joyd, I’m sorry about your problems. I hope you will recover. I felt like I loved people but they never felt the same, and I know even from such a one sided affection how painful having intense feelings for someone can be when relationships fall apart. Still regarding loneliness there are several things I think need to be separated. Firstly of the intensity of the subjective experience. Second the fact that the feeling of loneliness is separate from circumstances. Thirdly not ever being in love, and fourthly the duration of loneliness.

so one and two are connected – being alone / feeling lonely affects people differently. As you said you can be in a relationship and feel lonely. As Robert Pirsig said “Even in the presence of others he was completely alone”. This I think is true but my problem is not just that I’m alone, but that I have intense emotions, I have a high sex drive, and deep need for intimacy and closeness that is being completely unsatisfied for prolonged periods of time with no signs of any future resolution. These two issues of being alone and feeling alone are the crux of it, and there are many causes.

The third and fourth issues intensify the first two. They make it more painful, distressing, and tortuous. My loneliness is magnified by the weight of many thousands of days alone, a burden and misery that innumerable hours of exposition could barely scratch the surface of. And of never experiencing love: of having the illusion, dream and possibility that a relationship would resolve these emotions.

Maybe you will disagree, especially given your current situation, but I think that it’s better if you experienced requited love in the past than having never experienced it. At least you have some magical memories of moving moments of intimacy and connection to appreciate when things get dark. You got to experience love, and I know it can hurt, but what hurts more is never knowing, never even being wanted. Being so utterly undesirable despite your best efforts, of working so hard, and trying, of struggling and suffering and trying to repair your shattered mind into some vaguely socially acceptable non-damaged state. And constantly wondering whether finding the right person or people would be the cure for this sickness. I think it would, and that belief, really is the source of my sadness. but – “When you’ve never been moved it’s really hard to move on”, and well more than anything I want to feel for myself this central human experience, before I potentially dismiss it.

Anyway I have a troubled past and I’m trying to create something from the ruins of my mind. I know there are things to be grateful for but it all pales in significance to the feelings of love. For the quixotic optimist and lover inside me that never gets to express any affection or deeper sense of appreciation for another person, it is a fate worse than death to endure a life without love – yet that is precisely what circumstance, bad decisions, emotional problems, and depression have lead me to.

meditation is something I agree helps, and I think a quote by Victor E. Frankl is highly relevant here:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In
that space is our power to choose our response. In our
response lies our growth and our freedom.” – Victor E. Frankl

mindfulness meditation gives you an awareness of the space, of your choice in responding to stimuli. It liberates you from the tyranny of default, and from the unthinking response to the situation, and is of much help in taking control of your mind.

this I think is related to being lonely, and how you are not in control of your own mind and thoughts. Yet even here it is difficult, pain is necessary as it catalyses change if it’s intense enough it is a body’s response to a problematic situation. The problem is that often it causes too much pain and you can’t function or grow. So being lonely isn’t even intrinsically a bad thing, but the problem is how intense, prolonged, and unresolvable it can be.

Making peace with it is mostly what I have to resign myself to right now, accepting that nobody wants to be with me, and moving on with my life. I think connecting to social movements is a good idea, and culture is deeply connected in these feelings. The norms of monogamy, consumerism, individualism, capitalism, it’s all a toxic influence in the collective mind.

To conclude I would say that unless someone saves you, you have to come to terms with being lonely before you can function again.

Sorry I wrote so much, I still have much more to say, but think I wrote enough for now. Anyway thanks for your reply, even talking online makes me feel a little better, and gives me some suggestions for helping to cope.

DXM