SINGLE AND LONELY?
We
tend to downplay the importance of everyday sharing and companionship while
giving undue importance to the need for space and independence
When I get up from the couch, I leave the lamplight
on, just so that I have the comfort of walking back towards the semblance
of human presence.” This, coming from a single friend, has to be the most
poignant statement of loneliness I have ever heard.
Surrounded by people and loved by friends, singles
still feel an intense loneliness when alone at home. Unlike what most would
like to believe, the problem of lonely singles is not the lack of sex, but
a need for companionship. A companionship that we seek and find in friends
of course, but which is far more comforting and reassuring when we take it
home with us. Sometimes, you can be surrounded by people and yet feel
lonely and companionless. You need that one person to belong to, the one
who belongs to you. Okay, in a manner of speaking! More often than not, it
is just the desire for someone who cares for you over others. To give you a
hug when you need one, someone to talk to and share the day’s highlights
and travails with. And no, pets cannot fulfill that need.
Most singles would happily trade sex for the
comfort of a human presence on the couch beside them, in bed next to them;
someone you can make a cup of tea for in the morning and share the
newspaper with. Someone to just potter around the house and break the
deafening silence. Someone to look at and be looked at by, someone to talk
to, someone to be silent with. Someone to come home to, someone to grow old
with…
I can just see some of my established single
friends, men and women, shaking their heads and reaffirming their need for
space and time; they have structured their lives in a manner that leaves no
space for another. Well, perhaps they need that breaking apart to be able
to come together again in a more meaningful manner.
We may like to believe that sex is an easy solution
to loneliness. It isn’t. At best, it is a stopgap cure for feeling unloved
and lonely. Companionship is the only solution – an on-going togetherness
that is based on friendship, trust and common interests. As life moves on
and we mature, we realise that losing the only thing that endures — true
companionship — is too high a price to pay for the need for space or
independence.
It’s alarming when people find it is so easy to
walk out of a marriage. It may be easy to walk out, but it’s very tough to
live with the consequences. There is a lot to be said for having someone to
grow old with. To me, the only worthy reason to walk out of a marriage is
any form of cruelty or a total lack of companionship, where the presence of
your significant other leaves you uncomfortable and agitated, rather than
calm and peaceful. Anything else is acceptable, but a marriage is indeed
dead if it cannot give you the comforts of trusted companionship –
friendship, trust and a warm concern.
You can have a companionship with many, where these
many fulfill different needs and aspects of your personality, but then
there is the one — your life companion — the one you choose to live your
life with. Very few are lucky enough to share a deep companionship of the
soul. But in the absence of the elusive ultimate, there is a lot to be said
for what can be had, the one who is with you.
VINITA NANGIA 140302
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