spocksdisciple started this thread and wrote
With most us here being bachelors I am curious as to how a lot of you handle being alone, or spending time alone? Do you welcome time alone or fear/dislike it?
To me, the definition of bachelorhood is not being in a committed relationship, to me it has nothing to do with being alone or being lonely.
Only women define being single with such negative connotations.
So how does the membership here handle being alone a lot of the time? or maybe you have an active social life and are never really alone?
Personally, I like being alone more then being around other people, I have a high threshold of sensitivity to crowds and very much dislike crowded situations and prefer a quiet place to think. To me as the title of this post states, Loneliness is a state of mind. Having said that I ask, are men superior and better "equipped" to handle solitude then women in general?
For me solitude is "character building", it strengthens and doesn't weaken a man who is properly prepared to handle it. I know solitude is used as a form of punishment in prisons but for the properly prepared man this isn't really a punishment at all but a chance to build his inner strength, if you can handle solitary confinement you can handle almost anything else IMO.
Whereas for women, the thought of solitude and being alone seems to deeply terrify a lot of them!, personally I can never understand their need to "swarm" like bees and constantly drone on with other women about the most trivial nonsense! The S/N ratio is very low in women's communications with each other.
Married women never seem to get the hint that men need their "cave" time and to be away from the noise of the social scene, at least this has been my observation. Men need and require time alone to develop properly, whereas I've observed manginas and in general gay men need a lot more social interaction in their lives then most "men" (ie they tend towards the same behavioral model as women).
Note that in the first half of the 20th century women tended to like and desire the strong, silent type of guy who radiated inner strength without the verbosity which most women seem to demand these days from men. (ie the man has to be "communicative" and "sensitive" and various other "ives")
I wonder if silence (reticence) is a threatening quality to women today which is why quiet men are laughed at and not taken seriously.
Finally, for me loneliness is how you perceive and define it, if you can master the art of solitude and know how to deal with occasional feelings of loneliness, I think such a person would be ultimately freed from the "desires of the world" as the Buddhists would phrase it, and would be completely immune to the manipulations of modern women(who think men can't stand being alone either). ie you would be the classic "Happy Bachelor!" or at least a content one
