We’ve Become Experts at Being Alone?

a friend once told me: our tragedy is that we’ve become experts at being alone. you know, that i’ve learned how to be happy by myself. i used to say, ha! good for me! i still do sometimes. but is that a good thing, really? or a fatal flaw? sometimes i think those people who just can’t live without a partner may be on to something. they seem to be embracing (and feeling) a kind of life i’ll never know, probably because i’ve “learned” to. is it a death of some kind of innocence? did we kill it?

Are we really secure of being alone? or Perhaps a partner for security only?

These are thoughts in my mind that bothers me and that's why I ask this in one of the Gay Network Queer Questioning. I am still single for some reason will be single for the rest of my life. I choose not to but fate will probably keeps me from finding difficult partner in life. I enjoying life and the love and support my family has given me is the one that keeps me from believing that you can be happy and content without having to take or involve in a relationship a partner in life. As I have posted this, a lot of great and inspiring responses surprises me. Indeed I was awaken. I'm copying one of the great response and I hope this will help me and other readers that being alone constitute happiness too.

"I think some people develop such an independence and invulnerability about them that they become totally unable to function in a relationship, which requires interdependence, vulnerability and trust.

For a lot of people, it has nothing to do with being happy as a single before being in a relationship...and more about simply not having the strength within themselves to open themselves up to another person and experience the deep (and sometimes downright uncomfortable) feelings that meaningful relationships usually bring about.

Even people who are married, coupled or "partnered" (and this is not exclusive to gay couples either), many of them seem to have a sense of superficiality about their relationship because they still keep themselves partially guarded from each other, which I think is one of the reasons the relationships don't work out. In gay culture, it's especially easier for guys to just pitch the towel and run because we can always find sex, which is an easy momentary diversion from coming face to face with our own loneliness (and yes, you can be in a "healthy" relationship and still lonely at the same time).

A relationship requires trust that continues to grow deeper as the people make themselves more vulnerable (it's a process). It's not always comfortable to grow that way, and a lot of people just pitch in the towel, rather than consider that the long-term reward of hanging in there and growing (which is painful) may actually be greater than that current pain of the moment. "