Episode 114: What If I’m Alone Forever?

Welcome to the Loving Truth podcast, where it's all about finding clarity, confidence, and peace in the face of marriage challenges. And now, your host, relationship expert and certified master life coach, Sharon Pope. Hello, loves. This is Sharon Pope, and this is the Loving Truth. Today, our topic of conversation is all around what if I'm alone forever. This idea, like, whenever I ask people to get in touch with their fears of if they choose to stay and their fears if they choose to go, it is always listed as one of the top fears in terms of if I choose to end my marriage, what if I'm alone forever?

So this fear of being alone and therefore feeling the emotion of loneliness, that can keep you paralyzed for years or even decades. So I want to share this with you in terms of a story of one of my clients. Now, she was very much in a fork in the road sort of moment inside of her marriage. She had come across something that was an absolute deal breaker for her.

And for her, it had to do with money. But for you, it might have to do with an affair or consistent cheating that just doesn't stop, or an addiction or maybe just never getting your needs validated or always being blamed for what's happening inside your marriage. Like your partner maybe never takes accountability, whatever it is, so that you can relate to this. See, she knew logically what she needed to do because her situation was financially.

This is just math. This is just data. She knew she had consulted with attorneys. She knew exactly what she needed to do. So then why wasn't she doing it? She knew she needed to have a conversation with her husband that would lead to, look, we either have option A, where we are going to do this to help us navigate this challenge that we have, or we're going to end the relationship.

Those were really the only two options that she had on the table in order to not betray herself and still be able to protect herself and honor what she wanted in her life. And you have that same opportunity. So she had all these people telling her exactly what she needed to do. It was all perfectly logical and reasonable. These were paid professionals and they had her best interest at heart.

So why wasn't she doing it? See, the distinction here is that we're dealing with something in an intellectual way when this isn't an intellectual problem. The intellectual problem on why she wasn't addressing this financial challenge inside of her marriage was an emotional challenge. But we're trying to deal with it intellectually. And the emotional challenge, that's what we had to get at when she wasn't taking action and she just kept delaying having that conversation and putting it off and saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

I'm going to do that next year, I'm going to do that in six months, whatever. I knew it wasn't a logical thing that we're dealing with. This is an emotional thing. So we had to get at what was the emotion that was keeping her stuck? What was the underlying fear that was keeping her so paralyzed from doing the very thing that she knew she needed to do, which was have this difficult conversation with her spouse?

Now, in this particular situation, it's completely understandable why she had this fear. Because her underlying fear was, what if I'm alone? What if he doesn't want to take this avenue of here's how we can solve this problem. And the only answer then is to end the relationship and then I'm alone forever. Now understand, she had this very logical reason again, for why she felt so afraid to be alone, because she had basically gone from her parents home to being married.

You know, she met her husband when she was 17 and now 30 some years later, you know, she's still with him. And so she's never been alone. She's never had that experience. And so it feels really unfamiliar. And things that are unfamiliar to us scare us. Right? That's what shows up as our fears. And so many people deal with this and they all have their own situations. Like, I've talked to other people who have this fear, and they weren't married 30 years.

They'd only been married a few years. But before they had met their spouse, they had been single for five years or 10 years, and they felt like it was really hard to be single and it was really hard to find the right person. So there's a million different scenarios that can create the exact same fear. And they all sound perfectly logical and perfectly rational in our brains. But the outcome is that that fear keeps us stuck.

And so many people are challenged with this idea of, but what if my marriage ends and I'm alone forever? If that is so scary to you that it will keep you from honoring yourself and moving your life in the direction that you know you want it to go, then we've got to overcome that challenge. Okay, now I'm going to say something here. I don't often say with 100% certainty, but this is one of those things that I'm going to tell you with 100% certainty.

If you are afraid to be alone, you will settle 100% of the time. I'm going to say that again. If you're afraid to be alone, you will settle in your life 100% of the time, right? You're going to put up with people who aren't going to honor you or treat you respectfully, or maybe they don't even treat you with kindness. You're going to endure bad or hurtful behavior.

