LIVING ALONE IS IT NORMAL

Single Living Alone HAPPY I am divorced and live alone. During the divorce I read a book called, “married living alone.” It was written by a Christian minister and was suppose to guide me to mending the relationship and staying married. It might have worked if the marital problems were associated with drugs or alcohol or supposal abuse, or infidelity it even had a chapter on weaning your husband off video games. (Apparently playing video games all day can ruin a marriage). Since my marriage did not have these major categories for living alone married. It became clear, that I would either remain married, and be miserable or move on be single, alone and try to find happiness. After 4 years of living alone now, I started to do research on living alone and found some very fascinating results. Sweden ranks the highest ratio of people living alone at nearly 50% (47% survey 2010), while America, Japan, Canada, France and Italy are all hovering around 28%, while abnormal countries like India 2nd most densely populated country in the world is at 3%. First, living alone does not mean you are alone and lonely. It might be perceived that depression might come to those alone and lonely but is not the number one cause. This blog is not about being depressed as much as it is about the New Norm – living alone is the new norm. More and more people of all ages are now living alone around the world not just in America. The biggest social change in the history of mankind is taking place, Not long ago in the 1950’s more than 4 million people lived alone or approximately 9% of the population at the time. According to the 2011 census data, people who live alone is almost ten times more, with a staggering 34 million Americans live alone. It is the largest segment of America now making up 29% of the population, no longer is the nuclear family and multigenerational family the biggest segment. This is not just a one year indicator either, over a 5 year period the people living alone will continue to live alone. The majorities are concentrated in the big cities and are women. Yes the women are the biggest solo households with the majority ranging in age of 35 to 65, but evidence that the 18-30 young adults are the fastest growing segment. Living alone, being alone and feeling lonely are not the same as recent physiological experts are suggesting. The book bowling alone, by Robert Putnam stated living alone has caused a rapid decline in the quality of life. Other publications more recent about being lonely by psychiatrists that living alone has increased the aloneness and lonely feeling among many leading to decay in the community and social well being of America. Surveys indicating that many who are living alone have no one to communicate important matters with and seek social media sites to discuss personal issues publicly with people who are basically online friends, a significant change from the close personal friend of the past or even parents. MySpace was seen as a place to go to have fun and interact and take away the loneliness and even ask opinions of your issues in life in blogs. More and more interpretations of surveys conducted by large organizations like the American Sociological review indicate the record number of people who live in alone is a sign of how lonely and disconnected a society we have become. As modern technology has increased, it had a negative effect on communication between people. We twitter our feelings across the world; we post on Facebook what we are doing or did the past weekend. We now text our kids instead of talking to them. Fact is if you are parent today you better learn to Text so you can talk to your kid. All of this intertwined together with the many feeling there is no need for marriage either. There is no real proof that living alone makes you lonely however it has been found that it is not the quantity or how many social interactions we have but the quality of them. So for someone living alone having a few very high quality times and events will give them a sense of well being and that extraordinary feeling of happy, that can last weeks in between encounters. There is also an upside to living alone. The truth is living alone and being alone allows us to do what we want, when we want without the demands and constraints of the domestic partner, married or not. Living alone also serves a purpose; it helps us have more self control, and makes us realize what we find important in life. It gives us individual freedom to control our own destiny in a way that “lets us pursue our sacred modern values, individual freedoms, and self control” as Klineneberg suggests, and lets us discover who we really are, and the meaning of life as we know it. I am not depressed because I live alone. It is an attitude adjustment, much like the glass is always half empty instead of half full. Pick up a book if this blog piqued your curiosity. There are several good ones available, Loneliness by John T. Cacioppo, or the lonely American by Schwartz and Olds, bowling alone by Robert Putnam, one of the latest and well researched books is called Going Solo by Klineneberg So get out and say hi to someone, smile at everyone you meet; surely you will get a few smiles back. Most of all by having a positive, upbeat attitude, it will carry you through times of living alone and being lonely. I might live alone and goes places by myself, but I am not alone for long. I AM JOE.