Feeling lonely is an illusion

I think the illusory part is thinking it's about being with people. Being around some people just doesn't help, no judgement it's just the personality and who they are as people don't have much in common and doesn't line up.

Also frankly a lot of people with a superficial understanding of their own human nature getting together is going to make for superficial socializing.

Contrast that with someone spending maybe quality time in nature. No other people around but they are communing with the environment, at peace.

While we have social needs, a lot of how we socialize have also become unnatural and not in a way that nourishes and supports us. Even if someone temporarily feels better with that kind of socializing it is likely on a superficial level. It IS possible to have a deeper relationship with people, but it seems rare.

Funny enough, how to go deeper probably involves being alone. I'm pretty sure nobody who is deep in any sense (which doesn't mean being a genius or a poet) did so by always avoiding being alone or being fed a stream of media diet of random disconnected stuff, of which porn is one type of such media.

 

Why do we feel lonely?

I'd bring it down to this:

- Development of the suburban life-style, that destroyed the community, plus the entering in the work-force of many women (not assigning blame, it's their right), which led at the development of the nuclear family and the end of the extended community. We no longer have kids being taken care of the people in our community, we send them to little prisons for 6-8 hours every day. Loss of social connections.

- Edward Bernays' transformation of war-time propaganda into "public relations", that changed advertising from being a fact based promotion of goods (listing the features of the product) into the emotional purchasing of non-material goods today (you don't buy a car, you buy a driving experience and freedom, two non-material goods). Loss of connection with self.

- Social media and the "sharing" culture, which is more recent, that allows us to curate our public lives to our own will. But so do other people, our "friends", and we only see their curated lives, only what they want us to see. We compare this curated public life of our friends with our own entire miserable daily existence and it makes us believe we are not enough. Again loss of connection with self.

- The financial aspect of having banks issue money without democratic oversight, globally, that lead to increased housing prices and a lot of speculation, which in turn makes people work more for jobs they don't like, in offices they hate, for companies they don't believe in. It was normal in the early 1900s that one single income would suffice for one family to live and own a home, but nowadays it's getting harder and harder with two incomes to pay the rent. This creates a disconnection from nature, since people don't have the time and energy to spend time in connection with nature. A landscape architect works in an office nowadays, probably 10-12 hours per day. Agriculture also changed our connection with nature, since we are so removed from how our food is grown...!

So there you have it, recipe for boredom, loneliness and, ultimately, depression.

 

One can be perfectly happy to live by themselves, if you carve or your own path there is no reason to be lonely

 

From the other side, we could also say feeling like you're not alone, such as in some kind of support group is also an illusion sometimes. In the context of recovery it is an illusion that may help, but ultimately if we dig deep enough that may be an issue. I think how it helps a lot of people is they don't care to dig beyond that and are going to a bunch of meetings, but truth be told they don't have much in common beyond that.

From this perspective it may seem a bit depressing but if we dig deeper we may find more essential connections in spite of a lack of commonality. Addiction to the same thing doesn't give us more of a bond, but appreciating a lot of people have some form of addiction and having some compassion around that for ourselves and others may even if it is more general.

 

Hey there, I've been on nofap hard mode for almost 3 months now. Never made it that far before and I actually was convinced that I 'll never be able to quit that shit. Now I am more than determined to never going back to PMO and the other crap after realizing what the addiction did with my life. Actually porn hasn't been that much of an issue for me for the last couple of years or so. But casual dating on the internet has become quite an addiction to me and this probably for the last 15 years at least. Also sex texting, cams and pictures and so on. But dating women I met on the internet and having sex with them was the greatest addiction. I wasn't even aware that this could really be the reason why my life always had been a chaos. So I'd call my addiction a true sex addiction which doesn't make it any better. By no means.

Lately, my girlfriend broke up with me. She was the love of my life but I wasn't able to feel that. Wasn't able to feel anything. I was together with her for 6 years. She'd always told me that I would be the best father for her kids and that she wanted to marry me. But I kept pushing her away from me and didn't know why. She stayed with me for many years, hoping that I'd come to my senses and start a family with her. But I couldn't. I was stuck in depression, brainfog, lethargy and so forth for years. And I kept looking for other remedies since I didn't know that my addiction was the source of everything. After she broke up with me it started dawning on me that I could be truly addicted and that I had kept her away from me only because I was afraid that I couldn't get back into my old life of f****** around anymore.

This realization along with the pain of having lost everything that was dear to me was a turning point. I swore to myself that I will change my life from now on. And so I started nofap this time for real. Going cold turkey for 10 weeks now, I am feeling emotions so intensely. Depression , LONELINESS, isolation, grief, despair, frustration and so on. Sometimes it is almost past endurance. I've never felt this emotional in my life. And now I can see clearly that I used sex and masturbation just to numb my emotions. I think the hardest part for me is this massive feeling of isolation and loneliness. Even around friends I feel lonely and sad. I can't even describe why. My mind tells me that I am not alone on this planet. I do have friends. But I feel so isolated within myself. Only now I refuse to get back to my old coping mechanisms which ruined my life in the first place. Due to my physical and emotional state I even lost my job one year ago. So I can say for sure now that my addiction has taken a huge toll on my life. I lost my job and my girlfriend so far. It is absolutely devastating and I didn't even realise that. Now I am sure that this is the source of all misery in my life. Nofap and staying abstinent is the best thing I have ever done in my life. Even though I went to university and studied and graduated and stuff, and all of that with best marks, I had never been proud of myself. This feeling, pride, never existed within me. But now, after almost 3 months of abstinence I start feeling proud of myself. And I feel like some spirit is reaching out to me, letting me know that I am on the right track this time.

So guys, I want to let you know that you are not alone in this battle. Everytime I feel down and isolated I'm thinking about the heroic efforts and commitments of my fellow fapstronauts and this makes it a little easier for me.

I wish you all the best. Hang in there.

 

Good on you mate, you are on the right path. I think you are right about exercising the positive thoughts because in the same way that negative thoughts and emotions feed on themselves so do positive ones.

 

Interesting perspective..Thanks for this, really makes you think.