You're going to overlook it, you're going to accommodate it, you're going to make excuses for it. You will abandon your own deal breakers. You'll bargain with yourself around not honoring the things that you know to be true for you that you need in a relationship. And you'll betray yourself all so that you don't have to face being alone. Now you might be able to some of the things you might overlook like you might maybe you never have fun together as a couple.

Maybe you can operate together, like you can co parent together or you can function as roommates together, but you're not really sharing anything or connecting in any kind of deep meaningful way. So you're not getting your needs met or you're not getting what you want or creating the kind of relationship that you want. You're just sort of ignoring those red flags, right? Another red flag could be, well, the sex kind of sucks, but at least I'm not alone.

It's like as long as I have a warm body next to me, I'll put up with almost anything so that I don't have to face the emotion of loneliness. Now don't get me wrong, loneliness is debilitating, right? Like some scientists have likened it to the equivalent health wise as being a smoker. It gets that dramatically harmful to us to feel lonely. And I think we are built to be in relationship with each other.

So I'm not suggesting that like just get comfortable with being alone forever. That's the way it should be and that's the way you'll be happiest. Like I'm not suggesting that, but I'm saying that even though we are built to be in relationship, we shouldn't come from a place of need, we should come from a place of want, right? Because when you are comfortable being with yourself, then the people that you will allow into your energetic space will look and feel very different than if you're not comfortable being alone and being just with yourself, then you'll allow anyone and everyone into your energetic space, right?

You're not going to have any boundaries so that you don't have to face the fear of being alone. Now I will argue all day long that loneliness when you are not in an intimate relationship is a certain kind of loneliness, for sure, but loneliness when you are inside of a relationship where you have a warm body next to you, but you don't feel like you have anyone really in your corner, anyone having your back, anyone who really loves and cares about you and prioritizes you.

That's a whole different kind of lonely that I think we have to think about. So here's where I want to go with this. I want to help you get more comfortable with the idea of being alone. And the way I want to do that is to give you five new things to consider, five beneficial things that can happen for you when you just start getting comfortable with being alone.

Okay? So I'm going to give you kind of the sunny side of being alone. Not so that that's how you'll be forever, but so that you can get comfortable with the idea. So that then you don't settle in your relationships and you don't overlook your boundaries and negotiate your needs and betray yourself. You're able to have healthy, productive relationships because you're not so darn afraid of being alone.

Now, there probably was a time that I was afraid of being alone, and I'm going to share some of that with you. And I've gotten so comfortable with it that maybe I've gone too far in the other direction, but that's probably for another day. So let me give you five benefits that you can receive that you're probably not expecting when you start to get comfortable with just being with yourself.

So the first place I want to begin is, if you are not your favorite person to hang out with, why should you be anyone else's favorite person to hang out with? Right? If you don't want to hang out with you, why should anyone else want to hang out with you? So, but when you can get to that place of where you're like, you know what? I'm pretty fantastic.

I'm pretty fun. I'm generous, I'm kind, I'm empathetic. I'm a great listener. I care about people, right? Whatever the qualities are, when you can own that, not from an egotistical space, just from a truthful space of what you bring to the table in terms of being in relationship with people. And if you don't know, then look to the people that you have around you today to say, hey, what do you think some of my best qualities are in terms of being your friend or being in relationship with you or being your sister.

Like, you hang out with me, not because I'm your Sister. But I must bring something to the table for you that I'm not seeing. Can you help me see that? So sometimes it helps to see yourself through other people's eyes who love being in relationship with you so that you can own that. Because once you become your favorite person to hang out with, then the quality of person you are going to allow into your space is just going to be a different quality of person.

Okay? So you want to become your favorite person to hang out with. And once you know why, then it also boosts your confidence. It gives you that confidence to be able to turn down invitations because there's no FOMO that you're going to be missing out on something you're not. Because you're not missing out on anything. Because you're not unhappy where you are, you're happy where you are. And if that invitation that you received doesn't feel good for you, you feel totally confident and comfortable just being able to say, yeah, no thanks, I'm good.

