Solitude & Love

I’m taking a six-week break in my relationship.  My partner and I have agreed that each of us wants this time off, to balance our relationships with ourselves, with our relationships with each other. This move is re-introducing me to un-diluted solitude. I’m finding something in my solitude I didn’t expect, I hoped for it, but didn’t know what would be possible for me. I’m finding, there is a relationship between how I feel about me, and how I feel about my significant other. Solitude is deepening both. Through this process, I’m learning that being alone, which is difficult, grows my relationship with me, which in turn, grows my regard for her.

There seems to be some paradoxical relationship between solitude and love. The more I am alone, and come to love myself more, the more love I have for my partner. This sounds like some kind of fusion, a confusion of our being mixed together, but it actually only evolves when we are apart. Go figure! Life has apparently set-up an elegant paradox with very exacting parameters. “Know Thyself” becomes “Love Your Neighbor.” But, only if I spend the time alone to really get to know myself.

Take for example freedom. My partner is more free to be herself, more free to find out for herself what that means, because I can handle being alone. My time alone liberates her, as she is figuring out for herself her own liberation. A friend of mine calls this “co-liberation.” To me, this is what relationship is really all about.

The German poet Rilke correlates loving with solitude. He points out a special aspect of solitude, which if cultivated, is to “become world.” “Become world in him [or her] self, for the sake of another.” The idea of becoming your self, and containing the world, for another, is the ultimate in expansion and freedom. The whole idea of becoming fully one’s self, being the development that frees the other, is counter – cultural. Isn’t love supposed to be a multiple-party thing? Isn’t it about mutuality and collaboration? It seems that there is a connection, but it is more complex than just being about holding hands and cooperating.

I find being alone, even when I am able to turn it into solitude, hard. The hours seem to scold me, and I feel challenged to find the creativity to engage my self. The day can stretch out, and I am often revealed in ways I wouldn’t have guessed at. The mirror of solitude, for me, has been flawless, despite my protests. Strangely, I like this. Self-revelation tends to sober me, and settle me down. My anxiety about myself abates. I have a more accurate picture to work from, and that, despite not always being pleasing, sets me to working on what really matters about my life. Plus, each night I tuck myself into bed, and I know my life is being lived out, the best I can.

This thing about becoming myself, and that being the most loving thing I can be doing for my partner, awes me. I want her to know I am real. I want her to know that when I touch her, the world is saying “you belong.’’ I want her to feel movement inside, some sense that the Universe is moving too. None of these things are possible, so I’m learning, without my experiencing them in my solo life. It is in such moments, moments alone, where I experience the invisible link that joins us, and I know that all along we have been part of something larger than us, that joins us to one another. It is alone that I am more likely to cry from that knowing.

Solitude also breaks my heart. It reminds me of the real benefit of remembering my existential aloneness every moment. I don’t know about you, but I would just as soon forget how alone, and responsible I am, for my own life. That forgetting, which I do all the time, is revealed in my solitude, to be the reason I don’t recall the miracle that attends our being together. When I forget all of that, I treat us both with disregard. I miss the miracle that is going on.

Solitude isn’t just freeing for my partner. I guess that is what is so compelling about it. I walk taller (in this case, sit taller) through this life, when I admit, and this only happens when I love what the Universe has created in me, that my being here is no accident. I may not know why I’m here, but I know, that despite all the bad scientific advice I’m getting, I belong. I’m the universe expanding in a totally unexpected way. So are you. Imagine that!  I do, especially when I am alone.