For a long time, I did not enjoy being alone with myself.
I stayed busy. I stayed connected. I stayed surrounded. Not because I loved company, but because being by myself felt uncomfortable.
Prefer to watch? The video version of this reflection is at the bottom of this post.
Looking back, I think I understand why.
I did not like the company I was in.
Have you ever been around someone who made you uneasy or restless? Someone you just did not enjoy being with? That was me, when it was just me.
Today, things feel very different.
I value my relationships deeply. I cherish my marriage. Time with my wife matters to me, and it is one of the greatest gifts in my life.
What I have come to see is that time alone does not compete with those relationships. It actually supports them. Being alone has become one of the ways I recharge and reset so I can show up more present and more grounded with the people I love.
There was a season in my life when I felt like I had to be with someone in order to be okay. Much of that came from codependency. From needing validation. From needing someone else to tell me I was enough.
Over time, I began to understand something important.
There is a difference between being alone and being lonely.
Lonely is when you do not want to be with yourself.
Alone is simply being with yourself.
Today, I no longer feel lonely when it is just me.
That change did not happen all at once. It came slowly, through learning how to sit with myself and through doing the work of becoming someone I could be at peace with.
For me, that work shows up in simple, ordinary moments.
Being at home by myself. Sitting in a quiet house. Eating out alone. Long drives where it is just me and the road. These are no longer things I avoid. They have become places where I slow down, reflect, feel grateful, and genuinely recharge.
Even small, everyday choices have shifted. Like going to a movie by myself
(especially when that movie would never make it onto my wife’s list).
Learning to be alone did not pull me away from connection.
It has simply made me more at ease with myself.
And that has changed a lot more than I expected.
