[Elizabeth]

I notice that this post is a couple of months old, and was just edited. I wonder - Is your friend still happy being alone?

I had some really atrocious roommates at one point, and got out of a bad marriage at another point, and shortly after getting out of these ugly experiences, I was happy to be living alone, but after a period of time, I got lonely. Often, very painfully lonely.

At this point in my life, I work from home and I have been pretty much isolated from people for about 6 months - and before that on most weeks I only saw people once a week for about a year and a half. It has only been in the last couple of months that I have started being okay with being alone.

I used to enjoy the company of others, although admittedly I preferred time with others to be productive or structured, and was usually able to bring people from being in a hurt, worried, or angry mindset into an improved mindset. I enjoyed this. After a period of time of continual close proximity with such people, I lost my ability to just naturally calm them down, and they would be even angrier or more upset because I was not longer able to just make everything okay - and I eventually recognized that it was the naturally angry or perpetually wounded that were attracted to me because I could make everything okay for awhile, and would not see what kinds of people they really were because around me, they were okay - at least until that - whatever it was - wore off.

Although I was happy to be out of a bad situation, and I was lonely both with people who were not interacting apporopriately with me and lonely without people, at this point I am not lonely alone - although I have online contacts.

I was raised as an only child, and I understand that people without siblings have more of a tendancy to be loners than those raised with siblings. Obviously that would be habituation. Even when I liked being with other people, I also needed a certain amount of space, too.

I find it easier to do things for others than for myself, but in doing things for others, I also enjoy the benefits of those things being done. Nevertheless, it is not worth being abused for. It seems to me that if both people have positive energies, or energies that are somehow complimentary to each other, at least a certain amount of interction would be a positive thing - and it is a rare person that actually likes having someone hanging around them like they are in orbit or something. Wouldn't balance be the key?