Right? So that's the first thing is you've got to be able to become your favorite person to hang out with. And when you do, your confidence goes up. The second thing is that you are able to honor your own needs and your own preferences when you live alone and get comfortable being alone. You know why? Because now you don't have to navigate everyone else's needs and preferences. You can just get clear about what it is that you want, what it is that you need, what it is that you prefer moment to moment.

And then you can give yourself that opportunity to meet those needs. And by the way, my friends, when you start meeting your own needs, you'll stop looking to everyone else around you to meet your needs for you, you become so much healthier. Because now I'm not looking to other people to make me happy. It's on me. And because it's on me now, I know I'm responsible for it and I'm capable of it, right?

So I'm more sovereign. I have more agency over my own life. So now I get to understand what my needs are. I get to honor my needs and I get to just take the burden off of everyone else that I'm in relationship with, needing them to be a certain way or do a certain thing so that I get to feel comfortable, loved, not lonely, right? So that's the second thing.

The third thing is that when you become your own best friend, you actually can create deeper connections with people than you could when you were not your own best friend. Now, that might sound odd to you, right? Like how can I create deeper connections by being alone? When you get comfortable living alone and being alone now, when you enter into relationships, it's from a more whole place. It's not from a place of neediness or graspiness or even codependency, right?

Of I need you to make me feel a certain way, right? If I, if I have abandonment issues from my childhood upbringing, for example, I don't need you to solve those abandonment issues for me, right? So I come at relationships from a place of I'm good and I don't need you to fill me up. I don't need you to plug the little holes of things that I haven't healed.

I don't need you to make me feel a certain way or take responsibility for my feelings at all. And so from that place, I can create much deeper and more connected relationships. Now, the fourth thing that I want to make you aware of, and this is really one of the reasons why so many people will avoid being alone. I know I sure did. I didn't want to be alone and quiet with myself at home because I knew once I got quiet, some of my shadow stuff was going to come up.

And by shadow, I just mean the parts of ourselves that we don't really want to own, right? The hard questions that we don't really want to answer about ourselves, about our choices, about our lives, about why we do what we do, right? Because when you get quiet and you get alone, all that stuff sort of bubbles to the surface. So I remember that I was separated from my husband.

This was in my first marriage. I was separated from my husband and I was living alone. We weren't yet divorced. And I filled up my calendar every single day. I think every day except Sunday, because I remember Sundays there was a lot of like laying around crying. But I would fill up my calendar until 10 or 11 o'clock at night. Like I would work all day, then I would go, let's say to happy hour.

I'd go shopping or I'd meet up with a friend for dinner. Whatever it was, I had something on my agenda every single day. I literally, I'm thinking about where I was living at the time. And I couldn't remember a time that I just went to work, came home, made myself dinner, ate dinner with my own damn self, and then, you know, did something in the evening, like went to yoga or, or watched my favorite show or called a friend.

Like, there was never a time that I functioned like a civilized human being because I was so afraid to face those hard Questions. And at some point you just get sick of yourself. Like, at some point you have to face yourself. And so after a while of doing that and burning myself out, then I finally just forced myself to be alone, to get comfortable with being home alone.

Like me and my journal. That's what it became. I would force myself to do it, especially on weekend nights. Those tended to seem more lonely because I think there's this underlying expectation that we should have plans, we should be out doing something on a Friday or Saturday night. So I forced myself to get comfortable with it. And at first, something that is new and uncomfortable is going to be uncomfortable.

But the more you do it, the more comfortable you become. Right? It makes sense. So when you get quiet and you're alone, some of that. Some of the parts that we need to heal within ourselves start to come to the surface. And here's the gift. You're able to acknowledge those parts of yourself. Because we all have parts that, you know, there are parts of us, characteristics of us, that we might say we would put in the good column, and then there are characteristics and parts of ourselves that we might put in the not so good column.

Right? We all have those things. But when you can really see those parts of yourself that you might put in the not so good column, and you can love them, you can accept them and validate them, and then you can figure out, do I want to heal some of that stuff? Do I want to change some of those things? Because they're not helping me get to where I want to go in my life or in my relationships, Is there something for me to look at there?

