Lonely, But Not Alone
Learning Not to Compare My Insides with Others’ Outsides
November 1, 2010
I’m struggling to remind myself lately that although I feel lonely, I’m not alone. It’s been a hard distinction to make, I admit. I’m probably chafing because my ex-wife found new companionship about five months after our divorce was finalized. I also look wistfully at so many people around me dating and doing what seems to me to come so naturally to them.
My therapist has been giving me good-but-tough advice when it comes to my fantasies about putting myself out there. Firstly, he reminds me not to compare my insides with others’ outsides. In truth, I’ve no idea the complexities of any of the couples who catch my eye. Secondly, he’s really encouraging me to keep learning to live with myself; to be happy with myself in my relatively new life of recovery from addiction. And it’s true, I’m still learning to do healthy things for myself, without shame, without codependent excuses, and without the taint of my addiction.
Though it’s difficult, I’m trying to nurture myself in sobriety instead of jumping into any sort of dating. I was pretty awful at dating, besides. Dating usually boiled down to two things for me in my short, ugly sexual history: I would either go down in psychological flames because I wasn’t hip to a would-be partner’s mores or cues; or, I’d go down in physical flames because I was a porn addict who couldn’t respond to a sexual encounter unless it was dangerous and careless; the opposite of intimate.
I’ve had some pretty powerful fantasies lately that I’m trying not to overindulge because companionship and true intimacy and physicality will come in their own time. And realistically? I can’t really see myself dating right now because I am pretty cognizant of where I am in my recovery and it’s a great place to be, even if I do get lonely. I’m trying not to be repressive, but I also don’t want to force myself into some social proscription. I’m trying hard to be realistic about what I can be comfortable with right now. My yearning to be with someone keeps coming up and I keep talking about it with others in my program and with my therapist. And I keep remembering how happy I’ve been with just me — the real, sober, authentic me.
