Living alone is less the exception, more the rule

• This week in Life & Style, we will be exploring loneliness from every angle in our new series, All the Lonely People. We want to hear from readers about their experiences of loneliness. Are you lonely? Have you ever experienced feelings of isolation? What has helped you overcome those feelings? Email us at lonelypeople@irishtimes.com
• If you have been affected by these issues, Alone helps older people who are homeless, socially isolated, living in deprivation or in crisis, 01-6791032, alone.ie. Jigsaw works with young people aged 12-25, jigsaw.ie. The Samaritans are available 24-7 on freephone 116123

A passage in Zoë Heller’s

Notes From a Scandal

, told from the perspective of sixtysomething spinster Barbara, ignites a pinprick of uncomfortable familiarity and makes my blood go a little greyer.

“People like Sheba think that they know what it’s like to be lonely . . . but about the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing,” Barbara says of her younger, married colleague.

“They don’t know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the launderette. Or to sit in a darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can’t bear to expose your bleak evening to a crowd of jeering trick-or-treaters. They don’t know what it is to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor’s hand on your shoulder sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. I have sat on park benches and trains and schoolroom chairs, feeling the great store of unused, objectless love sitting in my belly like a stone until I was sure I would cry out and fall, flailing, to the ground.”

I’m still in my 30s, but have been inadvertently committed to singlehood for most of them. I’m at a loss to provide an explanation for this. It’s just one of those things; neither fault nor consequence of anyone or anything.

Yet with youth still on my side (just about), I’m supposed to be impervious to the dull ache of loneliness. I have a wide circle of friends, and we enjoy devil-may-care, out-on-a-school-night social lives. I’m a solo dweller, so the black bloom of isolation rises up inside me, as unwelcome and malevolent as an illness. Sometimes it niggles, like a cold draught; other times, it has enough power to pull me under, sapping not just self-esteem but spirit itself.

Out of necessity, I learned to refashion my solitude, looking at it less as an unfortunate quirk of fate and more as a delicious luxury. Besides, most writers crave solitude, where others do much to avoid it. It’s a vantage point from which to know not only yourself but others. So many people see solitude these days as something to be scared of, but isn’t it more helpful to think of it as a space within which to build self-reliance and character?

We're societally conditioned to think of pairing up with someone (anyone, in some cases) as a milestone we are obliged to hit as adults. It's our part of the bargain when we get the cars and the salaries. The economics of marriage and motherhood have been fetishised to the point where both are seen as some kind of aspirational meritocracy. Going it alone is seen by some not just as a failure but a transgression; something to be suspicious of, in either case. In his book Solitude, Philip Koch pinpointed our problem: we see solitude as unnatural, psychologically dangerous, escapist, anti-social . . . and, perhaps most significantly, pathological.

Yet young people are feeling more lonely than ever. A recent survey carried out in the UK found that 83 per cent of 18-34-year-olds have experienced loneliness. It’s an irony, given that we’re in a world where technology has enabled us to stay more connected to others than ever. Perhaps it’s the wrong kind of connection, though, enabling us to foster relationships with lots of people, but fewer relationships of substance. And in the world of social networking, where selves and social lives are curated and buffed to a high shine, it’s even easier to feel suspended in one’s own social limbo.

Of course, there is a difference between loneliness and solitude. Many people live alone by choice. A recent study funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council found that women who live alone rate their lives as happier and healthier than if they cohabited.

Living alone is becoming less the exception and more the rule. The 2011 Census indicated that there are now 392,000 one-person households in Ireland. This number has grown significantly over the past five years, by 62,500.

What’s more, single-person households will be one of the huge social trends of the next decade or so, accounting for 70 per cent of the growth in households by 2026, according to official figures. The market research firm Euromonitor International says the number of people living alone globally is rising fast, from about 153 million in 1996 to 277 million in 2011 – a rise of some 80 per cent in 15 years.

Age and solitude

Does solitude mean different things to different generations? Last year, the story of 85-year-old James Grey posting a newspaper ad imploring people to spend Christmas with him cut many readers to the quick. The actor Brenda Fricker (69) lives in the Liberties, as she puts it, largely alone with her memories: "I go to a therapist once a week, purely to have a conversation and to hear another human voice," she said in an interview last year. "You get so bloody tired of nobody listening to you."

According to Seán Moynihan, chief executive of the charity Alone, loneliness can take you by surprise at any age.

“The people we deliver dinners to on Christmas Day are just like you and me. Some have been married; some even have kids in other parts of the world. All of them would say that they never thought loneliness would happen to them, or that they’d have ended up using a service like ours.”

There has been a steady rise of people, young and old, looking to access Alone’s services, something Moynihan attributes not just to the rising number of older citizens but to a wider societal disconnect because of long working hours and broken-down social circles.

“Our natural view is that the country is more isolated than the city, but that’s not always true,” he says. “It’s possible to be very isolated indeed in the city.

“The good news is that it doesn’t necessarily happen to everyone. Older people are stereotyped as frail and lonely, but in many cases they are linked-in and quite happy.”

Surely there are psychological effects to being alone, whether by accident or design?

Dr Claire Hayes, clinical director at mental-health charity Aware (aware.ie), differentiates between those who are alone by choice and those who experience isolation though bereavement or empty-nest syndrome.

“If someone is on their own and struggling because they’re thinking ‘no one’s bothered with me and everyone has this great life’, they will feel vulnerable, especially if they have been used to being with someone else for years,” she says.

“That then becomes part of their self-identity, which can be a problem. If the solitude gets to them, yes, it can cause depression.

Just as being alone in one’s 30s and in one’s 80s are entirely different, there is a massive difference between being alone for a while and being long-term single. Much like Heller’s anti-heroine, long-term singles who have tired of casual sex have often been starved of one basic human need: touch. It’s the final taboo, one that many single people are unwilling to face.

Starved of touch

Despite the bounty of technology available that's supposed to grease the wheels, twentysomethings are having much less sex than we might imagine. According to research published in the Archives of Sexual Behaviour, fewer than 7 per cent of twentysomethings have sex two to five times per week, while 49 per cent have not had sex at all in the past year. And being starved of touch and affection, one assumes, has psychological, and possibly physiological, implications.

In 2013, French journalist Sophie Fontanel wrote The Art of Sleeping Alone, detailing her experiences of staying celibate for more than a decade. What was meant to be a two-month hiatus became a 12-year way of life. Fontanel stayed every bit as stylish, sociable and vital during her "singularity", as you would expect from an Elle magazine editor, and even began to delight in her state.

Somewhere amid her celibate spell, she suspected that more women would like to take a breather from the sex and relationship grind (so to speak) than meets the eye. "All the French women I know, if you listen to them, they are the queens of sexual activity," she told the Wall Street Journal. "But I'm sure French women are very big liars." Potential paramours, meanwhile, were "fascinated by the fact that I was so wild and original and secret and lonesome".

Despite what media narratives may hint, long-term singles are alone not because they’re brittle, prickly types with hearts encased in cement. They’re more likely to be die-hard romantics, holding out for someone great. Sure, there are dark nights of the soul, but folding at life’s poker table would feel a lot worse.