What is Loneliness Trying to Tell You?

“You read something so sad

Some lonely boy just went mad.”

Luke Temple, Love Won’t Receive

Many codependents suffer from loneliness. It’s often a self-imposed loneliness that comes primarily from self-alienation. After all, most of us abandoned ourselves when we were very young. That same loneliness is also due partly to our sometimes fierce independence. We may often enmesh in others, but at the opposite end of the spectrum we like to pretend like we don’t have any wants or needs of our own. In other words, we won’t allow anyone to help us.

In between codependent relationships, many codependents are loners. We can be very independent while we’re licking our emotional wounds, and this can lead us to being lonely as well.

A few years ago, while I was in the throes of loneliness, I asked my Higher Power to help me. Then I discovered a book that had a chapter on loneliness. It suggested that we ask loneliness what it has to teach us about ourselves, so I did: “Loneliness, what do you have to teach me about me?” I gave that question to my loneliness and my Higher Power and I did receive answers.

The first answer, or bit of awareness I received was this: I realized that people often ask me to do things and I say “No.” Why was I saying “No” and thus imposing loneliness on myself? Well, because the persons who asked me to go for coffee or to a movie weren’t the people I WANTED to ask me. No. They were people that I had already dismissed as nerds or as having nothing in common with me. So I asked myself “How do you know that you have judged these people fairly? If you’d say ‘Yes’ to their invitations, you might find out that you have misjudged them. They might turn out to be good for you, and yet you aren’t even giving them a chance.”

At the same time, the people you want to ask you to do something, aren’t asking. And chances are that your attraction to them is an addictive attraction. So, they won’t be anything but toxic for you anyway. I had to admit that all of this was true.

Second, loneliness told me that “you never ask anyone to do anything. You just always expect that others should ask you, and then you whine when they don’t.” True enough. I was guilty as charged. Asking others to do things takes great vulnerability for me and I don’t like rejection. So I was in the habit of playing it safe. I waited for invitations.

These are behaviors that recovery has helped me to correct. Now, if someone asks me to do something, I usually say “Yes.” And I am less lonely than I used to be.