to be able to welcome solitude: feeling, to quote Winnicott, calm, restful, relaxed and one with people and things when no excitement is around—whether or not you are actually alone. During times when you are experiencing yourself as fragmented or incomplete, or ‘invisible’ to those around you, and when that feeling is accompanied by self-doubt, then you are more likely to experience being alone not as solitude but as loneliness—when what you don’t have dominates your thinking and feeling.

Feeling not-whole usually expresses itself in a wish to bring something into your life from the outside which will, in your fantasy, fill you up and make you feel whole on the inside. We are all vulnerable to this. Our fantasies may vary but the desire—to increase our sense of wholeness—stems from the same ‘not whole’ source within. Maybe in your case your longing is for a partner, a more loving partner, a job, a better job, a baby, another baby, a house, a change of town, a change of appearance or a greater sense of direction.

A loving partner, a decent job, children if you want them, reasonable housing, values you can wholeheartedly espouse: these are legitimate needs, but it is possible to have all those needs met and still to feel empty, incomplete, unsatisfied, not-whole.

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