Solitude and sovereignty

On intimacy, connection, and the desire for its opposite

Image by Tory Morrison on Unsplash

I recently read

Miranda July

’s delightfully relatable novel All Fours and gobbled it up. It wasn’t the sexual exploration that spoke to me (though that was fun to read). It was the claiming of space, of differentiation, of an identity separate from our partners. The idea of checking into a motel and remodelling it to be an exquisite solo sanctuary, had me grinning from ear to ear. Judging by Miranda’s book sales, I’m guessing it’s a popular fantasy.

Sharing your life and your space with another can be rich and rewarding. It can also be tedious and hard. My husband is one of my absolute favourite people on the planet, and yet the pull towards aloneness carries a compelling fascination.

For the last two weeks, he’s been away overseas, and I had a chance to indulge these longings.

As I pondered the things I fantasised about doing alone – yoga, reading, early nights, comfort food – I realised these are all the same things I do when he is here. So what is the difference?

The difference seems to be the amount of energy that can be consumed just by having another person in my space. Even if we’re not directly interacting, there’s a level of awareness, of noticing their whereabouts, what they’re doing, the subtle shifts in their mood, their nervous system. There’s a significant amount of energy pouring outwards.

When I’m alone, I get to reclaim all that energy for myself and channel it into other things.

The psychologist in me recognises this as a low-grade form of hypervigilance.

I sounded out some friends about this, and despite their differing relationship histories and attachment styles, they recognised this too.

I’m not talking here about the hypervigilance that comes with a high-conflict or unsafe situation. This is hypervigilance in the face of a fairly harmonious companionship. It’s a deeply engrained habit, perhaps an intergenerational carry-over from times when our ancestors were genuinely unsafe. Perhaps from wartime experiences. Perhaps the hypervigilance women can carry around men, from generations of fearing for their physical safety when walking the streets at night or going about daily life.

Humans seem to have an innate desire for belonging and connection, it’s a necessary part of our survival when we’re young, and we carry this survival fear throughout our lives. Rejection and abandonment can feel tantamount to death. Loneliness has been identified as a silent killer, impacting our physical and mental health in a myriad of ways.

Yet we also have a competing pull towards solitude, towards self-sovereignty, towards the space to truly honour ourselves and our needs.

The balance is different for different individuals, and likely dependent on what your past experiences have been. You may find yourself drawn towards whichever need was not met in childhood – the need for connection or the need for autonomy - or towards patterns that feel deeply familiar from the past.

We can call this anxious or avoidant attachment styles.

We can call it introversion or extroversion.

But on a more simplistic level, I see it as a question of where our nervous system feels most settled. Where does the noise of hypervigilance become quiet?

A calm nervous system is where we get to heal and replenish, restoring our energy reserves and refuelling our systems. Some people find calm and safety in connection and companionship, and experience a sense of threat when they’re alone. Others find safety in aloneness, and sense threat (judgement, demand, the need to accommodate or appease) around other people. And of course, many experience a mix of both.

The good news is, to access this safety, I don’t need to avoid other people or leave my marriage. The ongoing work is to expand the capacity of my nervous system to feel safety and ease in the presence of others. To teach my system that it’s not in fact under threat in the presence of my favourite people, that it can drop the hyper-focus on the other. To practice accessing safety and regulation in the company of people.

Wherever we find ourselves on this spectrum, we can begin to slowly, incrementally teach our nervous system to access more safety in the opposite. It takes time, but it’s one of the many reasons I love somatic work. These traits and patterns are not necessarily as fixed as we may have believed. Our nervous system is malleable.

This has been one of my reflections this week.

The other realisation I’ve been pondering is that, when I’m alone, I’m forced to challenge some of my assumptions and reclaim parts of myself that I’ve projected onto my partner.

I tell myself that I’m looking forward to a clean and tidy house, my mind neatly framing him as the messy one. A week in, and I’m confronted with the house looking as messy as ever. Could it be that I am messy too? That I’ve been conveniently disowning that quality, and that the version of me who lives in my head is a little different from reality?

Likewise, my grumpy, irritable moments.

Without anyone to pin it on, I’m forced to recognise that those parts belong to me too. I’m forced to see a more 360-degree version of myself, and to recognise the parts that I disown and project onto others.

I can highly recommend a temporary relationship holiday. As well as claiming the space to do as you please without needing to accommodate others, it also functions a little like a silent retreat. In the space and quiet, there’s a mirror that shows you aspects of yourself, both the comfortable and the uncomfortable. There’s an opportunity to view yourself, your partner, and your relationship from a different angle. For lightbulbs to turn on, patterns to become clearer, and insights to emerge. There’s an opportunity to take these learnings and realisations back into the relationship, to continue to grow your capacity for relating.

What we discover is that intimacy and solitude are not polar opposites. It’s a two-way flow, and each feeds the other. We learn about ourselves in relationship to another. And to be truly intimate with another, we must become intimate with ourselves.

We can only show up in connection to the extent that we are connected to ourselves.

I’d love to hear – what is your relationship with connection and solitude? Where does your nervous system feel quietest? And what are your experiences of relationship holidays? Jump over into the comments to join the conversation.

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Disclaimer - Content is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only, and is not a substitute for mental health treatment or advice.