That's what can happen when you spend time alone. But if you're always in your head and you're always in your plans and you've always got something going on and you're working on your to do list, and you never just get quiet with yourself, that stuff will never come to the surface, and you'll be running from it your whole life. So I really feel like this is where most of our growth can occur if we allow it, if we give ourselves the space for it.

Now, the last thing, the last unexpected benefit that comes from living alone and getting comfortable with being alone is that you start to have a different relationship to silence. Now, I know, even me just saying that has probably already freaked some of you out. Some of you who always have to have a podcast going or a video that you're watching, or music on the radio or the TV on, or people talking in the background, whatever, like we have a Lot of noise in our environment throughout much of the day.

And this is another one of those places that we've got to work through the discomfort to get to a place of comfort with the silence. But, man, are there benefits when you get comfortable with silence. So you may try to fill it at first, you may try to, like, there's this empty space and you're going to want to fill it up. And I want you to resist that temptation to do it.

Because when you can get comfortable with silence and even welcome a little bit of silence in your life, here's what I'll tell you. There's three major benefits. You will become more creative, right? Because you're able to access that more creative part of your brain. You will become more decisive and you'll trust yourself more. You won't second guess your decisions. And ultimately, both of those are a result of the biggest benefit, which is when you get comfortable with silence, then you actually have access to your own inner wisdom, right?

We all have inner wisdom, but most of us are so noisy in our lives and in our minds and in how we fill our days that we cannot hear that inner wisdom, right? That gut instinct. Our brain overrides it with all the pros and cons and. And what do you think I should do? And what do you think I should do? And we just add noise to our experience.

And you have to remove noise from your experience in order to be able to access your inner wisdom. But when you can, and you can do it regularly, you'll be so much more decisive. You will trust yourself. You will have your own back. You'll know that you're going to be able to trust and honor what you need and what you want to create in your life. You're going to be so much more clear about what you want to create in your life, and you're going to be so much more creative in terms of overcoming challenges, solving problems, and what you want to create in your life.

Because we all are ultimately creators that can be creator of a cake, it can be creator of a painting, it can be creator of a business or a company, it can be creator of a family. But ultimately, we all create something in this life. And when you can access that inner wisdom, you can sort of see, like, what you want to bring forth into this world. But if you're noisy and you're so scared to be alone, and you're so scared to be quiet, and you're so scared to face yourself, you'll never be able to access that.

So those are five things That, I would tell you, are unexpected benefits that come from being alone. You know, lots of times when my clients, if they decide to end their marriage, and then they're either at home, maybe they moved into an apartment and they're by themselves, where they haven't been by themselves for a decade or two decades or maybe three decades, and they're by themselves for the first time, or they're at their family home and their spouse has moved out, whatever the case may be, but they're alone and it's uncomfortable.

I want you to be able to come back to this podcast. Be able to come back to this and say, you know what? It's not just about hang on and endure until I can find someone. That is not the way to approach welcoming new people and new relationships into your life. It's. Let me take this opportunity, this time, to get comfortable with myself so that I become my favorite person to hang out with, so that I become my best friend, so that I can approach relationships not from a needy or graspy place, but.

But from a deeply connected and rooted place where I know I'm good. And so I don't need you to do or be anything for me to feel good in my life. I don't have a lot of needs of you. I don't have a lot of requests or expectations of you, which makes me easier to be in relationship with. And yep, some of my shadow stuff comes to the surface once in a while, and that's an opportunity for me to integrate those parts of myself and love those parts of myself, heal them, maybe change them.

And because it's an opportunity for me to get more comfortable with the silence so that then I can access my own internal wisdom. All right? There are many benefits that can come from being alone, getting comfortable with being alone, and it doesn't mean that you're making peace with being that way forever. It means you're sort of solidifying and grounding yourself so that everything you create and all the relationships that you have after that time feels so much better than before.

All right? So don't be afraid to be alone. There are some real gifts inside of being alone and getting comfortable with that. Until next time, take really good care. If you're listening to this podcast because you're struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you're serious about finding that answer, it's time to book a truth and clarity session with a member of my team.

On the call, we'll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there's a fit for you and I to work together so you can make and execute the right decision for you and your marriage. Go to clarityformymarriage.com to fill out an application. Now that's clarityformymarriage.com.